Why the Aqara Hub M3 Might Disappoint You: A Brutally Honest Review!

all right aora lovers today is the day their Kora Hub M3 has been released it has been talked about so much much anticipated about this amazing Hub but is it all it's cracked up to be been testing this out for you guys and today I'm going to tell you what I think about it in its current state and is it a purchase that you need to do or not let's jump into the video all right first things first I want to thank aora for sending this out to me for full honest review but this is not sponsored in any other way all my opinions are my own and not even reviewed by the company so they're hearing this the first time that you are also all right let's go ahead and talk about the big thing about this Hub and what it's all about and that is all the multi- protocols and connectivity cuz that's what hubs are about taking your little accessories and bring them to a centralized location and automate them or sending them to another system that can automate them so what can this new Hub do well obviously it can do everything the M2 did had zigg had Bluetooth it worked with Lady a it worked with Google home and my primary platform Apple home this new one now has thread meaning that their new aore thread devices like the P2 motion sensor and the P2 contact sensor don't have to go directly into Apple home for automation it can actually go into their core hub for automations now downside or what I expected out of these new devices coming into the new Hub is more functionality and unfortunately I can't report that it has any more functionality except for it can now communicate you know to more core accessories through the Hub you know it has the different automations or more choices for automations but for instance there's been rumors which you never buy on a rumor that this push button on the contact sensor would now be exposed to the core Hub well unfortunately that setting is not in their core app at least not yet will that come who knows it's a rumor secondly on the P2 motion sensor uh you're limited to what it's defaulted and there's no settings in their core app they said the settings would be coming but unfortunately there's no settings on range or coold down periods so whatever is currently in here that's all you get hopefully these settings will be coming for these newer thread accessories but currently they are not and there's two ways to get this into Apple home it is Apple homekit certified so you can scan the QR code for apple homekit and bring it in that way and you can also use the matter code and bring in apple home you probably only want to do one or the other I tested it both ways and I didn't see a difference between the two also the entire Hub can be exposed to matter meaning that if you have another Hub that supports matter like my primary matter Hub which is the homie Pro which is awesome you can bring the entire Hub over to homie Pro and all the child accessories that are already attached to the hub and it automatically comes over you want to be careful if you're using Apple home uh integration or home Kitty and homie Pro cuz then you have double the amount of accessories in your Apple home app so just be careful of that you going to have to turn that off if that's one way that you want to get the Aur accessories easily into homie Pro and talking about homie Pro aora also works with third-party accessories via matter but unfortunately it is extremely limited there's actually only like three accessories or three companies that currently work with works with bulbs with Philips Hue which I did not test my Hue Bridge simply because I'm not willing to bring my Hue Bridge into Apple home via matter because it works great over homekit and I'm not going to mess that up now it also works with Levon switches and dimmers that I did test you actually have to go up to the camera and scan the code and say there is no code it's not in the list of devices that it currently works with you actually have to go to the camera icon to activate these and then it also works with a Google Nest Thermostat which I don't have so I was not able to test that so all in all this is not currently much of a matter Hub so if you thought this was going to be a matter Hub that can control all your devices in your home in its current state it's not even close if you want something that's a lot closer and a lot more usable definitely check out the homie pro hub which I absolutely love all right now we got the big things out of the way let's talk about some small things and give you my overall thoughts and some pros and cons and if I think it's worth it or not so to set this up was really easy there's multiple ways I love that has Poe capabilities if your switch does not have Poe that's okay it also has a USBC wire that you can plug in and get power that way this also works on Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz but obviously a hub like this you definitely want to have hardwired and once it's on your network this does have local control and what's awesome at least I haven't it's really hard to test this but it says if your network is down um it can actually communicate locally with the other hubs that you have from aora the older ones if you happen to have them like I do or you can also migrate those older hubs to this new one if you want to really easy except for for the original Hub the M1 I had a lot of accessories still on that Hub and that Hub did not show up as something that could be migrated over to the new M3 so I had to delete everything and add it to the new M3 it wasn't the end of the world I did have a couple weird issues I one of the water sensors kept saying that uh it had a flood alert but didn't like it was just weird so I just kept deleting it and read addding it and eventually it came back to life it's just really weird about that but all my other old accessories I absolutely love the good old days of a COR affable great zigg products you can now uh bring right into your M3 Hub also and don't forget you can bring the new thread accessories into the M3 Hub also but these work over matter so these are not child devices within the M3 Hub only zigg and Bluetooth are child devices so if you want to bring this into other platforms you'll have to share this out which I kind of think it's using the home Apple home thread Network don't quote me on this it just looks like it is it looks like this M3 Hub is a router within my thread Apple home network so you do have to add these back in Via a new matter code um it's not the end of the world but just know that these are not automatically assigned through this Hub to Apple home you have to read them back in with a new matter code which by the way you get that matter code within the core app you just go to matter and it it uh give you a new matter code you can't use the same matter code that you had this assigned to aora already and just like the M2 and the m1s this brings over the DIY alarm system that you can use in apple home exposes the four settings off away night and home so you can use this as a DYI smart home alarm system if you want to this also has the same ability of the M2 when it comes to IR blasting unfortunately I don't really use IR in my home I have a few things but nothing that's near my Hub or I would want to connect to my Hub I understand that there's lots of people lots of situations if you want that it's the exact same thing as the M2 I think if you have some AC systems that use IR you can expose that to matter and bring that into Apple home but seems to be very limited um it really didn't work for me I tried it out in the M3 Hub just to play around with it and it seemed like it had download issues to download the codes and everything uh I don't know if that's the way it's supposed to be just because it just didn't work um it worked with my M2 Hub but the M3 Hub seems to be having issues with the IR blasting downloading the code it would be nice if it did expose all IR things to Apple home which bypass that you can use scenes and bring in the scene through Apple home but like I said I really don't use that but that option is definitely available uh but right now it seems like they're having issues with the M3 IR blasting code downloads a COR also talks a lot about device binding and what happens if a hub goes down you can have a secondary M3 Hub all in all to be honest my Hubs have never got really gone down and unless there was a full power outage so all this advertising about device binding and this will happen that will happen it's just a bunch of marketing and I just feel like it's just not anything that in the real world that most people are worried about but yes there is some devices that have device binding that if something does go down one hubs do go down the automation can still happen but it's actually very limited I think some of the light um strips the relay and one other device that has device binding currently so all in all it's very limited to begin with anyways and it's just a bunch of marketing talk that most people are never going to use or see so what I think about this like you can probably tell this thing is very limited uh past what a M2 can do pretty much M2 and the M3 currently are pretty much the same thing except for now you can bring your thread a core thread devices into the Hub and manage them in their core Hub but there's no extra settings like the rumors say there's going to be hopefully that will come at least um because you're paying a lot more for these new accessories and they're bigger and you know supposedly better but for the price they're really not the price of the M3 Hub is also astronomical in my opinion uh just get m to I think you'll be just fine but if you did want to experience you know and wait for aord have these third party matter um products exposed to the aora hub so you can automate and have one Hub then hey it's your money but I would say just get M2 Hub in my opinion if you have to have a hub but you know otherwise this has potential but for the price and for what it currently has I would say it's not worth it and you're just going to have to wait around and see what cor does with this cuz right now it's extremely limited all right guys that's going to wrap up for me let me know what you guys think about this Hub down in the comments below is this something that you're willing to pay for and pick up let me know down below thanks for watching guys hit that like button hit the Subscribe button I have a lot more new content coming out on this channel thanks for watching see you guys on next one

Channel: ModernDayTech

Views: 2,796

Keywords: Aqara Hub M3, smart home, Apple Home, home automation, tech review, gadget review, Aqara review, smart hub, thread protocol, IoT, home gadgets, Aqara vs. HomeKit, Aqara M3 issues, Aqara setup, smart home tech, Aqara M3, Aqara Hub, Aqara Hub 2, Apple HomeKit, Aqara M3 Review

Id: Eb2ggWMqAng

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Wed May 08 2024