Back in May of 2015 I bought my first Rachio, but alas I’ve sold that house and I’m having moderate to severe Rachio withdrawal. I noticed Costco is going to have a sale on November 1st for a 12 zone Rachio 3. This model isn’t listed on the Rachio site so my question is, does the Costco version have any different functionality than the 8/16 zone models available through Rachio?
I have had the Costco version for two years and it works just like the regular 8/16. It is not crippled like the cheaper base unit. I run it on flex daily with no issues. It was perfect to me as my home has 9 zones so I just needed one extra zone over the 8 zone model.
I had a similar situation. I had a Rachio 2, 8-zone in my house that I sold, and when I bought my current house about a year ago, I bought the Costco Rachio 3, 12-zone, which is perfect for me as the new house has 11 zones.
It works just like the Rachio 8/16 zone models, but with 12 zones and at the Costco price and their excellent return policy.
It’s been a year now and it still works great on Flexible Daily.
The Costco one is 10zones instead of 8 or 12. Looks the same though.
There’s also a section that has a yard layout and you can put the locations of your heads and zones, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. I guess its kind of nice to lookup where heads are if you forget? Although simply turning the zones on shows you were heads are, unless something breaks.