Today, Aqara has made its previously announced Aqara Hub M3 with Matter and Thread Border Router available worldwide. This hub, which can eventually connect almost all your Smart Home products, is now available for $129.99 at Amazon. It succeeds the Aqara Hub M2 and offers new possibilities with Matter support, but especially through the Thread Border Router functionality. This makes this new hub much more similar to well-known Smart Home hubs such as the Apple HomePod mini or Google Nest Hub 2. This means that this hub gives a glimpse into Aqara’s vision of the future, namely setting up its own Smart Home platform through which you can control almost all Smart Home products with Matter support via the Aqara Home app. In this article, you will learn all about the functionalities of the Aqara Hub M3 and whether this hub could become the foundation of your Smart Home.
Currently, the Aqara Hub is still not available at Amazon Germany. However, it’s possible to order from Amazon Spain, as they deliver to Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Ireland and other countries with similar delivery times for most of these countries. You can check the delivery windows to your country here.
Aqara Hub M3
Connectivity Aqara Hub M3
The Aqara Hub M3 stands out first and foremost for the many possibilities to connect your Smart Home devices to this hub. While most hubs only use e.g. Zigbee, Aqara combines a range of connectivity standards in the Aqara Hub M3. As we are used to from all other Aqara hubs, such as the Aqara Hub M2, this hub supports Zigbee. Most Aqara products are currently based on this technology. In addition to Zigbee, Aqara began releasing Thread-based products in 2023. Currently, there are two Aqara products supporting Matter over Thread, the Aqara Door and Window Sensor P2 and the Aqara Motion and Light Sensor P2. Until now, you needed e.g. an Apple HomePod mini or Google Nest hub for these products to connect to your Smart Home. With the arrival of the Aqara Hub M3, it is now possible to set up these sensors via the Aqara Home app. This opens up new possibilities for automation, and there are also features of these sensors that can only be set up exclusively via the Aqara Home app. For example, the sensitivity of the motion sensor can be adjusted. Aqara also previously indicated that the button on the door sensor can be set up via the app. Not all of these functions may be available immediately.
In addition to Zigbee and Thread, it is also possible to control your Infrared devices with this hub, such as your air conditioner. The hub essentially copies the signal from your remote control and forwards this signal when you want to operate your air conditioner. As the hub can also receive the signal of the conventional remote, you can view the current temperature and status of the air conditioner in the Aqara Home app.
Specifications
Below we list the key specifications of the Aqara Hub M3.
- Support for Matter, Thread, Zigbee, and Infrared
- Currently supports three brands for connecting through Matter: Philips Hue lamps, Leviton switches and dimmers and Google Nest thermostats.
- Power supply via USB-C or Power-Over-Ethernet (PoE)
- Data is stored locally for your privacy and security
- Powerful speaker for automations
- Climate Sensor for temperature measurement
Aqara as Smart Home platform
In addition to controlling Aqara devices via the Aqara Hub M3, this hub also allows you to add devices from other brands to the hub and thus to the Aqara Home app through Matter and Thread support. This essentially means that we can add Aqara to the list of Smart Home platforms such as Apple HomeKit, Google Home and Amazon Alexa. The support for other brands is currently limited to specific products from the brands Philips Hue, Leviton and Google Nest. Currently, it is not yet possible to connect and control your entire Smart Home via the Aqara Home app, but Aqara seems to expand this functionality further in the near future. The Aqara Hub M3 could potentially become the central hub of your Smart Home. Of course, it is up to you whether you find the app and features of Aqara a good basis for your Smart Home. We also see it can be difficult for e.g. Google and Apple to support all types of devices in their ecosystem. The Matter standard itself also does not yet support all Smart Home product types. We will have to be patient before everything can be controlled and set up in an app or platform of your choice. With the Aqara Hub M3, Aqara is certainly taking a big step to participate in this race.
Availability and Price Aqara Hub M3
The Aqara Hub M3 is immediately available worldwide for $129.99 at Amazon and other selected retailers.
At the time of writing, the Aqara Hub M3 is not yet available on Amazon Germany. I’ve added a note right after the first paragraph how to buy the Aqara Hub M3 from e.g. Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Ireland at this moment.
Tough competition for this unit. Apple’s Matter/Thread hub, the Home Pod Mini costs less at $100 and has a really good microphone and speaker and hadles more then just a few brands of Matter devices.
The big feature that these smaller companies have to match is “voice”. It is REALLY hard to get right, not only the AI back end but the physical microphones. Let’s say you are in the upstairs bedroom and want to turn off the lights by voice-command. It would be really bad if you had to walk downstairs to be near the Aqara hub’s microphone to say “turn off the lights”. Apple can place microphones in the hub, in your phone and the earphones that connect to the phone and on the watch and you can place multiple hubs arounbd the house. It is going to b e really hard to compete with Apple’s microphone system. With voice, we want the same assitant to not only turn off the lights but also make phone calls and send texts and remind us of aplointmentsand do web searches.