RWDragoon

I bought the Sanp-On Verus as soon as it was released, and I think I have the 1st or 2nd one in Alberta, Canada. Compared to the Modis it sure seemed like a super powerful system, that could expand and grow as my new shop needed. Boy was I disappointed. My shop usually works on Japanese cars of all sorts, with occasional domestic as well. I needed a scan tool with the capabilities of all so I could obtain my out-of-province inspection license even though I never work on Euro. I am a specialty shop that focus's on high performance street and race cars. We are not the average high volume shop. The 4 channel scope appealed to me as it would be useful when paired with my chassis dyno. I think the first version I had was 8.4? It was brutal. Buttons were tiny and very difficult to press with the crappy touch screen. We had communication problems from day one with Subaru vehicles (One of the most common vehicle I work on) Tech support was useless and never solved a problem... ever. After using the unit for more then a year, and pretty dissatisfied with the $14,000 unit (had to upgrade to Euro/Asian, COP adapters, and a few other accessories) I then tried to bleed a transmission on a Mitsubishi Evolution X we had in the shop. No such menu's to do so. I phoned tech support and walked through exactly what I was trying to do, and I had a factory Service manual for the car I was working on. My question was simple, with a software upgrade does this allow or enable the ability to service the transmission on the Evo X? Tech support went through the available options and menu's and said no it wasn't supported, but perhaps in a future release it would be. Again I'm dissatisfied with my very expensive purchase, and cant even upgrade it to perform a simple task. Randomly a friend of mine from another shop stopped by and was using my dyno on his car, and he brought along his own Verus to do some monitoring. His was a newer version then mine 10.something I borrowed it for 2 minutes and went through the menu's and sure enough it clearly listed the ability to bleed Evo X transmission(my Tech support phone call was the same week!) Now I am pretty pissed off and called my local dealer, who conveniently had a conference in town with the "head guy" that handles sales, questions related to diagnostic equipment. I went to the conference and they were explaining the release of the new wireless version without personality keys. After it was over I had a good discussion with the diagnostics guy, explaining that I am not the most typical shop, I dont use it more then 10 times a month, but when I try and use it, often it just doesn't work or communicate. He tells me that my problem is my software is very old and out dated, that many fixes have been applied, and the machine in general will run much faster! All for the low price of $1200cad with no satisfaction guarantee. I bite the bullet and go for it, spend the money and they update my tool. My local dealer picked it up and returned it in 1 or 2 days updated. It blue screened of death the first time the dealer tried to show me how great it was. The second boot up it seemed to work ok. It was a pretty large improvement, the buttons were large so you could usually click on what you intended, it used scrolling similar to an Iphone (but not nearly as smooth or good) and the menu's were cleaner. I dont think it really was any faster, except you didn't waste as much time clicking on the wrong menu's! 8 months ago the head diagnostics rep stops by my shop as my dealer has asked him to, due to my dissatisfaction. The rep listens to all my complaints and problems, we have normal 2008+ Subaru's at the shop it doesn't work in front of him, he suggest something wrong with the cable or key, we borrow one, same exact problem. It doesn't work on any of the new Nissan GTR's, 2008+ Subarus, and most other cars we work on. The rep doesn't care, doesn't do anything to help, doesn't even try to scam me into trading in on the new hardware.... nothing It's now 3 years since I bought it brand new, I'm running version 11.2 and I cant communicate with any Subaru's 2008 or newer it just endlessly wont connect. I have borrowed new cables, keys, everything and it never works. If I use OBDII Generic it works ok, with bare minimum support. It has the ability to work a little bit better with Evolutions and is able to bleed the transmission and reset TPMS. Tried it this week to connect to a 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee with a CEL on, doesn't work, cant connect. Generic mode, works fine. All in all I think its a pretty crappy product, not what I would expect from the "Legendary Snap-On" Poor product, poor support, poor choice to buy I'm located in Calgary, Alberta and if anyone would like to try it out I invite it. Dont make the same mistake as me!