Chinese brand's latest smart home hub is smallest and most versatile yet
The Aqara Hub E1 has gone live, a USB-powered controller that makes it super simple to control devices and sensors from the ever-growing line-up from the Chinese smart home specialst.
The E1 can be powered by any USB port in your house really; whether it’s on a wall-plug or a powered-USB port on a console, computer or smart TV.
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That, and its slimline design (4.25 x 1.18 x 0.3-inches and just 58g) make it the most versatile smart home hub from the Lumi Technology brand; the aerial part can adjust 210-degrees once it’s plugged in.
The small form factor and low price-point (just £29.99 make it the perfect starting point for anyone looking to build out an affordable smart home setup.
A Zigbee-based system, Aqara devices such as smart sensors and the new Roller Shade Driver E1 need a central smart home hub to connect to the cloud. That’s where the E1 comes in.
Like the previous hubs from Aqara – such as the M2, the M1S and the Aqara Camera Hub G2H (which is a hub and camera in one) – the E1 also paves a way to getting those Aqara devices singing and dancing within all of the popular smart home ecosystems.
Aqara’s hubs work with Apple’s HomeKit, Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home and IFTTT, exposing all of Aqara’s battery-powered sensors and smart gadgets to your voice-controlled smart home system of choice.
We’ve tested a range of Aqara devices over the past year or so – check out our comprehensive Aqara smart home review – and it’s a system we’ve really been impressed with. We’ve tested the E1 over the last couple of weeks and it works exactly as we’d expect.
Like previous hubs, the Hub E1 can accommodate up to 128 “child” devices (as Aqara calls them). However, you can only add 32 “terminal” devices (battery-powered sensors, buttons), before you’ll need a Relay device (i.e. something that plugs in) to add 16 more per Relay.
Additionally on the E1, there’s a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi repeater option, whereby you can add a couple of Wi-Fi devices to your home network (not just Aqara devices) that may be struggling to reach your router.
The Aqara Hub E1 is available from Amazon right now for £29.99.