Aqara, the simple and well-made Smart home: what and how it works | Video

Do you know Aqara? It is a brand that has grown a lot in the last two years and, in addition to being available on Amazon, boasts an important number of products able to make our home Smart. We’ve been keeping an eye on it for some time and today we finally tell you about it with this in-depth analysis thanks to the sending of the products by the company.

Aqara stands out mainly for these aspects:

1. Very easy to set up
2. Full compatibility
3. Very aesthetically pleasing and well made products
4. Clean, clear and highly customizable App interface (latest updates)

The opportunity to test the Aqara ecosystem arose from the fairly recent update of the application which renewed the interface and further improved interaction with the various products. This also facilitated the first configuration which is really very simple.

Depending on the product you need to add, you can do the scan the QR code or just press a button on the accessory to be integrated to show it to the application and set it up in a few moments. Everything is very fast, bordering on the banal and with only one negative note: the currently supported language is English but you can still give Italian names to the various devices.

As mentioned, the Aqara ecosystem is full of devices that must use a main Gateway to connect to each other. The positive thing is that you don’t necessarily need a dedicated Hub but you can take advantage of the company’s security cameras which they are gateways at the same time.

The advice is therefore to start from a camera and from there go and expand the ecosystem with everything you need.

It is essential, especially in this historic moment of technological transition, to talk about ecosystem compatibility. In fact, Aqara, in addition to the aforementioned proprietary application and compatibility with Xiaomi Home, can be integrated practically anywhere as it supports:

• Apple HomeKit (native with excellent integration and direct configuration also from HomeKit itself)
• Google Home
• Amazon Alexa
• Zigbee protocol
• Matter via Hub M2 and coming to all other Hubs, cameras included

So let’s talk about extreme compatibility, even with Home Assistant and already confirmed updates on the way. You can also check the page dedicated to Matter on the Aqara website.

In the test I used what I could define as basic package capable of embracing most needs and which, except for various promotions, has a total price of around €250:

Let’s start with the camera which, as mentioned, is in fact the brain of the ecosystem being tested. Once logged into the application via email, social media or Apple account, everything will then be easily manageable with one multi-device cloud synchronization that will allow you to never lose anything even when switching between different operating systems

The G3 is very nice aesthetically, also suitable for a children’s room as it has a sort of humanoid face with possible ears that can be appreciated by the little ones and, importantly, has many functions. The “range” radius as a HUB is very wide and I had no problems managing accessories in a house of about 130m2 and in any case every single product shows the quality of the signal in order to make the connection stable.

In addition to having a 360° view, being remotely controllable, having an excellent 2K resolution, night vision, dual band wi-fi, privacy mode that physically closes the optics and recognition of faces as well as animals, has a gem that certainly surprised me positively: IR control!

It may seem silly but the presence of this sensor allowed me to make the camera a control system also for TV and air conditioners. In particular, the management of the splits allows you to expand enormously and make automation management extremely effective and therefore the switching on or off of the various splits according to the temperature present in the house. Really well done!

The sensors are also very interesting because they combine aesthetic refinement with functionality. The temperature sensor is very small, with a successful design and above all able to give you information on many parameters.

Not only temperature but also pressure and humidity and therefore to be exploited in an intelligent way within the automation section that you will find further on in the piece.

All the information you see above is managed by a single sensor which also gives you all the separate and easily consultable graphs. Also, as you can see, the application is extremely customizable and I have created a page dedicated to the whole weather/sensors part in order to have a clean view of what interests me.

This is instead integrated within the motion sensor and allows many features. In addition to the graphs above, thanks to the automations it will be possible to start a series of actions such as, for example, automatically closing a curtain or shutter if the detected light is higher than a total lux (Aqara also has some very interesting smart curtain closing systems here).

Finally, I liked the sensor for doors and windows above all for its very small size compared to other competing solutions that I had tried. Obviously it works as well as I would have expected with the same options as the other sensors and the ability to create advanced automations when a door or window opens, closes or remains open/closed.

All managed by a very well made interface, even for the thermostatic valve everything is extremely easy and immediate. Not only can you set the desired temperature, turn the radiator on and off and set a very precise and extensive schedule, but there are also some very clever features.

Particularly it is possible to block the physical interaction with the valve to prevent children from “playing” with it and set the temperature to wrong values.

Also there is a antifreeze system which could be useful above all for houses in the mountains, perhaps with few inhabitants, where the temperature could drop a lot and therefore allowing the water to circulate below a certain threshold could be interesting.

Above you can also see the screens of the Zigbee signal which is always recorded in the application in each product with a punctual graph.

The Smart socket has nothing special except a very clean, simple, minimal and well done design. Like many of the modern smart sockets, it not only monitors consumption but can be managed in an advanced way through automations and various ecosystems.

In this case, however, there are two further considerations to make: consumption monitoring is simple but well done e you can set a maximum of Watts of absorptionwhich is not obvious and which allows you to use it even more flexibly.

In the screens you can also see the Zigbee graph as this accessory is the furthest one I have compared to the G3 Hub (camera) and it has no problem.

Although not translated into Italian at the moment (coming soon anyway), the Aqara application is a further added value. Not only is it graphically well done, but it has a mode of control and customization that is rarely found in a Smart Home control application. Among the many themes, widgets and possibilities, the management of the Home certainly stands out and the possibility of creating different pages with separate accessories and a more effective overview. Excellent especially if you have many accessories and therefore want to put things in order (also consider only more temperature sensors and for doors / windows).

Excellent then the management of several houses, a feature that I found incomplete in many apps, even absent on Alexa for example and which is instead managed in an exemplary way here. In fact, each house has access to all the products, customizations and options as if it were a second integral native application. Really compliments.

The automation management is interesting and intuitive. Since the camera is the Hub (in our case), it is possible to interact with all the connected accessories to create a series of automatisms that will activate functions when an action is performed. The possibilities are really many with a super complete list of IF and THEN, or Actions and Reactions.

I have configured a few for testing and have not detected any problems apart from the detection of the position that Aqara itself defines as being in Beta.

Finally, the part of product management and connection with the various voice assistants is always immediate and updates also seem to be frequent. Very also interesting is the access to the complete logs: these are in fact very detailed but also divided by product or even by home. In short, everything is done with knowledge of the facts and in an intelligent way.

Initially attracted by the aesthetic factor, I didn’t think I’d find such a mature, easy and intuitive ecosystem and such a complete and well done application. Certainly the current lack of Italian – which will arrive in the coming months – among the supported languages ​​perhaps does not help the less smart but it is all so trivial that you will hardly have to look at the translator to understand a meaning.

The products are very well made and I will certainly expand the knowledge of Aqara by keeping it active in my home and we will see how it performs with Matter and future updates. I remember that I am talking about a Smart home, and that the sensors for doors and windows are sensors and cannot be considered a real alarm. Furthermore, like all these ecosystems, Acqua only works if the Hub is powered and if there is an internet connection. Features common to 99% of similar products and which do not make Aqara less effective but which it is right to remember as home automation with offline control is something else with undoubtedly different costs, compatibility and compromises.