Back on topic? We've had a demo Zeus for a while. It has a little added Fast Track type functionality which is sort of useful. Other than that it is just a (very) slightly upgraded Verus Edge, Which we have. The only thing it really brings to the table is a decently sized OBD connector. It's now a very small thing instead of the giant and gaawky soap on a rope the Verus and Verdict have. The new OBD fob will happily connect with a Verus, which is nice. I couldn't get it to comunicate with a Verdict though. Hopefully SO will sell them separately. As I write this I see someone has one on Ebay for $600. Surely Snap On wouldn't ask quite THAT much for one. I hope.
The added ability of highlighting relevant PID's to problem codes when viewing vehicle is so hit or miss as to pretty much be useless. We had a car with a converter issue we could see by the O2 sensor activity but the Zeus highlighted the fuel trims. Kinda sorta helpful, maybe. Some other codes it was able to pop up TSB online and be useful. I was able to do the same thing by looking up the code and vehicle on my laptop using Google. So it saved me a few steps and some typing. Gosh.
It's OK. If you have something like a Verus Edge, you don't need it. The having to pre-pay a four year tech info subscription with the scanner purchase is VERY off-putting.
Last edit: 6 years 7 months ago by GypsyR. Reason: Mistakenly typed Verus when I meant Verdict.
GypsyR wrote: Back on topic? The new OBD fob will happily connect with a Verus, which is nice. I couldn't get it to comunicate with a Verus though. Hopefully SO will sell them separately. As I write this I see someone has one on Ebay for $600. Surely Snap On wouldn't ask quite THAT much for one. I hope.
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I emailed snap on about that a few weeks ago, I was told the zeus dongle will NOT work with the verus.
Would be nice if it would though.
bruce.oliver wrote: Snapon topend scantools are absolutely rediculous. The Zues just takes it to a knew level of rediculousness. $15k for a scantool and a scope, really? Anyone that buys this thing is foolish. Especially if you're not a shop owner. The Solus or modis if you want a 2 channel scope has the same scantool features as the verus or Zues. Spend your extra money on other scantools to expand your capabilities or use that money to buy a pico or pay for training. All the bells and whistles they are adding do nothing but hurt the industry because techs think they can buy this tool and it will help them fix the car. Get training and learn the circuits. That's what will help you fix the car. All this thing is doing is adding another tool to shotgun parts at a car
The Zeus dongle WILL work with a Verus Edge. It's been done. It pairs like the original big Verus dongles. Seems you have to pick one, the Verus doesn't like to be paired with both.
My Verdict recognizes the Zeus dongle it but I haven't gotten them to communicate with a car. Yet. I need to edit my above post. Verus+yes, Verdict+no.
GypsyR wrote: The added ability of highlighting relevant PID's to problem codes when viewing vehicle is so hit or miss as to pretty much be useless. We had a car with a converter issue we could see by the O2 sensor activity but the Zeus highlighted the fuel trims. Kinda sorta helpful, maybe.
I played with the same code on the demo vehicle with the Zeus, and felt the same way. :lol: I also thought it was strange when I looked up a P0171, and the Zeus highlighted the upstream O2's and the short term trims. Nothing about the long terms...
It's a fantastic concept on paper, but the execution needs work.
GypsyR wrote: The Zeus dongle WILL work with a Verus Edge. It's been done. It pairs like the original big Verus dongles. Seems you have to pick one, the Verus doesn't like to be paired with both.
My Verdict recognizes the Zeus dongle it but I haven't gotten them to communicate with a car. Yet. I need to edit my above post. Verus+yes, Verdict+no.
Just going off what snap on told me. You have successfully paired the new dongle with a versus?
I can get it to pair with the Verdict too, it just won't communicate with that scanner. Since the Verdict is my personal machine I'm not giving up yet. I LIKE that new smaller dongle.
GypsyR wrote: I can get it to pair with the Verdict too, it just won't communicate with that scanner. Since the Verdict is my personal machine I'm not giving up yet. I LIKE that new smaller dongle.
Lose that dongle for the Zeus and it's $1800.00 I'm hearing as another poster told me that on another forum.
The Zeus is going to be another over priced POS. You will still need to use your head for proper diagnostics and actually do the work. Its just another bi-directional scanner. I wouldn't even look at it.
I've got to admit, I was waiting for legions of die hard snap on guys to sing the praises of this machine.
Not necessarily here, but somewhere, lol. Still to new, or just not catching on?
Last price I heard was $18,000 for the tool. It really is no different than any other scan tool. Its for those people that want the scan tool to have all the answers which is never really does anyways. All it does is short cut to Shop key or whatever their service is and pulls up diagrams and other information instantly. Why pay the price?
I think a lot of guys are getting it for around$12k but that's still overpriced. It can flag all the PIDs it wants to, you still have to know what your looking at and what to check/test to determine why that PID is out of spec. Our SO dealer has tried to pedal that POS a couple times, I finally told him we weren't buying it. And if the boss did I would roll my toolbox out the same day
It's basically a Verus Edge. With software pimped a little bit in ways that might help clueless folks fix a car. Kinda sorta maybe. Or that's their sales pitch. I met a fella who bought one because he had a shop full of shotgun mechanics who basically throw parts at problems until they disappear. He had in mind that if they used a Zeus it might be possible to slow the tide of parts coming into the shop. I don't know how that worked out for him.
If you ignore the Suretrack on other Snap On scanners and rarely look at the troubleshooting tips there's no point in you buying a Zeus if you ask me.
Have had the Zeus for about 3 months now. Save your money. Slower than a Verus, overloaded with a lot of useless bells & whistles. Excellent labscope but identical to Verus labscope.
Looks like they are adding that crap to the Solus now and calling it Apollo D8. Lol
I know I have a lot to learn in diag, but if I have to rely on a scantool to tell me what PIDS I need to look at then I need training or need to find something else to do
I know it's an old post but I thought I'd add my 2cents.
The Zeus is a really smart idea from Snapon. It will be a money making machine... for them! The vast majority of their sales demographic uses their $10k+ scantools as code readers. Heck, I'm impressed enough when I see another tech just LOOK at data. They have no idea what they're looking for but still... it's a good start. Customers think these are magic push-of-a-button-fix-it-machines. If a shop owner thinks the same then they deserve to buy a $10,000 code reader...
I have so many complaints about the redboxes... Probably my biggest complaint is hardware. Hardware is so cheap. If someone is spending over 10grand on a scantool then put some decent hardware in it! There's no excuse not to have a SSD with tons of ram and a CPU faster than neeeded. Let's have some longevity and ability to multitask!
As far as Snapon's scantool line goes I can't use any of the little ones anymore. The live data and scope functions are far too annoying and make it harder to diagnose. My shop has a Modis Edge. It's painful anytime I have to use it. You can't move the data pids around and there's no grouping. It's particularly annoying when you just want to capture some standard engine pids on a road test before you know what the problem is and look through them after for anomalies/etc. The scope is even more horrific to use. It takes FOREVER moving a trace up and down. The zoom and saving functions also take a stupidly long time. I tried hiding one trace so I could focus on the other and it hid both traces...
Snapon's scantools are horribly overpriced. That's why I recommend to anyone getting a used one that's a model or two old. I have a 2nd or 3rd gen Verus. The last one that still used keys. Sure the keys are annoying but not the end of the world. My old shop had a Verus Edge and it actually had a smaller screen than mine! On mine, when I look at a lot of data pids in graph mode I get scales on each graph. Those scales weren't there on the Edge. Mine has an ANCIENT Celeron processor that came out in 2003... but after I put a solid state drive in it and upgraded the RAM it performs certain functions faster than the much newer Edge. It certainly loads faster...
I can't live without the Verus's data and scope viewing/operating features. That's not to say that I think they're GOOD... Far from it actually. I just think they are the minimum baseline for usefulness. Anything less is just making it more difficult to get an overall feel for the vehicle I'm trying to diagnose. My scanner I got for $1500 a few years back. I have a much easier time diagnosing with my Verus than any newer/smaller scantool. Plus I use the 3rd and 4th scope channels quite a bit. The saving and replaying saved data files is also far more useful than on the smaller modis/solus/ethos.
I never thought I'd say this but I'm also getting a Verdict and I'm actually quite happy about it! I'll be getting it super cheap because he can't sell the thing! One of my previous shops had one. It was what I learned on before I got my Verus. I hated that thing so much. So did pretty much everyone else. The bluetooth scope module was kinda cool though. Especially since it could be used standalone. But ya, the reason why I'm getting one and I'm happy about it is I can pair both the OBD and scope modules with my Verus. Even though my Snapon rep said I couldn't... So then my Verus can become wireless. Plus it's handier having a second scantool for when you want to command stuff on bidirectionally while also grabbing waveforms. Sure you can trick the Verus into doing both at the same time but it's much easier and convenient having separate machines when you have the option to.
Anyways, that's my Snapon ramble-rant. Is it good? No. Is it worth the money? No. Can you diagnose with it? Yes. If you're limited on funds then I think for less money you can get much more usefulness out of an older, full-featured scantool than you can out of a small, economy line scanner and a Picoscope. Of course Pico's are the best scopes you can get. I just don't think sacrificing scantool functionality for the benefit of a better scope would be doing you any favors.
