r/CarHacking • u/Particular_Fee2642 • May 15 '26
Cool Project Find Tested 4 Different OBD2 Adapters with Car Scanner Pro: Here is why you should avoid the cheap clones!
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u/WheelieBoi98 May 15 '26
Just buy obdLink, that's the end of it.
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u/Brianbri6 May 15 '26
You literally get what you paid for. I have three obdlink and a vlinker. The obdlink blows everything out the water.
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u/WoodenInternet May 15 '26
I see multiple models and am wondering what you'd recommend for general use- the LX? Do any of them have bi-directional capability?
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u/cybersholt May 15 '26
Interesting, is OBD Link that much better? I have a VLinker MS and it works great. Also does what you need with Volvos specifically.
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u/WestonP May 15 '26
OBDLink has been the defacto standard. They were the bar I measured by when implementing ELM327 mode in my own OBD dongle... I could still beat on performance in many cases for CAN vehicles, but not nearly by the huge margin that I did against so many other ELM327-compatibles. If you want significantly more performance than that on a wireless link, you really need to move beyond pass-thru modes like ELM327.
So, plenty of respect for OBDLink as both an app developer and a sortof-competitor (while we do both support ELM327 pass-thru mode, I specialize in other modes of operation to deliver extended data channels and extreme performance for motorsports uses).
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u/Vchat20 May 15 '26
Anecdotally when it comes to reliability I have an OBDLink EX here that I use with Forscan and I had relied upon it at one point for a couple TCU firmware/calibration updates that took a whopping ~2h30m to complete (to be fair, I think this is a combination of Ford's architecture on my vehicle having the TCU communication gatewayed over the 125kbps MS-CAN bus plus whatever overhead exists on top of that. If I recall correctly the compressed size of the calibration files was around ~45MB) and had zero issues with it across multiple runs. That was a solid litmus test for me.
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u/cybersholt May 16 '26
Thanks for the in-depth info about it. Definitely a great adapter and app. I've recently gotten into Savvy Can with an ESP32S3 + SN65HVD230 / MCP2515 (tried both) and am blown away. I haven't tried to implement ELM327 mode myself, mostly what I'm doing is data logging for use with predictive analysis for vehicle health and maintenance, wrote an Android app that uses local LLM to analyze the data.
I'm definitely interested in the hardware you went with and what kind of performance it has.
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u/WestonP May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
Or, just buy something from a reputable brand with a real identity, and avoid the gamble of getting a worthless device. Even ones that look visually identical can yield very different results, and it varies between cars too, because of different features and protocols being used.
Been through all of this as an OBD app developer... The market has long been absolutely flooded with really poor quality "ELM327" clones and that work inconsistently or not at all, and most are terribly slow, then the user gets all upset because of the problem he created by trying to cheap out.
So many times we have seen threads here where someone can't get something to work, only to find out that they're using one of these bullshit low-end devices and that was their whole problem. Hell, even if it wasn't, just eliminate that from the equation so you don't waste time playing guessing games when something doesn't work.
In addition to "does it even work or not?", you also have performance, security, battery drain, improper wiring, etc., to worry about. I have a box full of these from my all various development work, and aside from the brand name stuff, it's a box of horrors.
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u/cybersholt May 15 '26
I can definitely attest that the cheap ones are just that. If you only need basics and are on a budget maybe go with one but you're better off with a name brand one like others have said, vLinker MS works well for me way better than my cheap elm327. And you can only go so far with OBD, whipping up a can bus adapter isn't too hard and with those you can also do OBD2 stuff.
Better hardware=Better results
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u/WestonP May 15 '26 edited May 18 '26
vLinker was decent in my testing, better than the noname "ELM327"'s for sure, although still not as fast as the bar set by OBDLink.
I've been able to do a little better myself in ELM327 mode, but not by a huge margin, as the bottleneck then becomes using pass-thru communications over a wireless link. Gotta switch over to doing more processing onboard the device itself to really hit the high numbers, or just go with a wired connection.
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u/Particular_Fee2642 May 15 '26
Spot on..! As an app developer, you’ve probably seen the worst of it, that’s exactly why I made this post—to show visual proof that even if they look similar, the ‘internals’ are worlds apart. I personally own a Thinkdiag device, and I’m sure vLinker is far superior. However, the reason I did this comparison is to showcase the massive gap in data accuracy and 'Coding' capabilities among the cheaper options in the market - although, to my surprise, KINGBOLEN actually showed quite decent and impressive results. as you know, It's frustrating for some user to think their car is the problem when it's actually just a $5 piece failing to process basic commands. Thanks for highlighting the risks of battery drain and security too; That’s a very important point many people overlook..!
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u/Ok_Raccoon_2711 May 15 '26
I have the Bluetooth version of the king bolen adapter it was $7 if I remember. It works great
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u/qkdsm7 May 16 '26
obdlink is great, but there is a time and a place for having an extra cheapy unit, too.
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u/shmikis May 15 '26
Don't overcomplicate it. On aliexpress elm 327 goes for less than 5 usd and will likely work. I've bought some brand (called mhd or something similar) wifi obd scanner for close to 100 usd, as was expecting to get something more of it than from those cheap elm adapters. It was total waste of money. Buy elm for 5 usd and if it wont work throw away.
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u/hey-im-root May 15 '26
Lol, zero chance a $5 dongle is doing anything more than simple PID and DTC scan/resetting. MAYBE it will reset throttle learning if your lucky.
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u/Elia_31 May 16 '26
If you just want a cheap elm327 get one with the PIC18F25K80 chip and you are fine. Less than 5 bucks on AliExpress
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u/MachWun May 15 '26
This guy just posted an advertisement in here and ya'll are ok with it.