The OBDMATE Scanner is a quality scanner that works well with the three Lexus cars that I tested it with. It also worked on a couple of other non-Lexus cars I tested it with, but without the extra Lexus features.
The unit is well made with lots of rubberized protection to save it from all the bumps it will take and to make it easy to hold without slipping out of your hands. The display is fairly easy to read in well-shaded areas; however, we got background reflections when sitting in bright daylight. The glossy finish on the screen reflects a lot of light. There is a lot of scrolling necessary due to the small screen as only eight lines of text are visible at a time. The buttons work well to navigate, and the screen updates reasonably quickly while navigating around depending on what function you are activating. Some diagnostics can take a long time.
There is no way to create a PDF or export file of results to read on a computer. This is very inconvenient as I would prefer to read a comprehensive listing of all the values on a computer, then look at the scanner to read or reset certain codes. Many of these hand-held scanners do not provide this capability.
We tested the scanner on the following Lexus cars:
1998 GS400
2015 NX300h (hybrid)
2024 UX250h (hybrid)
The scanner is not very fast doing some diagnostics and reading fault codes, taking several minutes to update. The 1998 GS400 probably has a slow interface compared to newer cars and would account for some of the slow reading. The NX was a bit faster, but not as fast as I have seen with other scanners.
The GS that had several modifications over the years had 7 fault codes that I expected to have. None are serious and I only use the car occasionally in the summer.
The NX did not have any codes, which is good as it is still dealer-maintained and I have had no issues with it.
The UX did not have any codes. It recently had the battery die due to a light being left on overnight, so we wanted to verify if there were any other issues. Nothing found.
Overall, I like the OBDMATE scanner. It gave me what I was looking for to be able to see what is happening with the car and to verify what the dealer is doing to it, or not, over time. I’ll be checking the scanner before and after the next service call. I sure miss a file export though.
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