Review: Eve Thermo — a simple-to-install smart thermostat that works natively with Apple’s HomeKit
Like many others (or, at least, so I think), my first introduction to the smart home world was through smart lighting. After a few years of slowly replacing every light source in my home with Philips hue bulbs, I wanted to make my home even more intelligent and was looking for the next step to take.
One day, I stumbled upon Eve and their lineup of products. Having picked Apple HomeKit as my smart home environment, I immediately fell in love with Eve’s commitment to the platform and the privacy the products offer too.
A few days ago, I bought an Eve Thermo smart radiator valve while visiting my local Apple Store. I needed three to cover my entire home, but I wasn’t entirely sure of all the details, so I decided to wait and initially only purchase one.
Setting up the Eve Thermo
The setup of Eve Thermo was straightforward — once I got all the details right.
My apartment uses community heating, so there wasn’t any “boiler trouble” that I had to account for. All I had to do was to replace my existing radiator valve with the Eve Thermo, and I would be in business. Or at least so I thought.
Eve Thermo is using an “M30” fitting, one of the most common radiator valve fittings on the market. In addition, Eve Thermo ships with three adaptors for various Danfoss radiators. Unfortunately, my radiators aren’t Danfoss, and none of them are equipped with the M30 fitting — instead, it has an M28 fitting, which meant I couldn’t mount the Eve Thermo on my radiator without getting an M28-to-M30 adaptor.
Luckily, it only took a few minutes on Google to find one of these fittings, which proved relatively cheap. I live in Sweden and ended up paying SEK 48.00 (approximately USD 4.70 / EUR 4.40 / GBP 3.80) for the fitting, which I found at a major local hardware store.
With the correct fitting in place, the installation was simple. All I had to do was remove my old radiator valve, mount the fitting, insert the two AA batteries (which are included by Eve) into the Eve Thermo, and then scan the Apple HomeKit setup code on the back side of the Eve Thermo. After that, the Eve Home app guided me through the installation, which only took about five minutes to complete.
All in all, a straightforward process. One thing that positively surprised me was that I didn’t need any tools to loosen the old valve or mount the Eve Home smart valve. During the setup process, Eve even says you shouldn’t use a wrench to mount their valve.
Using my new smart valve
Once the Eve Thermo was mounted on my radiator, it initially ran a calibration program, probably to get familiar with the radiator valve. It took about two minutes, and after that, there was a firmware update for the Eve Thermo, which had to be installed. So in total, this took about five minutes too.
The Eve Thermo automatically appears across your devices in your Apple Home app (if you’ve set up Apple to synchronize your home settings across devices, which I would encourage you to do). The smart valve reports the current temperature, and adjusting the target temperature is remarkably simple.
I’ve read some complaints about the Eve Thermo being noisy, but it’s not something I’ve experienced myself. The motor generates some sound, but it’s very quiet after it has been automatically calibrated.
In addition to controlling your valve from your iPhone, you can do other things with the Eve Thermo. One cool feature I particularly like is the ability to see heating over time, which is available in the Eve Home app. Every 10 minutes or so, the Eve Thermo reports its status to the Eve Home app, so you can go back in time and see both the actual and target temperature for your smart valves.
The real benefit of Eve Thermo comes from automation. The Eve Home app offers some features for that too, but I’ve been using the Apple Home app to create the automations for my home, and the Eve Thermo worked with those straight out of the box. Within a few minutes, I had my Eve Thermo added to the following scenes in the Apple Home app, which I use to control my home:
Arrive Home: This scene is automatically triggered when I arrive home. As a part of that scene, I’ve set the Eve Thermo to automatically turn on and set the target temperature to 22 degrees Celsius.
Leave Home: A scene that does the opposite; whenever I leave my home, this scene is automatically triggered, and in addition to turning off lights and any music that might be playing, it’s also closing the valve on my radiator now.
Goodnight: According to some research, you sleep better in a cold environment. I’ve therefore added the Eve Thermo, which sits in my bedroom, to this scene, and configured it to set the valve to 15.5 degrees Celcius when I go to bed. A timer automatically triggers the scene in the Apple Home app.
Good morning: 15 minutes before my alarm clock goes off in the morning, I’m using this scene to turn on the lamp on my bedside table, and now also set the radiator to heat to 22 degrees Celcius.
It’s effortless to create these scenes and automations, and they generate a lot of extra value for me. It enables me to save energy and money while at the same time keeping my home comfortable when I’m there.
In addition to the above-listed scenes, I created an extra scene, which I can manually trigger: Warm Home. The idea behind this scene is to enable me to start heating the home when I’m on my way rather than waiting until I get home. Thereby I avoid coming home to a cold apartment.
Conclusion: Should you buy the Eve Thermo or not?
As you might have guessed by now, I’m pleased with my purchase of the Eve Thermo, and I even plan to buy more to cover the rest of my home. The integration with Apple HomeKit and all the benefits it offers, the sleek design (it looks a lot better than the regular valves), the quiet motor, and the product’s simplicity are great.
I recommend buying the Eve Thermo if you want a smart thermostat for your home, which integrates well into the Apple HomeKit environment.
I bought mine at the local Apple Store and paid SEK 1 095.00 (approximately USD 106.10 / EUR 100.70 / GBP 86.40). On Eve’s website, it’s available as a set of two, three, and five, and the more you buy, the more you save.
