A disappointing experience from an updated device.
We’ve been on a smart home journey now for nearly 7 years. When we moved into our home back in 2012, we wanted to start integrating technology into the way we live and one of the easiest ways to do that was to add in the Philips Hue lighting system. After that, we upgraded our thermostat to a Nest unit and have kept it as a ‘smart’ system ever since. Some of the ancillary smart devices – like environment sensors – sometimes get overlooked for the primary systems. We’ve really enjoyed having them as a part of our ecosystem because it paints a more complete picture of your home’s environment. One of the coolest sensors in the market is the Eve Room. A few years ago, we reviewed the first generation of the Eve Room and today, we are excited to bring you our look at the Eve Room, Gen 2.
DETAILS
When you visit the Eve Room website, the first thing you will see is the line “Care for your Air”. This illustrates how important air quality is to your well-being and the health of your home in general. It also shows how Eve Systems is committed to creating products that help users monitor their homes closely and accurately.
The second generation Eve Room is much smaller than the original. It’s equipped with all-new precision sensor technology and is furnished with a customizable display. The older white plastic body has been replaced with a sleek, modern aluminum case and the Eve Room 2 is compatible with Apple HomeKit. The Eve Room is designed to monitor the temperature, humidity and air quality of your home. It features touch capacitive controls so that you can always work with your preferences. The display works through e-ink so that it’s easy to read no matter what angle you are viewing it from.
Another big upgrade for the Eve Room is the integration of a rechargeable battery. The original device used AA batteries that had to be replaced periodically, but the Eve Room 2 recharges using a Micro USB cable. According to the specs, the Eve Room should operate for approximately 6 weeks on a single charge.
SPECS
- Operating Range: 0°C – 50°C / 32°F – 122°F; 5% – 95% humidity
- Accuracy: Typical ± 0.3°C / ± 0.54°F; Typical ± 3% humidity
- Power: Built-in rechargeable battery: 6+ weeks
- Charging Port: Micro USB
- Recommended charging power supply: 5V: 500 mAh minimum
- Display: E-ink – 200 x 200 pixels
- Wireless Connection: Bluetooth Low Energy
- Dimensions: 54 x 54 x 15 mm / 2.1 x 2.1 x 0.5 inches
USER EXPERIENCE
The Eve Room arrived in a simple, well-branded box with an image of the product on the cover. There was ample information about the product includes on the exterior of the box including most of the specs. Overall, I like the packaging of the Eve Room, but I do think it’s also just a little excessive because of the minuscule size of the device itself. I feel like Eve could downsize the packaging and maybe save some costs.
The Eve Room comes packaged with a Micro USB cable for charging and a short manual. Getting started with the Eve Room is pretty simple. After it’s charged with a full battery (should only take approximately 2 hours), you simply download the Eve app and add the accessory. From here, the Eve should connect to your other smart systems so that you can program it together with them.
Even though working with the Eve Room should be a fairly painless experience – once it’s set up, you sort of set it and forget it – I ended up having some pretty significant issues with it. For starters, it took a very long time to charge. The specs suggest using a power adapter (not included) from a smartphone to charge the Eve from a wall outlet. I ended up using a charging station with USB ports to charge it. The output of these USB ports is 5V/2.4A, which should have been plenty to charge it given the specs of the device. It actually took several hours (overnight, in fact) to charge it completely. Then, the Eve Room would only run for 48 hours or so before the warning screen indicating it needs a charge appears. The specs say that the device should run for up to 6 weeks but I’ve had it for less than that and had to charge it every two days. Given that I haven’t seen many negative reviews on the Eve Room 2, I can assume that this unit may be defective but the issues are still worth noting.
As far as performance goes, the Eve Room seems to do a decent job of collecting data. I don’t like that the screen doesn’t stay on the temperature gauge 100% of the time and you have to wake it up every so often just to see it.
CONCLUSION
I want to be able to recommend the Eve Room as I love its purpose and easy-to-use features. I was disheartened by the malfunctioning power source and due to it, I wasn’t really able to test the device as rigorously as I normally would. The Eve Room retails for $99 and is available through evehome.com or Amazon.
For more information, visit evehome.com.
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1 Comment
Not a bad rating. Other problems are connecting / and logging failure. This falls into two categories, no logging of Air quality but the temp and Humidity do log. Total logging failure. The screen is still updated but no logging is occurring even after a reset. The screen and presentation is very good, and seems to be where they spent the money. The software rating is on a par with Blue-Tooth when it first appeared. To explain– logging onto the device from 3 iphones [ iphone 8 new / iphone 6 refurbished / iphone S new as of Nov 2018 ] was a chore– this is a feature of Blue -tooth from the year 2000, where pairing was a critical problem in two ways– losing the pairing and trying to pair and was Bluetooth hell for many customers with headsets etc. The new ios version 12 EVE app if you just want to connect peer to peer to test the device, you get bitch slapped between iCloud and Apple Home who do not give up, in the end the Eve10 App provided a hassle free connection.[ we ignored the option to upgrade due to having a higher ios than 12 ] and eventually connected. The same faults more or less covered “two” sequential purchases within 10 days from the same Apple store. That’s two out of two units that were faulty. Subsequent online investigation have found I am not alone. Due to verbal comments it could be that the faulty units are simply put back on the shelf and not investigated nor sent back to Elgato– but does not explain why the problems exist in the first place. Bad App writing, Bad software in the unit and Bad Blue tooth connectivity. Elgato test your software better in the future.