types of incubators- some better? or just paying for the name?

[angelobutter]

Hello, I am looking into getting a new incubator and it looks like some seem super fancy but wanted to know what other peoples experiences were. I am currently using the hovabators, but was looking at like brinsea,and rcom. the price jump is just soooo big I was wondering if they are really worth it or if correctly using the old fashion hovabators is good enough? my reason for looking around is that i am looking into getting "higher end" eggs and want good hatch rates. thanks

 

[gabrielle1976]

I have a brinsea and its night and day from my old lg forced air. A genisis woudnt be to bad but if you can I would really go with a brinsea advanced if you can even the ecos are pretty good but the advanced are even better and are comparble to all I have read to the more expensive table top bators

 

[CayuseRanch]

I have also been shopping and am ordering the brinsea. I was going to get the r-com but after reading reviews changed my mind.

 

[Pele]

Brinsea is absolutely worth the money, and then some. I just tried my first hatch with the Octo (no autocradle, because that costs almost as much as the unit itself).
SOOOOOOO much better! After years of paranoia, mistrust, and heartbreak with my stupid useless styrofoam bator, this was downright dreamy.

The brinsea holds temperature like it's the only thing keeping the world turning. It will not budge a single degree the entire hatch. The octo model is a genius design that lets you rotate the eggs without opening the unit, which means that you have less chances of bacterial contamination. And the egg plate holds the eggs well above the water wells, which means you don't have them in danger of getting wet when you fill them. It's so dreamy.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Are they worth the extra money? They might be to you.

I have the Hovabator 1588 and am OK with it. It took a couple of hatches to get the temperature adjusted right, but that’s easier on the new model. I keep it in a stable environment so don’t have trouble maintaining temperature. It took a bit of practice but I got the humidity thing down too. I strongly recommend the auto turner. That makes life so much easier.

I normally only hatch twice a year. If I hatched much more often, I’d probably upgrade. It’s partly ease of hatching and partly ease of cleaning. I get pretty good hatch rates but I have to pay attention. With the higher end models they do more thinking for you. Adding water should be easier though if you have a hard water source, you might think about using distilled water so you don’t clog up the plumbing. The Styrofoam isn’t that hard to clean with that tray under it catching most of the mess but I could see a problem if it got really messy, say if an egg exploded.

I can’t say whether or not you will get better hatch rates with an upgrade. Maybe, maybe not. Some of the bells and whistles make them easier to use but realize I don’t use all the bells and whistles on my car, let alone all the cupholders.

Are they more dependable? Well, I haven’t had a problem with my Hovabator.

 

[angelobutter]

well i am way too lazy/impatient to retry my hovabators so i went ahead and bought the brinsea octagon 20 eco- i don't mind manual turning since it looks so easy anyway and i just couldn't justify twice the price just to get the digital readout. I am very excited- now i just need to get some eggs for it- should probably do a test run in this one though just to get used to it before i get any "fancy" eggs.