Aqara TVoC Sensor with Apple Homekit: Is it a good buy for YOUR smart home?
Chris Young Chris Young
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 Published On Sep 13, 2021

DISCLAIMER: One of the Aqara TVoC sensors used in this video was provided to me by Aqara for review purposes. No money exchanged hands, but it's important to me that you know where this stuff comes from in case you think it affects my opinion.

LINKS BELOW MAY BE AFFILIATE LINKS WHERE I MAY RECEIVED A SMALL BIT OF CASH IF YOU CHOOSE TO BUY AFTER CLICKING THOSE LINKS.

The Aqara TVoC sensor is the latest is a wide range of accessories that Aqara has launched to the global market as part of it's quest to bring affordable smarthome technology to everyone's houses.

The TVoC sensor is a zigbee sensor with a high contrast e-Ink display which means that it's going to have great battery life ( approx one year according to their website ).

Although you could probably chose to pick one of these up and use it as a non-smart device, you ARE going to have to pair it with one of the existing Aqara Zigbee hubs ( M2, M1S, or G2H Camera ) if you're looking to get it into your Homekit home. On the bright side, if you're watching this video, there's a pretty good chance you already own one of those devices so you're probably good to take it out of the box, pair it up, and start enjoying your new sensors.

The Good:

The Aqara TVoC sensor has a really nice display that's visible from a short distance away.
As already mentioned, the e-Ink and the zigbee radio means that this is a very low-power draw device and the battery should last about a year.
The price on this baby is current the least expensive in this type of device that I've seen in it's class. ( By this I mean, Air Quality sensors that support Apple Homekit - the only ones I can really compare to are the Eve Room and the Kaiterra Laser Eggs which are double or triple the price, but also come with some other features.

The Bad:

The Aqara TVoC sensor's seem to have some calibration issues. I set three of the sensors, as well as the Eve Room (gen2) directly beside each other and there really wasn't any consistency between the sensors. The TVoC was close, but the temp and humidity readings all disagreed by as much as a couple of degrees and almost 5% relative humidity. This isn't going to be a lab grade sensor to say the least, but to be honest, it's as good as any other sensor in it's price range, and it's definitely good enough to be able to trigger automations in your homekit home.

Other note: I've seen several people complain about this device disconnecting from it's connected hubs. I can say that I didn't experience that during my review period ( about 1 month ) but I also kept the device fairly close ( within one room distance away ) as these things go so I really didn't push the boundaries on testing the distance.

Final Thoughts:

The Aqara TVoC sensor is a good buy as long as you have low expectations on the accuracy of the sensors. It's not perfect, but it's good enough for my use-cases to trigger air quality based automations.

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#aqara #homekit #airquality

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