TOPDON CarPal Diagnostic Scanner Review

If you think about the friends you have in your life, one of the things that makes that friendship work is listening to each other’s problems and being there to help. You can make friends with your car by listening to what it needs, too. One way to do that is with TOPDON’s CarPal Diagnostic Tool. It is an easy-to-use code reader that connects via Bluetooth to an app you install on your phone. Once you set up the app, which takes just minutes to do, you plug the CarPal in and get started listening to what’s going on with your vehicle.

More Than A Code Reader

Have you ever used a basic code reader on your vehicle? You plug it into the port under the steering column and if you have warning lights on your dash, the code reader will give you any error codes your vehicle is reporting. From there you have to look up the codes to determine what is wrong with your vehicle. The issue is that the simple numerical code is all you get from a basic code reader. You have to do the legwork from there to determine what the codes mean, and if they are important enough to warrant an immediate trip to the repair shop.

The TOPDON CarPal is different. It costs around the same as a basic code reader or less, depending upon where you shop, and it gives you a lot more information. We used it on our favorite test vehicle, a Toyota Tacoma, which had a warning light on the dash. It told us what the light meant and how urgent it was to get fixed. But that wasn’t all.

Get Your Score

Our favorite tool to use with the CarPal is the full vehicle diagnostic that it runs. The unit checked the engine, brakes, airbags, cruise control, tire pressure monitoring system, immobilizer, and occupant detection. Every code that was reported is given a severity rating and going through each code tells you what the issue is and gives advice for what to do next. If the code is something you can put off, the CarPal app tells you this and allows you to reset the code.

The CarPal has other cool functions that are quite valuable. It can do a battery system test, check your maintenance records and make suggestions, do a smog check for emissions regulations, should you need that information, and it looks up any service bulletins for your vehicle. Once it has the VIN stored, your vehicle’s information keeps flowing in. You get an overall vehicle performance and function score, which is cool because it shows you when you make improvements to your vehicle and how they affect the overall performance.

The CarPal also does a real-time performance test, letting you know what your ride is doing as it rolls down the road. This is a great tool for anyone wanting to get the most performance possible from their vehicle. When we ran this function on our Tacoma, we learned a lot. We found out that we will need to redo the brakes soon, but are getting by for now. We also learned we should clean our air filter and we’re due for an oil change. The biggest issue we found was that there is an airbag sensor that we need to fix very soon. A simple code reader showed the error code but even looking that information up didn’t give much actual, usable data. The CarPal told us exactly what the issue was and where it was located. We learned our Tacoma has a malfunction in the passenger side sensor and we have made arrangements to have it repaired.

Should You Buy One?

Honestly, we went into this review with mixed ideas. TOPDON said the CarPal did a lot of things, and worked with your phone, yet has a price of $59. Could it really do all of that for that kind of money? Yep! It sure does. This is a great diagnostic tool for anyone who owns a vehicle. You don’t have to be mechanically inclined to use it and to understand what it is telling you about your vehicle. Is it as fancy as a high-dollar digital scanner that mechanics use? No, but it is pretty sophisticated for the average user and provides a wealth of information you need to keep your car performing well.

The bottom line is the CarPal works. And when you are talking about a diagnostic tool in that price range, that sounds like a win.