Review on 🏠 Aqara Smart Hub M2: Ultimate Smart Home Bridge with Alarm System & Remote Control [Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit, IFTTT Compatible] by Joseph Redding

I've had a 'regular' Aqara M1 Smart Hub as a base for my Aqara Smart Home System for a long time and it's great. When this new M2 hub was finally officially available in the US market, I ordered it because it had a feature that I really prefer in HomeKit hubs, which was the wired network option. When the M2 case arrived I was pleased to see that it was about as compact as the M1/M1s cases - slightly larger in diameter but about 1/3 thinner in thickness. Adding it to my HomeKit setup took less than 30 seconds with the Aqara app, and in no time the M2 was up and running. However, when it came time to set it up, quite a bit of work was required. Since I intended to use the M2 as my new primary hub, I found it a bit annoying that there wasn't an option to manually select which smart hub I should connect to. Aqara accessories (actually I have 3 hubs scattered around my house for good coverage). Because of this I had to remove every Aqara accessory and add it back to the Aqara app to bind it to the new M2 hub. It was a bit of a lengthy process because I now have over 20 different accessories; However, this gave me the ability to rebind any device with the best connection to the hub (as opposed to binding all Aqara devices to the same hub). This allowed me to use multiple hubs to provide a good signal for all Aqara accessories. As with the M1 and M1S hubs, after connecting Aqara devices to the hub in the Aqara app, you can switch to the Apple Home app for basic controls. So far everything is working as intended although I haven't tried the M2's built in IR functionality yet. A few other notes: First, you get a micro USB cable in the box, but no power adapter; I just used an extra USB charger from one of my iPhones as a power source and it works great. Second, the speaker in the M2 hub is not as loud as in the M1/M1S hubs. I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with design: M1/M1S hubs are usually wall mounted with the vacant speaker holes facing out; However, since the M2 is designed to be placed on a flat surface, the speaker holes are located around the base of the M2 and point straight down at the table (or shelf where I have it). Luckily, as I mentioned, I have more than one hub as part of my HomeKit setup, and luckily when I install M2, all other M1/M1S hubs sync to it. So when you enable the alarm feature on the M2 as an alert, all my Aqara hubs give the same alert as well. So okay - the M2 is a bit more expensive than the M1/M1S, but you get LAN connectivity, you no longer have to hunt for an open outlet (M1/M1S hubs block both outlets where you put them), and it has IR function. Aside from everything I just said, the M2 is still a great choice for starting your smart home! Even if you are not starting from scratch, I would say that the M2 Hub is also a good addition to an already installed Aqara smart home system.