No ... it is telling you where you are (80). It doesn’t know that you want to be at 85.
I still don't get it. It's as if you're saying seeing 80 is the kiss of death, you're caged in and can't possibly decide for yourself ...the drum is too low, I need to go higher! So what happens when you tap a head, hear the tone and say...hmmm, too low...BUT, since I don't have a gauge telling me anything, I'm free to crank the head down a bit more. Is that i?
Listen, we can get wrapped around the axle all day long. It comes down to this....at least for the idiot writing this. I can and have tuned by ear. I've followed the Gatzen methodology with good results, but I need a super quiet room and a ton of time to tune out unwanted overtones. Drum dial helped to some extent and still the tool I use if setting up for a gig where I need to check things in a noisy place. Haven't gigged for a year, so that hasn't been my go to tool.
At the moment, I'm mostly playing with L80s and Aquarian pads. When I get the opportunity, I rip those things off, get out the Tune Bot and spend maybe 10 minutes tops getting everything where it needs to be and play while I'm free to make noise. If I didn't have the tool, I'd either just put up with a detuned set of drums, or spend my available "noisy" time chasing down the right tuning.
Using the Tune Bot helped me to experiment and find the tuning I liked, then saved those settings, so I could get back very quickly. When I've changed head brands or plies, I've had to re-evaluate, then note the changes to save time. The tool really taught me how good my set could sound, so I fully realized their potential. That became my tuning baseline. Something I only guessed at before. If that makes me brain dead somehow, then so be it. I'd rather reach for the tool and save the time. I'll leave the drum tuning hero label to the ones who are way cooler than me. I'm okay with that.
To me, tuning tools are like anything else. I'm fully capable of making a killer margarita by crushing the ice by hand. I could be on my third one though in the same amount of time by using a blender. Same results, less time, more margaritas. That's a win! Same goes for toting luggage around. I see the cool guys muscling stuff around through airports too, I just prefer to do the same with wheels.