The main benefit of this product is that it allows you to prevent your water heater from turning on, either manually or under a schedule, so that it does not consume gas when you don't need hot water. Doing this From experience I can tell doing this reduces your gas bill cost, helping you to save money by turning it off when you don't need your water hot, for example when you are sleeping or not at home. But it has some limitations.How it works: Through a com cable that plugs into your traditional water heater thermostat control, this device connects your water heater wirelessly to an app in your phone, so you can turn it off or on when you want, rather than having it running 24/7.PROSYou can automatically prevent your water heater from running when you do not need hot water and get back on when you need it.You can set a timer so that your water heater works on a schedule for every day or the week or specific days and times.At any time you can see if your water is hot or not on your phone, and you can “boost” the water heater if you happen to need hot water outside the schedule you have previously set.It is easy to install, provided that your gas water heater is not too old. Mine is a A.O. Smith Signature 100, traditional natural gas model. (check compatibility on their website)CONSI think they should do a better job explaining in plain English what this product does and what it doesn’t, so you don't have to figure it out at the time of use.Poor user manual (if you are like me, who like to understand how things work, you will be emailing them for basic questions not addressed in the manual)The temperature reading is not completely accurate,. Expect a difference of about 5F degrees below the actual water temperature (BTW, remember that the water temperature is controlled only by the water heater thermostat control)No phone customer support. Only email and they may take a few days to answer.There is confusion and problems because there are two versions of that app for Aquanta, plus the website portal, all of which work to some extent and relate to your same account. However only the latest app version is working 100%, at the time of this review is version 2.7.0, the older app and the website can not at this point update your profile and preferences. I hope they fix these discrepancies because it is useful to also have the option of using the website portal from a computer.VERDICTI think it is amazing at what it does, letting your control wirelessly whether or not and when your traditional water heater is on or off. For that reason alone, I think is worth it. If they would fix the discrepancies between their website, their app, and their older app, plus make a better manual, and have better customer support, this product would deserve five stars.Update February 25, 2024I updated my review to five stars, because after two years, Aquanta keeps working fine, turning my traditional water heater into a smart device and saving me money in gas bills. Here a few notes about Aquanta operation and what that means to you:1. To know if your unit got disconnected from wifi, look for CURRENT STATUS in the HOME section of the AQUANTA app.2. Confused by the meaning of the color of the lead lights?Blinking: your unit is not properly connected to the network and searching for WIFI signal.Green: Aquanta is in monitoring mode, your water heater is working as if aquante was not there.Red: Aquanta is keeping your water heater off. Blue: Aquanta is letting the water heater work, but your water heater is off because water is already hot).Purple: Water heater is on and burning gas to heat the water.3. To fix problems connecting with wifi, it appears it is best to have your bluetooth enagled while engaging aquanta to your home wifi network. And... if after working for some time it stops connecting, you may need to disable wep3-wep2 mix and choose wep2 only option.

update: 6-2020 Aquanta now has an app, this is an improvement.Installation was very easy with basic knowledge, basically you undo a some wire nuts add a junction box (the unit) and that is it. Sensors Zip tie to cold water intake and relief valve. Instructions are clear. Wifi setup was easy, again instructions are clear. My unit did not ship with optional leak detector as the item states.I am a bit of an energy efficiency fanatic, that is the biggest reason I made this purchase. I estimate the energy savings will pay for the unit in about 18 months in my case. This unit allows you to monitor your energy usage at the water heater, the usage is only shown by the day,week,month. It does not break it down by the hour, at least not that you can see. It uses a program to learn your habits and regulate when your water heater runs, so far it has not made us take a cold shower, and I have it set to "Most Efficient". We have had the unit for 2 weeks and the kWh used per day for the first 2 days was 7.5 to 8.5, after that I switched it to "Most efficient" and the kWh per day has been 6.2 to 3.1 over a 2 week period. The aquanata is work but it does not tell me exactly how it is working. I wish it gave me a little more insight into my usage and how it worked. However it does work as advertised. You can manually setup a timer to turn on and of the water heater but this kind of defeats the purpose of the learning feature. You can also set up for a "time of use" rate plan, this is where you pay more for power during peak times, for me this is a big deal, power costs 4x as much from 2 to 6 in the summer. Now my water heater knows that and can/should adjust. This also allows to remotely turn off the water heater, in my case this saves $1 a day, I used to do this by flipping the breaker when going out of town.There are a few things that could be better. You access the remote functions through a website, not an app, this works but just seems out dated. There is a LED on the box that glows bright and different colors, it cant be turned off, and the different colors are not fully explained. There is a boost feature that gives you max hot water and away feature available on the remote website, However there is no way to activate those from the unit, for example a single button on the front.