Click and Grow Smart Garden 9 vs PRO: Not Worth It?
Naila Syifa
Updated November 2024
Click and Grow Smart Garden 9 PRO is priced at USD 299.95 or SGD 399.95, while the Smart Garden 9 retails for USD 249.95 or SGD 369.95. With such a price difference, the PRO model offers smart features that make it more advanced and premium, but do the extra features justify the higher cost? What type of gardener would benefit most from each model?
Key Takeaways
Smart Garden 9 PRO's key strength lies in a more flexible lighting control via the touch panel or in-app scheduling, but Smart Garden 9 can achieve a similar level of flexibility when paired with a smart plug, making it the more cost-effective choice for budget-conscious indoor gardeners.
Click & Grow Smart Garden 9
The Perfect Indoor Gardening Solution
✓ Grow up to 9 plants at once
✓ Grow your own fresh herbs all year round
✓ Non-GMO, pesticide and herbicide-free
✓ Compact, reliable and energy-efficient
Click & Grow Smart Garden 9 PRO
Smart Self-Growing Indoor Garden
✓ Grow up to 9 plants at once
✓ Grow your own fresh herbs all year round
✓ Non-GMO, pesticide and herbicide-free
✓ App-controlled light features & schedule
Design
Click & Grow Smart Garden 9
Click and Grow Smart Garden 9 and Smart Garden 9 PRO have an identical design and appearance. Both measuring 23.6 x 7.5 x 15.8 inches in length, width, and height respectively, they are compact enough to fit comfortably on most kitchen countertops while also being large enough to grow nine plants simultaneously.
On top of the shelf where the plants are nestled, a light panel houses LED lights that provide sun-like lighting to grow the plants. Despite looking identical, the LED panel of the Smart Garden 9 PRO is touch-sensitive. Swiping the top part of the light panel will turn the lights on or off.
The Smart Garden 9 has no touch-sensitive light panel, so controlling the lights becomes more troublesome by having to plug and unplug the power cord every time.
However, Click and Grow Smart Garden 9 does offer more color variants than the PRO model, including White, Gray, Beige, Sage, and Navy Blue. Meanwhile, the PRO model is only available in White, limiting your options for matching it to your kitchen's aesthetic.
Gardening Features
Click & Grow Smart Garden 9 PRO
Both the Smart Garden 9 and PRO come with nine pre-seeded plant pods included – three mini tomato pods, three green lettuce pods, and three basil pods.
If you want to grow other plant types, Click and Grow offers over 75 different pre-seeded plant pods to choose from, covering herbs, vegetables, fruits, and flowers. You can also use your own seed by adding it to the empty Grow Anything Plant Pods.
The pods are mainly what makes the Click and Grow system so effortless and foolproof for indoor gardening, as they contain all the necessary nutrients and smart soil technology to automatically regulate water, oxygen, pH, and moisture levels for optimal plant growth.
All we need to do is just add water to the tank when it runs low and let the system handle the rest. The 4-liter water tank can sustain the plants for up to one month before needing a refill, so maintenance is really minimal and hassle-free.
Click & Grow Smart Garden 9
The plant pods are first inserted into the included plastic cup before being placed into the designated slots on the growing deck. The cup has a wick on the bottom, which is a little white stick that draws water up from the reservoir to the pod.
A more advanced version of the cup, the Pro Cup, adds holes into the design to enable the plant roots to reach the water reservoir directly for better aeration and absorption, resulting in longer plant life and increased yields compared to the standard cup design.
The name Smart Garden 9 PRO may suggest it comes with Pro Cups, but it actually uses the same standard cups as the Smart Garden 9. Pro Cups are available as a separate purchase for both models.
Therefore, in terms of overall gardening performance and plant growth capabilities, both models are essentially on par.
Smart Features
Click & Grow Smart Garden 9 PRO
The Click & Grow app is available for all users, where we can add plants virtually to our garden to learn about their care tips and track their growing progress. On the app, we can see how many days they've been growing, sprout and harvest estimation time, whether or not the plant is edible, the optimal temperature for the plant, as well as specific care instructions.
The Smart Garden 9 PRO can be connected to the app via Bluetooth, which allows us to turn on/off the LED lights and set up a schedule. This means a more convenient control of lighting cycles. We can specify when to turn the lights on and off automatically at a specific time each day.
Without a lighting schedule feature, the Smart Garden 9 relies on the built-in lighting timer. Once plugged in, the timer will start a cycle of 16 hours on and 8 hours off. Resetting the timer requires unplugging and plugging back in at your desired start time.
Not only that it is less convenient, but this also means a fixed lighting cycle that may not be ideal for plants that require different light exposure durations for optimal growth. To tackle this, we can use a Smart Plug with the Smart Garden 9 to automate and customize the lighting schedule.
Smart Garden 9 PRO vs Smart Garden 9 + Smart Plug
Click & Grow Smart Garden 9
The main advantage that the Smart Garden 9 PRO offers is its more flexible light control via the touch panel or the app, but this can be replicated on the standard Smart Garden 9 by using a smart plug at a lower total cost.
In addition, the Smart Garden 9 PRO relies on Bluetooth connectivity, while most smart plugs today use Wi-Fi, offering more reliable and longer-range connectivity.
With Bluetooth, we can only control the lighting when we're within range of the device, while Wi-Fi allows remote control from anywhere with an internet connection.
That's why using a Smart Garden 9 with a smart plug might actually provide better functionality than the PRO model, while also saving money in the process.
Click & Grow Smart Garden 9 vs PRO
Final Thoughts
Click & Grow Smart Garden 9 PRO
Click and Grow Smart Garden 9 and Smart Garden 9 PRO are nearly identical in terms of design, functionality, and growing capabilities, with the main difference being the PRO's smart lighting controls. The touch panel enables quick manual control while Bluetooth connectivity allows scheduling through the app.
This added convenience makes the PRO more suitable for gardeners who will benefit from flexible lighting control, such as those growing different plant varieties with varying light requirements or those who want to precisely align their plants' lighting cycles with their daily routines.
If you don't need such precise lighting control or are willing to use a smart plug instead, the standard Smart Garden 9 offers better value while delivering a similar grow result at a lower price point.
If you like to read more about Indoor Smart Garden, check out our other relevant guides here:
Best Indoor Smart Gardens
Click & Grow Smart Garden 3 vs 9
AeroGarden vs Click & Grow
Author
Naila Syifa
Content Manager at Synced. She crafts insightful content on the latest trends in technology, consumer electronics, and smart home gadgets.
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