Hive Welcome Home - Review 2022

UK-based Centrica Continued Home has released its Hive smart dwelling house solution in the U.s., offering several subscription-based plans designed for dwellings of all sizes. Dubbed Welcome Home, each plan comes with a hub that connects to your domicile Wi-Fi and offers a variety of smart components—including switches, light bulbs, and a thermostat—that you can command from your smartphone. Information technology works with Amazon Alexa voice commands and supports If This And so That (IFTTT) applets, simply it requires a two-year contract and a monthly subscription (starting at $9.99), and y'all can't purchase individual components. Information technology works equally advertised, but there are far more than flexible habitation automation alternatives available.

Pricing and Plans

Different smart dwelling house devices from companies like Belkin, iDevices, and Nest, Hive components are sold as a plan, which eliminates upfront device costs, simply you'll stop upward paying for them over fourth dimension with a mandatory two-year subscription.

At that place are iii Hive Welcome Home plans. The Starter Plan (reviewed hither) costs $9.99 per month and comes with a hub, 2 Active Light smart light bulbs, two door/window sensors, and an Active Plug smart plug (pictured below). The Standard Plan costs $24.99 per calendar month and gets you everything in the Starter Plan plus 2 additional Active Lights, a motion sensor, and an Agile Thermostat, while the Premium Plan offers a hub, three Agile Plugs, iv door/window sensors, eight Agile Lights, 2 motion sensors, and 2 Agile Thermostats, for $39.99 per month.

The visitor also offers a Home Check Plan that costs $19.99 per month and includes a hub, ii door/window sensors, two Agile Lights, a motion sensor, an indoor camera, and a 16GB SD card. Hive does not sell individual components at this fourth dimension; you lot're express to the plan choices.

Hive

A package similar to the Standard Plan from iDevices, the Smart Smart Home Essentials Kit, is pricey upfront. For $400 you get a thermostat, a wall plug, an outdoor switch, and 2 smart low-cal sockets. But you don't have to make any commitments, and you can add together private devices every bit you proceed. Moreover, you don't need a hub. Most chiefly, the components will always function as promised. If you abolish your Hive subscription, yous'll even so be able to control the devices locally, the majority of app functionality and services associated with your subscription (similar Actions, which I'll describe shortly) will no longer exist accessible.

Pattern and Features

At i.0 past 3.7 past 3.7 inches (HWD), the sleeky white Hive hub is relatively small. Information technology contains a LAN port for connecting to your abode router, a power jack, a reset button, and three LED status lights. Information technology uses ZigBee circuitry to connect to other Hive devices, just is not compatible with non-Hive ZigBee devices, nor does it directly interact with other smart home devices such as the Nest Cam or WeMo Insight Switch. That said, Hive does back up Alexa voice commands and will work with a scattering of devices that support the If This Then That internet service.

Hive Welcome Home Starter Plan The main door/window sensor component (the office that attaches to the inside of your door) measures 0.8 inches broad and ii.7 inches long, and its magnetic companion is 0.iii inches wide and two.7 inches long. It comes with a CR123 bombardment and adhesive mounting strips. The Active Plug measures 4.0 past 2.0 past one.two inches (HWD) and has a manual On/Off push that glows white when on and bister during setup. It plugs into a 3-prong outlet and does not cake the second outlet. Finally, the Active Light is a ix-watt dimmable LED smart bulb with a warm 2700K colour temperature and a standard E26 base.

The Hive system can be controlled using the free mobile app (Android or iOS) or with the web-based dashboard. Both options open up to a habitation screen that displays circular icons for each installed device. Clicking on an icon takes you to a screen for that device; the door/window sensor screen tells you if the sensor is open or closed and displays a history of openings and closings, and the smart plug screen contains an On/Off button and lets you create a daily schedule for turning the plug on and off. The lighting screen besides has an On/Off button equally well as a dimmer, and it besides can be scheduled to plow on and off at specific times and days of the week.

All Hive devices tin be programmed to work with each other using Deportment. For example, y'all can accept the smart plug or light plow on or off and have a push notification and/or email sent when a door/window sensor is opened or airtight. You tin take actions run all the fourth dimension, or schedule them for certain days and times. There'due south no way to accept the Hive devices work direct with other not-Hive devices such as a D-Link external siren or a Nest Cam Outdoor, but you can apply IFTTT applets to do things like accept the lights turn off when you exit a specific location. At the time of this review, only the Hive Active Light and Active Thermostat offer IFTTT compatibly.

Borer the person icon in the upper right corner of the abode screen opens a menu where you can manage installed devices (rename, remove, check firmware) and install new ones. Here you can too access the Actions carte du jour to view and enable electric current Deportment and add new ones. Other settings allow you to change passwords, view account details, and access online help.

Hive Welcome Home Starter Plan

Installation and Operation

To install the Hive system, I downloaded the mobile app and created an account. Once the account was verified I plugged in the hub, connected it to my router, and followed the in-app instructions to enter my hub ID (located on the base). Within thirty seconds or so the hub was identified and I was prompted to brainstorm installing devices (i at a time). To install the starting time door/window sensor I removed the plastic battery tab and waited around thirty seconds for it to be identified and added to the system. I named information technology and moved on to the next door/window sensor. When it was installed and renamed, I screwed one of the Agile Lights into a lamp, turned it on, and waited 30 seconds or so for information technology to be added. Installing the remaining light and the Agile Plug was just equally quick and easy.

The Hive door/window sensors responded quickly when triggered in my tests. I created actions to have Agile Lights turn on when 1 sensor was opened, and off when the other sensor was opened, and the action worked perfectly. The lights and the smart plug had no trouble post-obit the schedules I created, and responded immediately to my Alexa vocalism commands to turn on and off. I created an IFTTT applet to accept the Active Lights turn off (using my phone's location services) when I left the house and it worked every time.

Conclusions

The Hive Welcome Home arrangement offers an like shooting fish in a barrel way to smarten up your home without a lot of upfront costs, but you lot'll accept to commit to a two-twelvemonth plan and pay a monthly fee of $9.99 for the length of the contract. Setup is a cakewalk and the devices work well with each other and respond quickly to Alexa phonation commands and IFTTT triggers, but you'll take to pay that monthly fee as long as you own them for full functionality. And as of now, you can't buy individual components similar you tin can with the iDevices organisation. Y'all're meliorate off purchasing a mix of Wemo sensors and Philips Hue lights if you're simply looking to control lighting and a few appliances. Adding a Nest Learning Thermostat to the mix might cost more than than the Starter programme does over 2 years, just you'll be able to use all of the devices at full capacity for far longer.