Is Carista Evo with pro subscription a waste of money

[Lubrown]

For anyone that got a Carista (not sure if it’s just the evo?) and had a month free by signing up and then cancelling a subscription… just check if it cancelled properly.

I bought an evo version and at that time it was advertised with a month free full usage (sign up/cancel as mentioned above). I duly signed up, got all my mods sorted in the van and car, cancelled within a week (the free month carried on as expected) and thought nothing of it. Checking the credit card after the month there was no nasty surprises. Turns out I still had full use of the thing, even though I’d shoved it in a cupboard and only got it out for diagnostic work. I just made another mod to the golf for no charge, 11 months after buying the thing! If I knew it was going to carry on working I would have leant it out for friends to mod their vehicles and maybe played around with other mods on mine a bit more.

Worth looking - you may have a freebie like I did.

 

[bluezie]

By far the best value is VCDS, it really isn't that expensive, it does what it should do, and there are no subscriptions.
Don't know why so many people buy an expensive van, but want diagnostic kit for free or peanuts? If you do your own servicing, a full scan of all modules is part of every service, not when something goes wrong!

 

[Lubrown]

By far the best value is VCDS, it really isn't that expensive, it does what it should do, and there are no subscriptions.
Don't know why so many people buy an expensive van, but want diagnostic kit for free or peanuts? If you do your own servicing, as full scan of all modules is part of every service, not when something goes wrong!

For me it was a simple choice - I don’t want to do my own servicing (I have a full time job, I also volunteer in my spare time, I have no drive let alone a garage, no space for lots of tools, trolley jack etc. and any spare time I do have I want to do things that are fun). So I’m happy to pay a trusted mechanic to service and, when necessary, fix my vehicle and I expect them to have up to date diagnostic equipment as part of that.
I did however want to modify a few things - daft stuff like a drip wipe after screen wash, to make a ten year old van a bit more in line with my ten year old car in terms of user interface- and Carista allows me to do that far cheaper than getting a mechanic to use a similar tool would be. Bought it on a Black Friday deal so it was around £30 ish, and used it on two vehicles to adapt a few elements to suit me. Simple as that.

When things don’t seem right with the van (or car) I scan it for faults as a pre-check prior to ringing the garage, just because I can and it may help narrow things down on booking in. I’m not pretending to be a mechanic and thought ‘what’s the cheapest way I can go about that’ and I doubt anyone else is.
From my limited understanding of VCDS the user interface isn’t as obvious (for a simple man like me) as Carista. In summary VCDS has no interest to me with my use case. I’m OK with paying £30 to play around for a bit and have some basic use as a quick guide to faults. I wouldn’t pay any more.

 

[John A]

I bought a 2019 Octavia vRS a couple of weeks ago and my 12-13 year old HEX+CAN VCDS cable wouldn't read the modules. It was still fine for the T6, but I couldn't do the stuff to the Skoda (activate auto high beam, traffic sign recognition, etc)
I bought the HEX V2 which does all the post-2019 MQB cars and still does the van. I am not convinced that I could have done some of the more complex adaptations with Carista, Carly, OBDEleven and so on.
I paid £264 for HEX+CAN in 2012 and the amount of coding, modification and fault finding I did for myself, family and other people covered its cost over and over and over.
The two features I coded on the new car were nearly £500 cost options, so it has (IMO) already paid for itself