Homey Professional Mini evaluation: Half the worth, loads of energy

Let me be proper up entrance: the Homey Professional (2023) just isn’t solely certainly one of my favourite sensible house units, however certainly one of my favourite units, basically. In my life, only a few tech merchandise have had as profound an impact on my day-to-day existence. I’m saying this as a result of I would like you to know my perspective in direction of the latest Homey-branded product: the Homey Professional Mini.

The Homey Professional Mini is a pared-down model of the Homey Professional — consider them like a Pixel 9a and a Pixel 9 Professional XL, respectively. The Mini sacrifices many options of the Homey Professional in an effort to repair the most important barrier to entry: pricing.

I wish to let you know all about what you’re sacrificing by getting a Mini over the common Professional. However, most significantly, I wish to let you know why the Homey Professional Mini is now the right machine to start out a wise house — much more so than the usual Professional mannequin.

If that is the primary time you’re studying about Homey and Athom, the corporate behind it, I extremely advocate studying my Homey Professional evaluation from final 12 months or watching my video evaluation above. Very principally, although, a Homey machine acts as a one-size-fits-all hub that lives on the middle of your sensible house — the one hub to rule all of them.

These of you who’ve dabbled in sensible house stuff will understand how a lot of a multitude it’s. There are a number of protocols (Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Infrared, and so on.) that don’t combine properly with each other, and hundreds of manufacturers that don’t play good with all of the others. On prime of this, some merchandise want a particular hub to operate, inflicting you to have a number of hubs throughout your own home, every one taking on area and an outlet. To make issues even worse, every machine household has its personal app, making an already complicated expertise much more cumbersome.

Athom desires to arrange this chaos with its Homey merchandise. The Homey Professional, for instance, helps each main sensible house protocol. It connects with tens of hundreds of units throughout a whole lot of producers. Utilizing its extremely well-designed software program, you can also make a wise house that’s truly sensible, with one machine connecting to and controlling the whole lot via only one app. What’s extra, you possibly can even do that all regionally, supplying you with whole management over your privateness and safety.

Essentially the most important drawback with the Homey Professional, although, is that it’s pricey, beginning at $399. That is far an excessive amount of cash for somebody simply starting their sensible house journey. That is made all of the extra problematic if you study that an individual who has already created an intensive sensible house community doubtless has jumped to Residence Assistant, which acts equally to the Homey ecosystem however requires you to create a customized hub utilizing an always-on pc you both construct or retrofit. This leaves the Homey Professional within the unenviable place of being extremely good at what it does, but in addition troublesome for me to advocate to its meant viewers.

The Homey Professional Mini, although, is right here to choose up the customers left behind by the Homey Professional.

The primary and most blatant distinction with the Homey Professional Mini is that it’s smaller than the common Homey Professional. The Mini is a squircle-shaped black puck that’s about 50% extra compact than the round Homey Professional. For space-conscious sensible house homeowners, this might be excellent news. Sadly, with that shrink in dimension, the Homey Professional Mini loses probably the greatest and most iconic features of the Homey Professional: its RGB lighting. I like the sunshine ring on my Homey Professional, so not seeing it on the Mini was disappointing.

Not all of the bodily variations are a downside, although. Regardless of its smaller dimension, the Homey Professional Mini has a built-in Ethernet port, one thing the common Homey Professional inexplicably lacks. To hardwire a regular Homey Professional to your own home community, you could purchase an adapter, which Athom sells individually. Nonetheless, that is pointless with the Homey Professional Mini, as you possibly can simply join it on to your community with the Ethernet cable included within the field (or every other you personal).

The downside right here, although, is that the Homey Professional Mini doesn’t help Wi-Fi just like the Homey Professional. This may be complicated, so let me make clear. The Homey Professional Mini can’t connect with your own home community via Wi-Fi, however as soon as related to that community with an Ethernet cable, it might management Wi-Fi-connected sensible house units.

Along with web/cloud sensible house merchandise, Homey Professional Mini has radios for controlling Zigbee, Thread, and Matter units. Out of the field, it will likely be in a position to management virtually all of your sensible house objects that use these protocols. Sadly, this implies it doesn’t have radios for Z-Wave, Bluetooth, 433MHz, and Infrared, so if in case you have units that depend on these protocols, the Homey Professional Mini won’t be able to manage them. Fortunately, you possibly can add help for these radios by connecting the Mini with a Homey Bridge, which is offered individually for $69.99. Even for those who purchase a Homey Professional Mini and a Bridge, you’ll nonetheless be spending rather a lot lower than you’ll on a Homey Professional.

So far as computing energy is anxious, the Homey Professional and its Mini counterpart are related. Each have the identical 1.5GHz ARMv8 quad-core processor and 8GB of onboard, non-expandable storage. Nonetheless, the Mini has 1GB of RAM — half as a lot because the common Homey Professional. This can restrict the variety of apps you possibly can run on a Homey Professional Mini.

Inside the Homey ecosystem, you utilize downloaded apps to manage your sensible house units. These might be official apps (i.e., made in live performance with the producer) or neighborhood apps created by different Homey customers. Both means, every app takes up cupboard space in your Homey and requires a specific amount of RAM to operate as an always-on service. With the 1GB of RAM within the Homey Professional Mini, you possibly can run about 20 apps comfortably. This can be a far cry from the 60 or so apps you possibly can run on a Homey Professional with 2GB of RAM.

Whereas 20 apps won’t look like rather a lot, it’s most likely loads for most individuals. I’m solely operating 15 apps on my Homey Professional, for instance, and my sensible house is fairly elaborate with round 50 related units, a dozen digital units, and a handful of always-on providers. In line with Athom, the typical Homey person solely has 14 apps put in, so a 20-app restrict ought to be high quality for many.

As a result of the Homey Professional Mini lacks all these options, Athom dropped the worth by 50% to $199. That is its biggest power.

A very powerful factor to recollect when evaluating these two units is the identify: Homey Professional Mini. The “Professional” moniker is important as a result of that’s what this product is. It’s not a cloud-based Homey and can use the identical apps because the 2023 Homey Professional. It’s finest to think about the Homey Professional Mini as a Homey Professional however with a few of its options eliminated — but it surely’s nonetheless a Professional.

Due to this, the expertise utilizing the Mini is remarkably just like utilizing the usual Professional mannequin. The software program is equivalent — in reality, the Homey app lists the Homey Professional Mini as a Homey Professional when it will get updates, so it actually is strictly the identical (see picture above). Which means you get entry to all of the Professional-level software program options and don’t have to pay any month-to-month charges. Additionally, assuming you might have the suitable units for it, you possibly can run your whole Homey sensible house regionally for enhanced privateness and safety.

The Homey Professional Mini additionally helps vitality monitoring, commonplace Flows (Homey lingo for automation), Superior Flows (utilizing the desktop app solely), and Homey Dashboards (just like Residence Assistant Dashboards; useful in turning a pill into a wise house management system). Basically, something a Homey Professional can do, the Homey Professional Mini may also do.

This creates a brand new paradigm for getting a Homey. The one motive somebody ought to fork over $400 for the Homey Professional now could be that they’re certain they may want greater than 20 apps. The Homey Professional’s help for Wi-Fi connectivity is a moot level as a result of anybody critical sufficient to spend $400 on a wise house machine will use Ethernet anyway. On the identical observe, the Homey Professional’s wider number of built-in connectivity protocols (Z-Wave, Bluetooth, 433MHz, and so on.) might be simply replicated on the Mini by connecting a number of Homey Bridges. Connecting as much as two Homey Bridges to a Homey Professional Mini remains to be cheaper than a Homey Professional by a not-insignificant $60. You would even purchase a 3rd Homey Bridge and nonetheless solely be $10 over.

Actually, the merchandise at the moment are so related that I don’t suppose I’d advocate the Homey Professional to anybody anymore. The Homey Professional Mini is now one of the best ways to enter the Homey ecosystem.

If somebody had been to inform me they had been beginning a wise house from scratch, I’d instantly begin singing the praises of my Homey Professional ($399 at Amazon). I’d inform them the way it makes issues a lot extra simple, the whole lot from preliminary setup to group to automation. I’d inform them how a lot I like creating Flows and the way my house has by no means been extra helpful and handy. Ultimately, although, I’d inform them to not hassle shopping for a Homey Professional — at the very least, not but.

The one motive I’d advise towards that is the associated fee. For somebody simply beginning out, $400 for a useful however nonetheless inessential sensible house product is untenable. What number of preliminary sensible house customers will purchase a couple of sensible lights after which cease there? What number of will attempt to automate their house, get annoyed, and quit? There are such a lot of the explanation why somebody would dabble in sensible house expertise and by no means use or want something {that a} Homey Professional presents.

Ah, however a $200 machine that does principally the identical issues? That’s rather more affordable. It’s nonetheless rather a lot for what’s ostensibly a Raspberry Pi in an Apple TV-shaped field, but it surely isn’t practically as troublesome to swallow as its $400 counterpart. If somebody is new to sensible properties however within reason certain they are going to be very into it, the Homey Professional Mini is a good begin.

I’d additionally advocate the Homey Professional Mini to sensible house veterans. As I discussed earlier, most individuals who’ve established a wise house are already neck-deep within the Residence Assistant ecosystem. For them, there’s nothing a Homey Professional presents that they’ll’t already do on their very own for a lot much less money. Nonetheless, somebody nearly to dive into Residence Assistant may discover Homey’s software program simpler to make use of (as a result of it very a lot is), and never needing to construct something has a sure attraction as properly. I’ve used each Residence Assistant and Homey, and I’d fortunately go for the latter over the previous any day.

Actually, the one individuals I’d counsel the Homey Professional to now are those that have cash to burn. Sooner or later, I’d additionally advocate the Professional to individuals who personal the Mini and are beginning to discover its limitations troublesome. For everybody else, although, the Homey Professional Mini is greater than enough.

After testing out the Homey Professional Mini, the one motive I gained’t completely add it to my sensible house is that Athom already despatched me the Homey Professional. There’s no motive to have each, so I’ll stick to the one that enables for as much as 60 apps and has RGB lighting. If I had been searching for a Homey, although, the Homey Professional Mini can be the model I’d purchase.