Eve Energy Review – Imagine being able to turn your appliances on and off anywhere in the world with just a tap of your finger, or a voice command. But at the same time, also monitor how much power the appliance is using.
And better, find out how much money you’ll have to spend with the appliance turned on in a month, or a year.
Eve Energy is both a smart plug and energy monitor with Apple HomeKit support, so if you just bought your new iPhone 11 (or have an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch in general), you’ll love it as you can use Siri & it has Apple Home integration with your other smart devices.
Eve Energy itself can’t be considered having a small and compact design because it will occupy two socket spaces on either your wall or powerboard. There’s a tiny LED button that can be pressed to turn the socket on and off so you don’t have to use an app to do so. The LED indicator will also show Green when the socket is turned on.
Spec wise, Eve Energy supports up to 1,840W of output so it may not support power-hungry appliances like a modern iron, or a powerful electric heater. When I forced using the plug with my Philips Azur Elite iron on it, the socket will auto turn itself off after a few seconds. But if your appliance has a lower power requirement like the TruSense Z-2000 Air Purifier that I’m currently reviewing, Eve Energy will work wonders.
And with scheduling, you can always turn any electrical appliance off/on, even a simple & dumb table lamp which will transform it into a smart lamp. With Eve Energy, you basically can transform any dumb appliance to a smart one in an instant (assuming it’s under 1,840W of course).
Setting up is pretty easy as you can name the smart socket based on the appliance it connects to, or go to the boring route like myself here by naming it “Eve Energy”:
With the Eve app, you can inspect the running cost of an appliace (such as the expense of turning your heater on for a whole day). Here are the stats when I turned the TruSense Z-2000 air purifier on for some time in a low fan setting. There is a real-time consumption meter value and also the cost to run it (you’ll have to enter the usage charge cost within the settings).
Strangely, to be able to see this consumption data, you have to go to the Rooms tab and this option does not appear under the Eve Energy Device on the Devices list. It did take me a while to find this out and it’d be great if Eve can make things more consistent and simpler.
Eve Energy Review – Conclusion
Eve Energy is a smart plug with energy consumption monitor built into it. It supports Apple HomeKit, which is great if you are on the Apple ecosystem but quite a bad investment if you are not. It doesn’t seem to support IFTTT, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home so if you are on the Android ecosystem, you can only manage it with the Eve app.
Or if you have an iPad or an Apple TV, they both can serve as a hub for Apple HomeKit and you can use Apple Home to smartly schedule stuffs like turning a bedside lamp after sunset, or a charger to charge your Nintendo Switch JoyCon controllers, for example.
It’s not bad I guess, but if you like to use voice commands to control your appliances and smart devices at home, there are a lot of things to be missed here unless you have access to Siri.
Eve Energy can be purchased at AU$85 at many retailers around Australia like JB Hi-Fi and also available at the Apple Store.
Disclosure: Eve Energy review sample was supplied for reviewing but all opinions are mine and not paid
