On the surface of it, the EVE Indoor Air Quality Monitor doesn’t seem like it does much and so may be challenging to justify the price, but it’s worth taking a deeper dive.
The EVE Indoor air quality monitor is a small temperature, humidity and air quality monitor designed to work with all your other smart home stuff. It works with Apple HomeKit and also works with the new Matter platform (coming soon) so should work with just about all smart home stuff going forward.
My first thought when I was looking at this was, why would I get this for $170 when I could buy a HomePod mini for $150 and it also measures temperature and humidity?
Especially considering that monitoring temperature and humidity was my main reason for initially looking at the EVE Indoor air quality monitor in the first place.
We’ve got HomePod minis in our bedrooms so we can see the temperature there and turn on our AC on heating remotely to ensure that the house is a nice and cool or toasty depending on the season when we get home from being out. I know we could also automate this, but I like to have a semblance of control. 😉
In the lounge we have the first generation Homepods which don’t measure temperate and humidity so that’s what made me first look at the EVE Indoor air quality monitor. But on first look, it seemed like I would be better off simply buying another HomePod mini for the lounge as it was cheaper and did the same thing. That’s what I thought but the EVE Indoor air quality monitor does so much more.
I know you’re going to say it’s obvious and it is, but it’s in the name “Indoor air quality monitor” 🙂
If you’re looking for something that tells you the temperature in your house, don’t get this. But if you’re looking to get something that tells the temp, humidity AND improve your quality of life, read on.
I appreciate that’s a big call, but stick with me. The EVE Indoor air quality monitor will detect all sorts of little particle nasties that could be floating around your house. The most obvious one is potential gas leak if you have gas heating, cooking etc.
Now, you shouldn’t obsess about this, but there are loads of little particle stuff that can effect your health that could be floating around in your house and the EVE Indoor air quality monitor can detect these and give you suggestions on how to ventilate the area and improve things.
The device itself is tiny and can be placed just about anywhere. It has a 6-week internal battery which can be charged via USB. Unfortunately, it’s mini USB and not USB-C, but that’s a small thing. It has a very clear e-ink screen that shows you the temperature, humidity and air quality. The air quality is shown in a star rating. Ideally you want to always be at 5 stars and never drop below 3.
For more, and I mean a lot more information, you can have a look in the EVE app. This is also what you use for connecting your EVE Indoor air quality monitor to your smart home. Please note that in order to access it via the internet it will need to be connected to a nearby hub. This could be any Matter hub, so can be AppleTV, HomePod or a non Apple Matter compatible hub.
You can connect it directly via Bluetooth to your iPhone, iPad or HomePod without a bridge or gateway.
Now I will say that the EVE app is not the prettiest app I’ve seen, but what it lacks in looks it more than makes up for in functionality. It allows you to access measurement history and gives insights in how to improve the air quality in your house. And EVE has a whole thing on their website about how they also focus on data privacy and security. So your data stays just your data.
The biggest selling point for me is this: our son has asthma and whilst thankfully he very rarely has asthma attacks or issues we did have an issue about a week ago where he came home from a sports event and was complaining about being a bit short of breath. We gave him his inhalers and all that stuff and he felt better, but he was still a bit anxious.
So we moved the EVE Indoor Air Quality Monitor from the lounge and put it next to his bed, so that he could see that the air in his room was 5 stars. This helped him be a calm down and eased his concerns about his breathing. I appreciate there is nothing medical about that and it’s more about his “feelings and perception” rather than anything else. But having the EVE Indoor air quality monitor in my son’s room, perhaps not literally, helped him breathe easier that night. And for me, that makes it totally worth it.
