THIS is the ULTIMATE scan tool for DIY mechanics on a budget

hello and welcome to the car care nut channel so if you've been watching my channel for a while you know that i have been on the hunt for the perfect ultimate diy scan tool every day i get many emails from all kinds of companies that i've ever heard of and i look into their product and it's just another blue driver that cost three hundred dollars that doesn't really do anything extra or it's another karista that costs four hundred dollars and doesn't do anything extra but one company caught my attention and i am so glad that i listened because their tool is really astounding but before we dig into the review and the demo and everything else if you're new to the channel welcome thank you so much for watching my channel consider subscribing check out some of my other videos if you are a returning subscriber well thank you so much for watching another one of my videos without further ado let's go check this thing out so let's talk briefly about scan tools as a professional i am used i work at a toyota leadership i'm used to dealing with the official scan tool from toyota that does everything that is possible to do the scan tool it is too complicated usually for diy and it's super expensive yes you can buy a clone whatever but that's not the straight way of buying one if you want to buy an official one it's very expensive so every scan tool have to have a few features that are very important for professional level or advanced level diagnosis let me break it in a few categories the first category which i expect the scan tool to cost 100 or less the one that could read codes and can access abs and srs and basically all the computers maybe do a little bit of customization maybe read some live data not everything but some live data in that category i think the charista and the blue driver are the best there are many others they're also good but they're pretty much all the same that's their capability then you go into the 150 200 dollar bracket in some other models really for toyota it doesn't do much maybe you can program tpms sensors maybe you can reset some certain things in other manufactures you could do a little bit more but that's about it but a professional grade scan tool can do one thing that most of these scan tools can do and here's where the price jump happens now you're in the 700 800 000 plus range is when you get to bi-directional control activating things when you're doing diagnosis this is very important with how cars are complicated today you need to be able to activate everything individually so you know what's going on not only that but it can do brake bleeding it could do some of the special functions or advanced utilities that not really available in the cheaper level or the entry level scan tools and this is what caught my attention to this one scan tool that we're going to review in this video usually i get the email you know i told you about this already i got the email i asked them what are the capability and what's the price 400 it can do they sent me basically copy paste the generic text from amazon i really don't respond to that because if you're not willing to really tell me what your scan tool can do i'm not interested in reviewing it and wasting my precious viewers times but this company went a little bit overboard they simply replied with a pdf file and told me here are the capabilities of my scan tool they i open that file and it is a 4 000 page file i am not joking here's a little snap of that and that's only for toyota this is every single model ever made by toyota that is obd2 compliant and what the scan tool can do 4 000 pages long you know what if you took forth that time to make a 4 000 page document you will have time on my on my channel and my viewers time because this tool is very impressive and ladies and gentlemen it is a scan tool from a company you've never heard of x tool is the name of the company and the scan tool in question is d7 that all means nothing until we see what it can do first let's let's open let's open the case and see what's in it what comes with the scan tool before we go hook it up to the corolla behind me and see what it actually can do so very nice blow molded case very nice scan tool actually the hardware usually is very flimsy from this cheaper level but this one it's an android it's very it has some protection on the sides it is generally a nice looking scan tool that's a scan tool itself then you also get some foam some instructions that are hard translation from chinese it could do a lot better but this doesn't matter because you'll see what this hand tool can do and you'll know why there's there cannot be an owner's manual then there is a very nice cable it has a velcro it's good length it's not super long but this is pretty much the standard for even professional scan tools the cable seems very high quality on one side it connects to the scan tool on one side it connects to the obd2 connector very simple it comes with a usb port you can update it and charge it which it comes with a charger something interested it's interesting here which i thought this was pretty cool for our international viewers this is actually 110 and 240 so you can have the standard us i think canadian one as well or you can have the other one i don't know what standard this is called but for everybody around the world and i remember from my old days this was the plug so you can this just connects to the charger and you can charge it i thought that was pretty cool but you know what all this means nothing until you see what the scan tool can do let me summarize it before we jump to the car this scan tool can read data good can read every single computer on the car good can do bi-directional control at the exact same level as the oem scan tool and not only that it can do a lot of special functions they're calling it here special functions like evap tests like tpms reset like so many other things it's really hard to list it in one video i'll just give you a little bit example the car behind me is a toyota corolla of the latest generation it is a hybrid model so let's go hook up the scan tool to it and i'll show you some of the awesome features of the scan tool and why this is taking your time as a viewer for me to review it alright folks so when you connect the scan tool i have the car running here it's a hybrid so you don't hear the engine it might kick on any moment well to begin let's go auto scan it's going to just identify the vin number of the car it's going to ask you a few questions that's normal it's going to ask you to order lexus we're going to go toyota it's going to ask you which country is this car destined for not where it's made but which market is in because this scandal actually can recognize european toyotas japanese toyotas and others so in our case let's go usa there we go it recognized the car corolla hybrid 2021 and you notice there's option radar cruise even though original scan tool will ask you for these options sometimes it'll actually have a tpms all kinds of other options so let's hit ok automatic scan this is actually going to look through all your codes all your computers recognize them and it goes very quick as you can see text stream takes forever this is something called health check and text stream it takes forever this is almost done there we go we're almost done so when you're here you just hit like you're on engine hit diagnose you got read codes clear codes live data and actuation let's go to our live data this does take a little bit of time even in tech stream takes even longer because there's so much data that it has to collect trust me these new cars they have incredible amount of data that you can get from the engine computer now this is where you have already departured from your 100 scan tool they're not going to show this much data because they're not capable of getting this much data the first data point is total distant travel this is not from the cluster this is from the engine computer so if somebody modifies the cluster to change the miles you're actually going to know immediately if you're like buying a used car because this is from a different point they can't change that usually you just change the cluster where you can see but they don't change everything else so that's the first thing there is so much data here folks i mean i'm just going to scroll through a few of it and this is something that i like like if we go back to some variable numbers so the airflow ratio it is live and it is the refresh rate is very quick scan tools and this is where text stream comes up right up with speed because if you can't see the fluctuations very smoothly like if they're jittery you might miss stuff in diagnosis so continuing on live data maybe you've seen live data before but here's the actuation test this is where your money is at folks this is a big deal because you can do some pretty crazy stuff here like control the engine cooling fan now let me turn off the ac it'll it'll always give you these descriptions you gotta read them because sometimes there are conditions that have to be met for the fans to come on and this is exactly the same as it is in tech stream so right now the engine cooling fan is off we're going to put it on high fans are on low now they're on low and off if you have a fan for example that's not coming on and you're not sure if it's a fan problem wiring problem or you have a control circuit where you know it's not getting a signal to turn on this is a very simple test you don't even have to break out your meter and all this stuff just activate the fan yeah the fan works so now i know my fan is good my control circuit is good and my control circuit leading to the fan is good and the computer of the fan is good so now i have to turn my diagnosis back to where is the fan getting a signal from and potentially there's an issue elsewhere this is a very simple way to utilize this so most of these you can actually control with the car off or the kion engine off i don't want to do that right now because i don't want to risk the battery going down but here's another one check the cylinder compression this will cut the fuel cut the ignition all automatic on each cylinder and then all you do is just crank the engine and it'll show you the numbers and life is great now all of this there is so many stuff here you can activate the water pump now the engine is running right now so you can put it at 3000 rpm here it is you can actually go listen to it see the flow put a zero rpm and here it's showing you two data lists this is actually the same as tech stream and i'll explain some of this doesn't make sense the activate the electric water pump that's the target so that's what the computer wants the water pump to do and then the bottom one is what the water pump is actually doing so when i put it at 3000 rpm you notice that it's flickering it can never hold that water pump exactly at 3 000 but it's very close and that the computer is happy when you put a 0 rpm you notice how it drops slowly because until the water pump starts spinning stop spinning now we're back at zero this is also very simple to test your your water pump if you're doing a bleeding and you want to be done quickly you want to circulate the coolant quickly you can just go in here activate it that way when the engine is off your water pumps still be running and you're still gonna re-circulate the coolant now let's exit out of engine and i'll show you some of the other cool stuff hybrid now one thing i noticed about this when you go to hybrid control and diagnose let it connect live data it's not going to show you much data here and i was kind of bummed like what's going on here here let's let's wait for it to load and we'll i'll show you guys so same thing travel distance now this is the hybrid computer now not getting it from the engine computer you scroll down and it just it's not showing me everything we're missing a lot of data here yeah it's showing you like the motor torque and where we're at like when you have positive torque the motor is thriving when you have negative torque you're generating remember how hybrids work if you watch my series so this is the motor torque for you know we're not driving right now but if you start driving all these will be all over the place because now you're driving generating driving generating so this is also a way for you to know what's going on with hybrid but there's nothing about the battery here here you can see the voltage of the battery right now before boosting and after remember how the inverter and hybrids boost you can see what it is boosting to what's going on you can see the temperature of the coolant this is in celsius you can actually change the units here if you want it in in standard or metric but i discovered something and this is not in the toyota scan tool turret scan tool it's just hybrid control has all the data but if you go back you can actually see hybrid battery and motor generator and you you'll see all there kind of broke it down in three sections you can see all the data for the battery here like the temperature of the cells the voltages all that good stuff you can see it all here here we go the status of the relays let's go scroll down to temperature of the hybrid battery these are the different the different temperature sensors on the battery here are the voltages this is very useful in hybrid diagnosis but let's go back and i'll show you the actuation test on the battery you can control the cooling fan if you ever if you have suspect that the cooling fan is is not working right same thing is it the fan or is it the control side so you can just activate it and there are levels of the activation 46 i can actually hear the fan running right now pretty cool pretty six that's full blast that's when your battery is clogged the filter is clogged on the battery but let's go even further to things that you normally don't see and this is you know some scan tools will have some of these activation especially for the engine stuff but here's when we go to main body main body is the body ecu that's toyota lingo for body issue basically so you can go to live data not really much there it's just showing you some of the options and that's normal but when you go to the actuation test anything but normal here because you can activate everything door lock like you you hit you're hitting the door lock here and it's not working well it's as he also do you want to moderate data list we're not going to modern data list but there we go door lock door unlocked isn't that pretty cool now you know is it a switch problem or is it you know the locks themselves or is there a communication problem let's go back and then the wireless buzzer like the see this is this is the lingo that toyota uses buzzer buzzer is like a warning chime or in this case the wireless buzzer is actually the remote control noise that like be beep when you unlock and lock the door so there you go here you can test it that way there is let's see what else relay of headlight can actually command the headlights on there we go the lights are on i mean the thing is endless if you have a car with with mirror folding mirrors that are not folding you can actually control that they're folding now this car doesn't have that so we can't really activate it vehicle horn this is a good one let's wake up to all the neighbors [Music] yep it works so all of this stuff you can spend days here so navigation system we have actually one fault let's see what the fault is disconnected xm tuner antenna there we go we got a fault and it's history you see that this is another thing that some of these cheapo scan tools will not show you clearly what is a history what is current what is pending and what is permanent this is clearly history so let's go ahead and clear the code cleared let's go back no trouble codes great now let's exit out of all this and i'll show you the creme de la creme of this scan tool which is the special functions folks this is when things go crazy key programming that's where your money's at folks again we gotta this doesn't happen automatically you gotta select it let's find our toyota there we go and it's not in alphabetical order for some reason here we go remote mobilizer smart key system all smart key lost i haven't tried this i tried to program a key it works great but i have not tried all smart keys lost this is a feature if it works it makes the scan tool the most valuable of all basically if you lose all your keys you could reprogram the car with this that is something big but very simple for the smart key so when we get to this menu you see that i've tried them this is not this seems like a little generic you got to keep trying until you find one that connects proxy 3 connected you can add a smart key you can erase smart key you can reset the smart key or you can program the ecu now i don't want to play with this because this is not my car and we don't have another key but you basically go add a smart key it'll walk you through the prompts and just like the toyota scan tool erase smart keys let's say your key was stolen one key was stolen you have another one you want to make sure that key doesn't start the car anymore get all the keys that you currently have and you go through that utility and you'll it'll ask you to touch the key to the start button and then whatever keys you don't have they'll be erased and that's it but this is how things are super simple here other stuff here some of these are not really for this model like we don't have transportation mode the supra does but we don't have here the dpf this is for diesel stuff steering angle sensor yes you do have this here very rarely you know toyota will go out but again it'll ask you which model you have which you have an electric steering system emps most of them do and then camry highlander this is where it takes a little bit of trial and error and understanding what's going on with these special functions tpms reset this is one that i think is very useful let's find our toyota there we go so here you have to select the car in this case we're going to go corolla and it'll ask you which frequency you have and this is where it takes a little bit of trial and error again so you want to learn diagnose our information learn is you can actually program your sensors so some of these options you notice that they're they're not really for this car like we don't have a gearbox match we don't have a crankshaft resync some cars need that we don't have a window reset these are you can do them from here we don't have a airbag sensor reset because it's recessed automatically but what we do have is abs bleeding we do have that one and i tried this one and it works pretty good except when the battery goes down we'll talk about this in a little bit in the video here we go brake line air bleeding for a hybrid you can actually do it with this you can bleed the forerunner the fall runners hydraulic unit if you've just replaced one you can bleed just regular system or if you're replacing parts you can actually bleed regular bleeding is simple but when you replace these parts on hybrids especially things get really complicated very impressive scan tool it could do so much we could be here for three hours folks this is very impressive well there you have it folks i hope i didn't lie to you this thing is pretty impressive and i'll be honest something about its speed i am super impressed by the speed of this scan tool and i don't know if you can see it on camera this thing is actually pretty beat up because i use it in the shop now because it is faster than tech stream the official toyota scan tool but for this price point this can do a lot more than just text stream yeah you could buy a clone one online to do that but you have to buy a cloned one for every manufacturer if you have three four cars with different manufacturers this can do everything for everybody and the price of this product as the date of filming this video is 470 dollars that might seem like a lot for a diy but trust me if you're ready to graduate from the basic hundred dollar below hundred dollar scan tool like awesome blue driver or awesome carista or many others are really good around that price point don't buy the 2 300 one because they're useless they're basically you're just paying for the hardware and everything else is the same this is really taking it to the next level i compare this and hotel is another company that makes really good products but anything comparable to this you're talking 800 to over a thousand and possibly more because this thing can do a few things that are just very specific if you are ready to upgrade to go to a better scan tool that will potentially cover all your makes that you have all the models that you have of cars that can do real diagnosis capabilities i think this is a great choice the company was generous enough to give us a small discount for my viewers i'll leave all the information in the description of this video i tested it on the newest stuff 2021 this is usually where these aftermarket scan tools suffer with the very newest cars and they still did very well it identified 2021 cars even some other complicated ones so before we wrap up this video it's not all rainbows and butterflies with this scan tool i will share with you the negatives of this scan tool because nothing is perfect in life if you want something perfect go buy the oem scan tool for ten thousand dollars and then even then you'll have issues let's discuss some of the things i did not like about this candle starting with the cable now the cable is perfectly fine there is nothing i don't doubt it's it's durability because i've been using this in the shop and we don't exactly have the time to treat things with love in the shop things are fast-paced and it has held up pretty well i don't see it having an issue however one thing that really is annoying this is personal i don't like these twist connections because here's a scenario in a shop you're in a hurry you get the car in you just want to check it scan it and now i have to open the case take the scan tool connect this turn these things on so it wouldn't flop over and now i'm halfway through my diagnostic and it's cut out and then connect this to the scan tool turn these things on to connect it and then when i'm done i open the case and i just want to put this here and move on i still have to disconnect this and put it here otherwise it won't fit no i'm fighting with the case now granite this one is only for professionals usually diy mechanics they're they're taking their time they're trying to do everything not in a rush in a hurry but actually this scan tool is capable of doing professional grade like independent shop would really find use of this but this is one thing and the other thing is the battery life the battery life is not great i probably used it for an hour off off the charger after a full charge when i got it and that's all it lasted and it went down straight to zero the other thing is i charged it fully i left it maybe for two or three days it was down almost to nothing now i don't know if that's a problem with this particular one that i have or this is just the battery life that they have it doesn't run android it's pretty stable you can actually use it as a tablet for very few things other than just a scan tool portion i don't really spend too much time on that because i bought it as a scan tool not a tablet but one downside of the battery is it's not an issue because when you connect it to the car it'll get power through the car but here's a scenario that i had that actually this could be a problem i was bleeding brakes on a 2013 cranberry hybrid and we've replaced everything in this there was a contamination you know big big job we're placing the hydraulic unit and the pump and everything while i was bleeding with this scan tool and it was working perfectly until the car's battery got to right around 11 volts this thing shut off flickered and shut off and restarted halfway through the process which kind of made my fever go up because if one of these very expensive components will get wiped out because we're in the middle of a procedure that's going to be a very interesting conversation with my boss but that didn't happen everything was good when i hooked up the charger to the car i should have hooked up the charger to the car but the battery on the car was new it just dropped because we've been on key on for a long time but if this thing had a battery that is good that is long and strong it would have continued but i know i started flickering at 11 volts so if you're going to use this for heavy stuff where the key is on for a very long time you're doing some long procedure make sure you got a battery charger don't count on the battery in this thing i really like this tool i recommend it only if you are ready to upgrade from the basic scan tool if you only want to read codes and you only want to do some customizations read basic live data stick with a hundred dollar scan tool this is overkill but if you're a diy and you have a hundred dollar scan tool and you just need a real scan tool not a glorified code reader this is a great option for that because of its capabilities because of its price point folks i hope you liked this video i hope you learned something new if you like this video consider giving it a thumbs up if you're not a subscriber consider subscribing to the channel check out some of my other videos until the next video folks may the lord bless you and keep you and you have yourself a wonderful day

Channel: The Car Care Nut

Views: 1,494,870

Keywords: This is the Ultimate scan tool, obd2 scanner, top car scanner, top 10 car diagnostic scanner, bi directional scan tool, xtool d7 review, xtool, d7, diy scan tool, autel scan tool, toyota mechanic, toyota maintenance, the car care nut, scotty kilmer, chris fix, car care nut, diy scanner, best obd2 scanner, car key programing, toyota, toyota supra, 2022 toyota tundra, toyota corolla, best car scanner, code reader, obd2 code reader, best obd2 scanner 2021

Id: 1tUBSwsZjU8

Length: 28min 20sec (1700 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021