Today, Aqara launches two new products, the Aqara Hub M100 and the Aqara Climate Sensor W100. The M100 is the successor of the Aqara Hub E1 and is a Smart Home hub with a USB-A form factor. It’s the second hub next to the M3 from Aqara with both Zigbee and Thread support. With a price of $19,99/€19,99/£19,99, the M100 is probably the most affordable hub with Thread support on the market. The Aqara Climate Sensor W100 measures both the temperature and humidity in the room and can be connected to a Aqara Radiator Thermostat E1. You can choose to use either Zigbee or Matter over Thread to connect the W100 to your Smart Home. The three physical buttons are exposed to Matter, which allows you to use these as 9 separate wireless buttons (press, double press, long press) to automate and control other devices in Apple HomeKit or other Smart Home platforms. Both products are now available on Amazon.
Aqara Hub M100
Aqara offers a growing number of hubs, with the Aqara Hub M3 as its top model, with support of both Matter over Thread and Aqara Zigbee devices. The Aqara Hub M100 also supports of both these protocols, but at a significant lower price point. The M100 is basically a USB-A stick, which you can power using a wall outlet or any other USB-A power adapter. It’s able to connect Aqara Zigbee devices, but also Matter over Thread devices from Aqara and other manufacturers. This allows you to control and automate these devices in the Aqara Home app. The Aqara Hub M100 is also a Matter Bridge for Aqara Zigbee devices, which bring these devices to other Smart Home platforms like Google Home and Apple HomeKit.
The Aqara Hub M100 supports 2.4GHz WiFi 6. While the Aqara Hub M3 supports up to 127 Thread and 127 Zigbee devices, the M100 is limited to 20 Zigbee and 20 Thread, up to 40 devices total. You can of course also use multiple M100 hubs in your Smart Home if these limits are reached. Compared to the M3 hub, there is no infrared sensor and no speaker on board of this hub. The M100 is primarily an affordable hub with support of the moest important protocols: Zigbee and Thread. This hub will make it much more accessible to add Thread devices to your Aqara system, as you needed a $129,99/€1129,99 M3 hub until now. Good to note it the fact that Aqara is adding Thread hub functionality to more devices lately, like the Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro and the upcoming Aqara Doorbell Camera Hub G410.
Aqara Climate Sensor W100
The Aqara Climate Sensor W100 is a temperature and humidity sensor, which shows these measurements on its 50*70mm build-in display, as well as in the Aqara Home app. The W100 supports both Zigbee and Thread, which means you can use a protocol of choice to connect the device to the Aqara app or other Smart Home platforms. If you like to connect the Climate Sensor W100 directly to Apple HomeKit or Google Home, you need a hub like a Apple HomePod (mini), Apple TV, Google Nest Hub 2 or Google TV streamer. There are three physical buttons, which you can use to control a connected Aqara Thermostat. These are also exposed to Matter as wireless switches, with a single press, double press and long press for each button. This means you can control several other devices integrated in Apple HomeKit or other supported Smart Home platforms by connecting an action to a button press.
You can either place the W100 on a table or use the magnets to mount it to a wall, fridge or other magnetic areas. Currently, you can connect one Aqara Radiator Thermostat E1 to the W100, which you can control with the physical buttons. A future software update will allow control of more thermostats. The battery lasts about 2 years. The screen can also show the temperature and humidity of an external Aqara sensor, or data from an online source of the outside temperature in your area.
Availability and Price
Both the Aqara Hub M100 and Aqara Climate Sensor W100 are available immediately on Amazon. The Aqara Hub M100 is available for $19,99/€19,99/£19,99. The Aqara Climate sensor W100 is priced at $39,99/€39,99/£39,99.
