Autel TS601 MaxiTPMS TPMS Professional Tool with OBD ll

Less expensive than similar tools from Schrader, Bartec, ATEQ, MAC, Matco, NAPA, etc. And it seems to be able to do most of the same things. The one big exception is that it will only program Autel programable sensors. Because of this limitation, one would expect this tool to appeal to small general purpose shops and DIY. But a tire shop would probably want a more universal tool. I wouldn't expect Autel to support every TPMS made in the world, but it would be nice if it support at least the top few, or so.Universal programmable sensors great as they can be programmed to fit a wide variety of vehicles. So one product to stock instead of many. Checked our closest auto parts stores and only one stocked the Autel programmable sensor. Schrader seems to be the most commonly stocked.A work-around is to use sensors already programed for your vehicle, if they are stocked. But this won't work for cloning. (Or buy the Autel universal programable sensors.)Programmable sensors also allow one to clone an existing sensor. Say you are a shop and someone brings in a wheel/tire where the sensor is dying, but still readable. If you clone the existing sensor into a new programable sensor, then you might not have to have the vehicle learn the new sensor. Or suppose your customer wants to rotate between summer and winter tire/wheel sets. By proper cloning, the vehicle won't have to go through a learning cycle each fall and spring.Autel MX Universal Programmable sensors do seem to be nice sensors. One nice feature is that, the sensor is easily removed from the valve stem to make installation easier and reduce the chance of sensor damage.Amazon product listing says "Lifetime Free Upgrade" for the TS601. Printing on the product says, "One Year free update on the internet via USB port."Got the tool primarily to support summer/winter tire & wheel swaps on gen 3 prius.Things could be clearer both on the device and in the manual. For example, I got an option to Erase Codes. But it wasn't remotely clear which codes where. Was it to erase the codes already in the car's computer, the codes just read from the TPMS sensors on the wheels, the codes in the sensors themselves, etc.? I guessed wrong. A bit more context would have helped!The tool uses an 8 GB SDHC card. The tool seems to only be capable of remembering one set of codes at a time. Would be nice if it could remember multiple named sets.One suspects that the right firmware update could fix all of these things and turn this into a 5 star tool.I found reaching customer support to be difficult. But once reached, they were friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful. Further, based on earlier feedback, someone from Autel reached out to me.

Really nice easy to use tool. Almost works itself.

Works great FAST

I write this review to try and clear up some of the timidness I had when purchasing this scanner. I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure if this scanner would work with the TPMS sensors I purchased since I bought Denso (Pacifc Industries) first time fit sensors and not the programmable Autel MX sensors. In short, EVERYTHNG WORKED. I installed the sensors on a 2008 Scion tC with 168k+ miles and was able to wake them up and write them to the ECU using this tool. In theory, you should also be able to use the Autel TS501 to write TPMS sensors IDs to the ECU as well. I opted for the TS601 due to the ability to read additional fault codes via the OBDII connection without having to purchase a second tool. There is a review by Victor on December 15, 2016 that gives this scanner a poor review. Its possible his still issue with transposing sensor IDs still exists but my bet is that Autel issued an update to fix that issue. I did not experience this issue when writing the new ID codes to the ECU. This scanner is still supported with updates. Upon receiving my scanner, I checked for updates and there were a few. After updating, using the scanner is a breeze. Many of the functions are self explanatory and other reviews have mentioned the manual is poorly translated to English. There are a number of youtube videos though that go over using the scanner. I did not read the manual in full and more or less followed online videos along with using intuition to use the scanner. When it comes to "programming" sensors, its true that this scanner will only "program" Autel's proprietary MX sensors; however, in this sense "programming" the sensors refers to writing the old sensor ID's to the MX sensor. This process should be referred to as cloning sensors instead of programming. If you have sensors that are already assigned an ID code and have the correct frequency for your car, you can use this tool to trigger the sensor to capture its ID and then write that ID to ECU. Thus, buying the MX sensors isn't necessary. I was able to scan all 4 tire sensors and write them to the ECU simultaneously. As an added bonus, the scanner also simultaneously clears the TPMS warning light during this process so there is no requirement to drive X distance for Y amount of time at a minimum speed of Z mph. You simply write the new sensor IDs to the ECU and you’re done. I haven't used any of the live data functions but look forward to exploring those.

Sensor relearn on 2008 Sienna TPMS worked great-note that you have to use the OBDII connection for this vehicle. However, I also paid extra for this model to get the OBDII code reader function but it is very limited and could not read the ABS or other subsystem error codes that are common on the better code readers. My other code reader that only cost $100 could see a code on ABS system of Sienna that this Autel TS601 could not.