I got one of these a while back and liked it enough to buy a 2nd for when i'm doing two carboys at once. Subsequently with the release of the newer model I got another to compare. The newer model appears to have a more accurate temp sensor. Though, i don't seem to be more than a degree off either way. Right now I have an older one reading 66 compared to 67.3 one-wire sensor and the new one at 69 compared to 68.5 one-wire sensor.
The gravity readings are close around 1.010-1.050 and off quite a bit around 1.100 without calibration. But the gravity changes/deltas are not. If you don't bother with calibration and toss this thing in you will see a similar curve to the SG as it ferments and can know when the brew has stopped when the FG doesn't change for 24 hours. That said, it's not hard to drop it in water and record "0" then drop it in your fermenter and record the SG you got with your hydrometer. No need to do a multi-point calibration unless you have nothing better to do.
You can log to google sheets with a cheap android phone or enable the bluetooth on your RPi or any other dev board. I wrote a tool to poll every 5 mins and upload to influxDB so i can generate reports and use grafana for alerts/monitoring. It's nice to have history and alarming capabilities.
To answer a question on carbonation -> during fermentation the tilt will bob quite a bit and unless you enable some smoothing you'll see jagged lines in data collection. This doesn't bother me, and i suspect you'll see the same thing during carbonation if you have degassing... but during carb you're usually putting gas into solution and i doubt that will affect it's density or change the tilt's "angle". I suspect your readings in a spunding situation would be fine.
To answer if the beer is better, i can think of a few ways the tilt helps your beer quality:
1) my lagers are better and have quicker turn around... i can use the fast lager method more reliably now. I ferment 50-55degF until > 70% of attenuation then ramp to 75degF. With the tilt I can know when i'm approaching that 70% attenuation without taking daily hydrometer samples which will waste wort.
2) If you did not have one-wire sensors and you live in the south with 85degF water you can chill to 85 and put the fermenter in the freezer/chamber then set an alarm to wake you when the temp hits your pitching temp.
3) I can be certain that the beer is "done" fermenting when the SG hasn't changed in a 24 hour period. Before you would have to pull a sample and depending on your setup this may introduce o2 exposure worst case, and best case your out the beer used to make take the sample.
4) you can also now dry hop at intervals ... you can know when your 25% complete, 50% complete etc. NEIPA often try to dose a couple times during active fermentation... and i prefer to always dry hop during active fermentation to void o2 exposure issues in hopes that the active yeast will chew any o2 up that gets tossed in with the hops.
Here's a snapshot of two 6gal fermenters chewing away on a Russian Imperial Stout:
https://snapshot.raintank.io/dashboard/snapshot/fi7HGtXVqSW41BYwpIPSXuuljPuAQ3XJ
