I am weighing options for future upgrades and not sure if the wave engine adds value if the convenience features dont mean anything to me. FWIW I do already have some hydros equipment, AND I have never used any of the gyre pumps/controllers.
The Wave Engine is as you mentioned, a convenience. They do not add any new features, bells, or whistles other than the possible coding options for water changes and/or feed modes. On the other hand you may lose some minor capabilities such as motor block speed. This may, or may not, be important to you.
Here is an gain example. I was using a pair of Maxspect XF280's. One day during maintenance I noticed one had a exposed wire at the motor block. That left me with one working. The controller started to get a bit difficult to read. I updated the firmware which included a new font (this was something hobbyist complained about which they tried to address). Anyway it was getting more difficult to see (and my age / eyesight) so I started to look at options. To buy a new XF280 (they released a new brand and this version was no longer available) was expensive and I saw an option to buy a Wave Engine LE with a IceCap 4k for a little under a XF280. So that is what I did.
Long story short I was able to part out the broken 280 and extend the use of the other one. Using the Wave Engine LE I could use basic patterns with the 280 and icecap 4k without issues. So this is a good thing.
Here is an example of a loss:
XF280 has a motor block that can go as fast as .5 ms in pulse mode. The Wave Engine LE limited it to 2 seconds. That may not be that big of a deal, and sadly I got into a tuff with CV on the subject, it was something that was working fine with the Maxspect controller and did not with the Wave Engine. To be fair (honesty in reefing) to CV the Wave Engine supports a lot of different pumps and they have to make some decisions on these types of issues for compatibility and/or control. But to your question, this is something you need to be aware of.
Maxspect flow patterns. Again this may not be that big of a deal but the older XF's pre cloud had some custom flows patterns such as the ogc (oceanic gyre cycle) and ltc (lunar tidal cycle). Those will not be available as the engine won't know them. The cloud editions no longer have those but again they won't have the 20 or so that it includes.
TL; DR - it does what it says. The hobbyist has to decide what it is they want to accomplish and see if some of these basic losses are a big deal or not. Losing some flow patterns may not be a big deal. Losing speed on a pulse again may not be a bit deal. If all you want to do is have a single app to do some basic stuff, then this is what you want.
On the other hand if you want more control then you need to look at the native apps because they will have that level of detail. Doesn't matter if it is Tunze, Maxspect, or whatever brand.
Hope this helps.
