The two units I now own and have tested are:

• Vericom VC2000 (www.vericom.org)
• G-Tech Pro (www.gtechpro.com)

I know that lots of people on the newsgroup own the G-Tech performance meter, and have heard a little talk about the Vericom. The VC2000 is the latest model, recently revised. Since the car magazines all seem to use the Vericom unit, I decided to take a chance and get one.

I picked up the G-Tech as a birthday gift last month and recently purchased the new Vericom VC2000 performance computer. While the G-Tech is pretty popular and cheap ($140), it's often compared to the Vericom (~$600), so I thought I would give them both a workout and compare the results. In either case, the most important thing should be consistancy. Who cares if the unit is a few horsepower off of the exact? As long as it is very consistant, you can measure it before and after making performance modifications.

A big plus for the G-Tech is that it is very small and fairly sleek looking. It is about the size of a small radar detector and attaches to the windshield via an oversized suction cup and has three small rubber "feet" that help keep it positioned securely and absorb some of the shock. A heavy coil cord plugs into the cigarette lighter. I've had much difficulty keeping the G-Tech well secured to the windshield. With both my unit and a friends it required a bit of moisture on the suction cup and some fiddling to keep it secure. Often it would just "fall off" if left on the windscreen for more than a few hours.

The Vericom is a much larger unit, almost the size of a Kleenix box, but at about half the height. It has two adjustable side brackets that hold a total of 4 suction cups to clamp on the windshield. These seem to be a little more flexible than the G-Tech suction cup and are easier to attach and seem to hold a more secure mounting. The Vericom comes is several different models, the one I purchased has a rechargable battery pack, so you can use it with the standard lighter cord or just on the NiCad battery packs, which seems to last about 8 hours (4 hour recharge time).

The G-Tech hardly obscures your vision, the big Vericom easily gets in the way when driving around if mounted around the mirror area.

Summary: The Vericom is a much better unit, hands down. Far better construction, much more consistant results. But, is it worth over $450 more? Here are some of the things I noticed, many of them will be useful to people that own either model or might be considering a purchase:

The test environment was using two cars, my Honda Accord EX and my BMW 325ic. I found three good spots for "testing" -- one was a good strip of an access road that was 4-lane, lonely at night, somewhat secluded, visually flat, and had very good 1/4 times with limited access for safety. The HP measurements were taken on a "road that goes nowhere" that was visually flat and allowed speeds up to about 70mph safely, and had limited access. Overall I did about 50 runs of HP tests (both cars combined, 25 each) and about 24 1/4 mile tests (12/car). I also experimented with differnet types of gas (standard and "high" octane 92) after running the cars all the way to (almost) empty.

The Vericom unit recommends that you purchase one of the NADA "Blue Books" for used car values. For each model is listed the "curbside" weight -- meaning the car with oil, no gas. I felt that this method was probably more accurate, when figuring the drivers weight, plus 6 pounds/gallon of gas. My '96 Honda Accord EX test car came to about 3300 pounds.

On the G-Tech there is a single slide-switch that serves several functions: To measure horsepower you slide the switch into the "HP" position and enter the vehicles weight by pressing down on the slide switch while pointing the unit either up or down. Sounds bizarre, but it isn't too difficult and is fairly quick, but does require you to remove the unit from the windshield.

The Vericom is very simple -- it has a keypad for numbers 0 through 9 and you can just enter the correct car weight on the keypad. As a some clever thought, they made the power-on default weight as 1000 pounds. So, if you get a HP measurement of 28.1, on my Accord you can just multiply it by 3.3 (3300 pounds) and get a result of about 92hp.

Both essentially start the same way. You position yourself at a dead stop on a flat bit of pavement and go whenever you are ready and the unit will auto-sense your start and start calculating. The G-Tech shows the HP calcs in "real time", the Vericom only shows it after a programmed run is complete. Here is where things are different and the Vericom starts to, er, pull away:

• On the G-Tech, you come to a dead stop, hit the start button and go like hell. The manual recommends that you run the car to the redline in first and second gear. When you come to a stop the G-Tech will show what the highest reading of HP during the run. Seems simple, huh? However, it's not very accurate.
  
• The Vericom requires that you use a "programed" run, meaning you have to specify a "range" that you want it to record HP. On my Automatic Accord I found that first gear can run to about 35mph at 6200rpm, 2nd gear can go to 65mph at 6200rpm, about where I would expect the peak torque/hp to be found. The Vericom book was very good about explaining that 1st gear is not a good place to do a HP check because (especially on automatics), the torque convertor tends to rob much of the HP with the short gearing. In the end I found that on the Accord the magic range was a run from 35mph to 65mph, which would let me run all through 2nd gear with the gas to the floor. What the manual said and what was easily verified was that when trying to use two gears for the HP test, a "surge" is felt when the 1st-2nd shift occurs, skewing the HP data.

The G-Tech gives impressive HP figure in second gear, but most of it seems to indeed come from the 1st-2nd shift. The HP figures were quite high, and very inconsistant, usually changing as much as 25hp in identical runs.

Once I figured out the "ideal" speed range for 2nd gear and programmed it in on the Vericom, it was dead-on consistant when running the same bit of test road. Except for three times during 50 test runs, it was the same every time.

The G-Tech was a little more variant. In the 50 runs the G-Tech gave me the same HP measurement about 15% of the time.

The end result was that the Vericom gave the Accord a 108hp rating and the G-Tech hovered around 130hp. Since the car is only rated at like 145 (on an engine dyno, I'm sure) and there is about 15% loss in the drivetrain and some more lost in the automatic transmission, I would guess that 108hp is pretty much dead-on for true rear-wheel HP, given wind resistance. How accurate it is isn't really important, I was seeking something that was super-consistant, so even minor changes to the car (ie: fuel) would show up. The Vericom wins in this department, by a land slide. If the G-Tech allowed for some sort of programmed run, the results would probably be much closer. I suppose as an alternative you could just use first gear for the tests on the G-Tech and use that as a baseline, but probably the real tests for HP might only show up at the higher speeds, when wind resistance and the like is going to try to slow your car down.

Both units would benefit from some sort of memory that would "remember" the last entered values for vehicle weight, etc, after the power has been shut off.

Turning off the Vericom or the G-Tech means that you have to re-enter the data for the vehicle weight. Just sort of a pain on the Vericom, since it has a keypad. A major pain on the G-Tech, since you have to pull it off the windscreen to do it.

You scream away, the G-tech shows your current time, the Vericom shows your current speed and distance as you fly along.

Once you hit the 1/4 mile mark, both units automatically "know" and the Vericom starts beeping and the G-Tech starts flashing.

The G-Tech immediately flashes your 1/4 mile time and speed. The Vericom shows your 1/4 time and speed but also allows you to view a lot more data. You can also find your reaction time (if using the countdown mode), the 0-30 time, 0-60 time, 1000' time, etc. Tons of data. I found that the only stuff I would look for was the 1/4 time, speed and 0-60 time.

Both units were fairly close to each other on the 1/4 mile. Within a few tenths of time, and within 2-3 mph on the speed. Again, the Vericom was much more consistant, but the G-Tech didn't do too badly. The Vericom was useful by giving the 0-60 time, too, whereas the G-Tech required another run in a different mode.

The Vericom is a little more difficult -- you have to program the run to be a 60mph-0mph run. Get the car up over 60mph and slam on the brakes -- the Vericom will start counting at 60mph and stop at 0mph. It will then give you all the data in feet, as well as the time (in seconds) that it took to do the stop.

Unlike G-Tech, Vericom does not offer any sort of money-back-if-not-satisifed deals. While they claim that it is because people will buy them, do all the testing and return them, it requires a big leap of faith by the purchaser to plunk down the $600 for one and know that they can only get it fixed, and can't return it if it doesn't live up to the promises.

The Vericom can switch between Metric or English measurements. You can dial in any sort of speed measurement, so maybe you want to only test the time that it takes your car to go from 40mph-60mph, like in highway passing testing. This is a nice option.

The flatness of the road is amazingly important. Even roads that seem to be totally flat might not be. Granted, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where hills are everywhere, but on a windless night, I was amazed to find both the Vericom and the G-Tech give different results based on what direction a run was done on the same road. After getting out of the car and looking at the road down low, I could indeed see a small grade that was almost unnoticed. Once again, this re-enforces the need to use the exact same stretch of road (and direction) when trying to compare any before/after changes to your car. I guess it doesn't matter so much that the road has a slight grade, as long as you are using the same one, same direction, for all your tests. I did miss the roads we had growing up in the midwest, truely flat and straight forever!

The G-Tech is pretty fun, easy to use, but I wouldn't hold much value in someone's results as being a real good datapoint.

The construction of the G-Tech is rather poor. While the case and bracket are decent, and the lighter cord is of good heavy quality, the red plastic covering the lens seems to be undersized and can come off, exposing the bare LED's. The slide switch that is used for many different functions is not of very high quality and looks like it will eventually wear out or break. Both G-Tech units I tested had a lot of "play" in the switch, indicating that the switch does not have a very secure mounting.

The Vericom is built very well, fit and finish was perfect, everything felt very solid and it's obvious that first-rate components were used. Of course, this very much affects the price of the unit.

You can check out the G-Tech, play with it for a few weeks and if it isn't your cup of tea, return it. It's nice that it is so small, as you can toss it in your luggage and bring it on trips. For laughs I was going to make a section on my web site that has performance numbers for rental cars I've "tested", since I travel a bit. The Vericom would give much more accurate results, but would require a lot more space in your luggage.

If the accurate results are really important and you need to have something that is going to be able to display even minor changes to your car's performance, get the Vericom. Once you have used the Vericom you will laugh at the G-Tech and consider it quite inferior. Of course this luxary comes at a much higher price. I would imagine that things like "performance chips" would show changes only on the Vericom, rather than the G-Tech.

On a side note, I found that using high-octane gas in the Honda V-Tech motor on the Accord makes absolutely no difference. I had thought that maybe the Honda had some sort of anti-knock or detenation sensor that might adjust the timing based upon the burnability of the gas, but there has been no difference that I can measure, including "seat of the pants". I imagine that Honda has set the timing and whatnot to run on the most horrific of gas found in the USA. Despite what some people think around here, the Accord (and Civic) are sure not "performance cars" by any wild stretch of the imagination. In my opinion they are just "family" econoboxes that are made very well. The EX package doesn't turn it into a car within the class of a Corvette or 300ZX, just gives it a little more pep and a better trim package. Same with the BMW 325 (in my opinion, since I own both). M3 is one thing. 325, get real.

Please feel free to send me any comments/suggestions/threats on this article. I'm more than happy to test other aspects or even willing to test the Vericom in someone's car if they are in the SF Bay Area (I live in the Penninsula). I can be reached at 'douglas@netcom.com' Having some hard numbers for your car's performance is always interesting to know, although sometimes depressing.

Warning: Despite what the auto makers might claim, you are going to have much, much lower horsepower results. Don't get too upset. Even on a chassis dyno, I've seen many people walk away feeling pretty dejected the first time they see the HP results of their car.