Since then, with a little of a delay, the company has released many more hubs – at the last count, not including forthcoming products at the time of this review, Aqara has a lineup of ten different Zigbee hubs, although, of these, only eight are HomeKit enabled (The Camera Hub G2 and the original Air Conditioning Companion are not HomeKit compatible). I personally own eight of these ten hubs, and so I would say I know my way around them fairly well. You can read our article on the main differences between the available hubs below;

Aqara Zigbee Hubs and Their Differences (updated 7/24/21)

One of the newest hubs, aside from the recently reviewed Aqara Camera Hub G3 (full review HERE) that came out at roughly the same time, is the Gateway E1. Whilst many of the hubs have their differences, the E1, which is part of their ‘Economical’ range, strips things down to a minimum in terms of size, whilst also retaining some of the core features of their other hubs. Today’s review examines this ‘pint-sized’ device, so if that piques your interest, read on…

I want to start by just stating a couple of things; first of all, at the time of writing this review, the Gateway E1 was only officially available in Mainland China, although it is now available on Amazon stores in the US, Canada, the UK, and France. The model I have here, which I purchased myself, is the Mainland China version. I also wanted to say that this isn’t going to be a terribly long review, as, let’s face it, hubs aren’t that exciting! That said, the Gateway E1 does have one extra function that might interest you.

PACKAGING/UNBOXING

So, as this is model is from Mainland China, pretty much all text on the box and in the manual is in Chinese, although setting this up in the Aqara app is easy enough, as all instructions are onscreen when installing it. Here are the specs for the device, as listed on the back of the box;

• Input voltage: 5V = 0.5A
• Wireless protocol: WiFi 2.4GHz b/g/n
• Connectivity to child devices: Zigbee 3.0
• Dimensions: 108 x 30 x 8mm / 4.25 x 1.18 x 0.31in (HWD)
• Working temperature: -10ºc ~ +40ºC / 14F ~ 104ºF
• Working humidity: 0 ~ 95% RH

As you can see, like all of Aqara’s products since the introduction of the G2H, the E1 is a Zigbee 3.0 device in terms of its connection to child devices when acting as a hub, and a standard 2.4GHz WiFi device when connecting to your local network. All pretty standard stuff. Even though a fair percentage of Aqara’s product has been exclusive to HomeKit and their own Aqara Home app, the E1 can work with Xiaomi’s own ecosystem, via the Mi Home app whilst still being exposed to HomeKit.

THE GATEWAY

Given its size and shape, you could be forgiven for mistaking the E1 for one of those old WiFi sticks you would use for a laptop, when built-in WiFi antennas were a rare thing. Indeed, the fact that it has a USB-A plug on the end really makes it appear as such a device. Oddly enough, this does have additional WiFi capabilities beyond its initial connection to your network, which I’ll touch on later.

Aside from the fact that it’s quite a departure from the company’s other hubs, like the M1/M1S and M2, in and of itself, it’s not especially remarkable, and one could argue is just as simple and unassuming as their other hubs. The fact that this is small, and can be plugged into any reasonably powered UB port (I have mine plugged into a USB socket that’s part of a Xiaomi power strip) makes it even less assuming.

The only form of external control for the E1 is a small button that, like Aqara’s other hubs, serves mainly for setup, reset and pairing functions. Below the button is a small multicolour LED that helps you know the status of the hub, be that connection status, pairing status, or other modes.

One thing of note is that the E1, despite its size, is still capable of supporting up to 128 devices, on the condition that amongst those are repeater devices, like Aqara smart bulbs, smart plugs, or wired switches with a neutral wire.

Due to both its slim size, and the fact that you can angle the USB plug by 105º in either direction for a total of 210º, you could easily have this hidden behind a variety of household items like sofas and chairs, flat-screen TVs, or other places where you either want it hidden or simple don’t have enough space.

What’s missing, you may ask. Compared to the M1/M1S hub, you don’t get either the speaker or the night light, and you don’t get the IR blaster found in the M2. As there’s no speaker when adding child devices, you would have to rely solely on the Aqara app, and the LED indicator in order to know whether you’ve been successful or not at adding a device, as there’s no way to hear the voice prompts without a speaker, of course. It does have a couple of other functions, one of which is not found in its larger siblings…

AQARA HOME 

In the Aqara Home app, as I have here, it’s set to the Mainland China server, and as you can see in the settings for the E1, it’s all standard stuff. Within the settings for the device, you have the ability to turn on an option that prevents the hub (and any connected child devices) from being accidentally deleted.

The exclusive function I alluded to earlier is mentioned in the ‘More Settings’ section, namely a WiFi repeater or Hotspot. When this option is turned on, the E1 creates its own mini-network that uses the network it’s connected to for connecting further devices. You can change the name and password for this network yourself, or give it the same SSID and password details as the hub it’s ultimately connected to if you prefer. This could be of use for devices that are on the periphery of your network, maybe a future video doorbell from Aqara, for example, that would use both a WiFi connection and Zigbee functionality as well. It should be noted that the Hotspot is limited to connecting only two devices, so it would only be of use in quite limited or exceptional circumstances, especially as there’s no 5GHz hotspot option.

HOMEKIT

In the Apple Home app, the E1 is primarily designated as a hub, but it does have a separate ‘service’, namely a security system, and just like the M1S and M2, all four alarm modes are exposed. Of course, as there’s no speaker, it can’t trigger a siren by itself as the aforementioned hubs can, but assuming you have the E1 in addition to other hubs, this is another option to set an alarm for the entire system, or as part of a separate system within your home.

I also have the following hubs in the home that support the four alarm modes; M1S, M2, and P3, as well as the alarm service in the Aqara G3. The good news is that selecting any of the four alarm modes for the E1, syncs the alarm modes for these other hubs as well, so it’s good that everything works as it should do in this respect.

At present, I’m only using the E1 as a hub for an Aqara wireless double rocker switch (one of the original multi-function ones) that I’m using to control a separate Aqara device I’ll be reviewing soon (…), but it’s good to see that the older wireless switches are supported and exposed to HomeKit still. You can see that the E1 is listed as the bridge/hub/gateway for the switch, whilst the E1 also gets listed as a hub in the Bridges section of the Hubs & Bridges settings within the Home app.

CHILD DEVICES

As you might expect now, with Aqara having such a large lineup of products, it’s no easy task (nay, almost impossible) for me to test and list every device that works with the E1 hub and which ones are exposed to HomeKit. If you’re new to either Aqara or HomeKit, you’d quite innocently think that everything Aqara makes is exposed to HomeKit. Unfortunately on one level, not everything that Aqara makes has a corresponding category in HomeKit, like the company’s Smart Clothes Drying Rack, for example, or the new Smart Sleeping Monitor, whilst some products that are a supported category, just haven’t been made HomeKit compatible, like the S2 or S2 Pro smart locks.

Having tested the following devices, I can confirm they both work with the Aqara E1 hub the Aqara app, and are also exposed to HomeKit;

• AQARA LIGHT SENSOR T1
• AQARA MOTION SENSOR T1
• AQARA CONTACT SENSOR T1
• AQARA TEMP/CONTACT SENSOR T1
• AQARA WATER LEAK SENSOR
• AQARA MINI WIRELESS SWITCH
• AQARA CONTACT SENSOR P1
• AQARA WIRELESS ROCKER D1
• AQARA ROCKER SWITCH (ORIGINAL)
• AQARA WIRELESS ROCKER H1
• AQARA WIRELESS ROTARY DIAL H1

Additionally, the following Mi/Mijia branded sensors were able to be added successfully (unofficially), and are also exposed to HomeKit as normal;

• MI MOTION SENSOR
• MI TEMP/HUMIDITY SENSOR
• MI WIRELESS BUTTON
• MI CONTACT SENSOR

the only device I tested that failed to be added to the hub, and the Aqara app is the Mijia Light Sensor, which does work fine with the original Aqara Hub M1 and the Aqara Camera Hub G2H. Something to bear in mind is that there may be a time when the Mi branded sensors may not work with Aqara hubs.

PERFORMANCE / FINAL THOUGHTS

Hubs, to a great degree, aren’t terribly exciting devices, especially if they don’t have any even vaguely interesting extras, like a speaker or night light, and the E1 fits into that category only too well. That’s not to say it isn’t any good or doesn’t do its job well enough, as it has indeed done so without any issues so far. It sits there, out of sight, doing its job, and that’s fine. I have to admit I’ve not been making use of the WiFi extender, but in my simple test, it once again worked as expected.

So, who is this aimed at, or what purpose could it serve? I suppose it could be considered a second hub to take on some of the workloads of your main hub, which if you have some devices that are on the edge of connectivity, this would be an ideal and cost-effective device for such a task. That’s all on the assumption that you have a spare USB socket available, which is certainly the case in our home. With the WiFi extender, this may well find niche use cases, so I do think despite the number of hubs that are coming onto the market from Aqara, there’s a seat for the E1 at the table.

You can buy the Hub E1 from the usual international resellers, like AliExpress etc, although as the only version currently available is designed to work with the Mainland China server, this version will be the one you’ll be buying, so you’re going to have to go down that route if you do buy from these stores. The price seems to start at just under US$23 / £17.00 / €20 for pretty much all resellers on AliExpress, so if you think this is something you could use, and don’t mind using the Mi Home or Aqara app connected to the China server, have at it!

The post Aqara Hub E1 (review) appeared first on Homekit News and Reviews.

PACKAGING

It comes in a small nicely detailed white box, which looks and feels decent, with most of all important information and specifications printed on it, with some product and application images.

Inside the box, you’ll find the device itself, the power supply, with different adaptors for regions including Australia, Europe, the UK, and North America, a USB power cable, and documentation in the form of a quick start guide, safety instructions, and a support contact sheet.

Technical specifications for the Eve Extend.

• Power: USB to Micro USB (5 V, at least 500 mA)
• Dimensions 75 x 23 x 78mm / 3 x 0.9 x 3.1in
• Compatibility: All Bluetooth-enabled Eve accessories except Eve Thermo (2015) and Eve Room (2015), both without display. Due to technical reasons, compatibility is not possible. Compatible Eve accessories
• Connection: Wi-Fi (2.4 / 5 GHz 802.11a/b/g/n)

THE DEVICE

The Eve Extend is quite small and light, with a casing made of high gloss white plastic that has a feel of quality. This style will be recognised by Eve users from earlier devices, such as Eve Motion sensor and Eve Room (1st gen).

Thanks to the small size of both the Eve Extend and USB power supply, it’s easy to find any unobtrusive location to place Eve Extend. You can use the included power supply, but because the Eve Extend only requires the typical 5V/ 500 mA voltage, you can also use any typical USB socket with the same specs to power the device. In the box, in addition to the main device itself, you get a small USB power adapter with plug adaptors for the aforementioned regions as well as a USB-A to Micro-USB cable. Departing from this topic for a moment, it’s hard not to mention that the power supply itself can also be used with the included adapters as a universal USB charger when going to countries with a different type of socket to your own.

The Eve Extend only has one socket, placed on the rear of the device – a Micro USB type – used to power the device, along with a single button that allows you to reset the device. On the base, you’ll we find the HomeKit code and four rubber feet, which helps stop the device from sliding around (on smooth surfaces). This is especially useful for how light Eve Extend is. There’s also a single coloured orange led light which informs us of the status of the device when pairing or turning on. When using the device itself, this led light has no function and when it is not lit, it is completely invisible because it is hidden under the plastic housing. Once installed, the Eve Extend does not require any interaction from the user, and the appearance of the device is not of any relevance to us in any way during regular use, so if the device’s coverage range permits, it can easily be hidden out of sight.

INITIAL SETUP

Generally, any HomeKit device can be added using one of the many third-party HomeKit applications available, including the official Home app, but in the case of Eve Extend, due to the specificity of the device’s operation, we cannot do without using the Eve for HomeKit app, and despite the fact that the Eve Extend is a HomeKit device, and also appears in other HomeKit apps, this device will not be useful to us in any other app except for Eve for HomeKit.

Just adding Eve Extend to our HomeKit home is no different than adding any other HomeKit device. The Eve for HomeKit app is available in the App Store in separate iPhone and iPad versions.

After scanning the HomeKit code, you will first see a request for permission to add the Eve Extend to your local Wi-Fi network, after which the standard options will appear, allowing you to give your device a name and assign it to a room in your home. The only additional option offered is to directly assign our Eve Bluetooth devices to Eve Extend, although it is not required, and we can skip this step for now, because I would like to first explain how the Eve Extend works and what it can do for your Bluetooth devices, as well as the fact that assigning devices to the Eve Extend can be done at any time.

It has to be stated that the Eve Extend only works with Bluetooth devices from Eve Systems and you can add a maximum of eight devices to each Eve Extend. Why is it like that? To eliminate any speculation on this subject, the answer is very simple. Technically, The Eve Extend is not a pure extender for a Bluetooth signal and therefore does not work with Bluetooth devices from other companies. Eve Extend simply doesn’t amplify, extend or do anything else with the Bluetooth signal itself, despite being called ‘Extend’. This device has one Bluetooth receiver, hence being limited to a maximum of eight connected devices, whilst balancing performance. With this in mind, it essentially acts as a bridge. It converts all Bluetooth commands from Eve accessories and forwards them to your Wi-Fi network. You can compare it to how any other hub or bridge works when transmitting commands from, for example, a Zigbee or RF protocol hub over a Wi-Fi connection. It can be definitely claimed that the Eve Extend is the first Bluetooth bridge operating within the HomeKit system. As for it extending the Bluetooth signal, it is possible and depends on placement, i.e. as in the case of other bridges, you must take into account, apart from the range of the Bluetooth signal between Eve Extend and the devices connected to it, also the Wi-Fi signal range between Eve Extend and your router. It is thanks to such use of the function of redirecting the signal from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi that we get a greater range and freedom to place your Bluetooth devices away from your Home hubs (Apple TV, HomePod etc). For example, by placing the Eve Extend on the edge but still within sufficient range of the Wi-Fi network, we can then extend the range between the Bluetooth device and the HomeKit bridge by several meters, via this additional Bluetooth connection.

For your devices to start using getting the benefits of the Eve Extend, you must first add them to the Eve Extend. Before you do that, the devices must be added to HomeKit, in addition to making sure that all compatible devices are using the latest firmware, because for these devices to work with Eve Extend, Eve Systems released some required updates for certain devices, like the Eve Door contact sensor for example.

ADDING DEVICES TO EVE EXTEND

To add a device to the Eve Extend with help of the Eve for HomeKit application in the options for Eve Extend, simply select ‘Assign Accessories’ and you will get a list of devices that you can add. The addition itself takes a moment, and after successful addition, the device is no longer directly connected to HomeKit. From that moment it is instead exposed to HomeKit via the Eve Extend, thereby acting as a bridge. It should be noted that when you turn off the Eve Extend after this point, you will also lose contact with all devices that go through the Eve Extend. However, this is not unusual and works exactly the same as other bridges, like the Philips Hue Bridge.

After adding devices, the Eve Extend’s status in the Eve for HomeKit app will show you the number of connected devices, whether each of them is available, or the number of disconnected devices, if at least one of them loses connection. In the ‘detailed view’, you will be able to see a list of all added devices and their statuses.  The Bluetooth devices themselves will always be visible as usual as individual devices too.

If we need to remove a device from Eve Extend for any reason, you simply open the options for that device and select ‘Unassign from Eve Extend’. Before the removal, you’ll receive a warning that after the removal this function will initiate the process of directly pairing the removed device to HomeKit with the HomeKit code for the given device being required.

When using Eve Extend in the Home app, it’s not easy to see any existence of this device. There are only two places where you can see it as such, with the first location being the settings of your HomeKit home where you will see the Eve Extend in the list of ‘Hubs and Bridges’ in use. The second place is a ‘detailed view’ for any of devices connected through the Eve Extend, where probably for the first time in the case of Bluetooth devices you will see that these have a Bridge. An additional effect of such a working system is that our phone can no longer communicate directly with these devices via Bluetooth because all commands transmitted from Eve Extend are transmitted instead via Wi-Fi connection, which means that we also do not need to have Bluetooth active on our iPhones for this specific reason.

DAY-TO-DAY USE
In everyday use, the Eve Extend is completely transparent and simply does its job, and does it very well. During the time stared to use this device, I have not encountered any problems. This solution extends the range of your Eve Bluetooth devices with respect to the HomeKit bridge but thankfully, that’s not all we gain. Communication with devices, connected in this way, has become noticeably faster. Of course, we still can’t count on the same response time compared to some other wireless protocols, because many Bluetooth devices that aren’t used for a period of time fall into a sort of low energy ‘sleep mode’, which requires a moment to ‘wake up’, but the communication itself is noticeably faster, and the same is true when updating historical data saved locally in the devices and updated in the Eve for HomeKit app, when connected to the device. Everything just seems to work faster. In theory, there is no reason why a connection via the Eve Extend should work faster than a direct connection, for example via Apple TV, but for now, let it be the secret of Eve Home and the clear evidence of noticeably faster performance, which alone is enough for me.

When it comes to compatibility with other systems, I can only reiterate that, as with any other device from Eve, they are designed to only works with the Apple HomeKit, so no Google or Amazon functionality is to be found.

WRAPPING UP
The Eve Extend is a very interesting idea and useful solution that works very well on the same basis that other systems using bridges work, in communicating with their sub-devices. Here we have the first such solution for Bluetooth devices that works directly with HomeKit. If you have compatible Bluetooth devices from Eve Home and you have problems with their range or you just want to speed them up, it’s definitely worth considering this solution. Eve Extend is not unique and doesn’t do anything that HomeKit hubs from Apple can’t already do, but it does it for a much more competitive price and in a much smaller and more convenient package. For example, it is certainly a better solution to put Eve Extend on a window sill, instead of an additional Apple TV for a better connection, for example with devices rated for outdoor use, like Eve Aqua or Eve Degree, or even inside the house, if we need to expand or strengthen the Bluetooth signal, it could be better solution wherever we do not need or want additional HomeKit hub. The only thing that the Eve Extend currently lacks is greater functionality for led light, which could, for example, show the status of the connection with Wi-Fi or power status, in the same way as other devices, to warn you with a flashing LED or some form of colour change in case of any irregularities, and refer you to the app for more information, but it is a minor addition and even without it I really appreciate how easy is to set it up and how reliably it works.

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