Top temperature sensors
Monitor your home and use that data to do more
Eve Degree
£59.95 FROM evehome.com features Bluetooth Low Energy
Eve Degree’s ultracompact size and unassuming (but typically Eve-pretty) looks belie its range of abilities: it’s both a temperature and a humidity sensor, and it can measure air pressure too, either in- or outdoors. IPX3 water resistance ensures it’ll survive more than a few drops of rain, and since it’s battery powered there’s no need for an external power source. Its app is neat and tidy, with comprehensive tracking of all three sensors. All good so far – but we definitely rated it more highly when testing indoors. Left out in direct sunlight, the Degree threw up some highly spurious readings, and creating triggers for HomeKit automations demands some convoluted wrangling between the Eve and Home apps.
Weather Station
£139.99 FROM netatmo.com features Wi-Fi (2.4GHz)
Despite what its name might suggest, Netatmo’s dual-module Weather Station covers both the inside and outside of your home, monitoring air pressure and quality outdoors, CO2 and sound levels indoors, and comparing temperature and humidity between the two. Everything feeds back to a handsome app, which goes as far as to create hyperlocal forecasts based on your historical readings and current conditions. The whole setup can be expanded with additional indoor modules (meaning you can check individual rooms) and add-ons like a rain meter for the outdoor module. We’d appreciate a little more connectivity, as there’s no HomeKit support, although the fine aluminium looks (and IFTTT compatibility) go some way to making up for it.
HT1 Smart Sensor
£47.99 FROM sensorpush.com features Bluetooth Low Energy
Against the other devices here, the SensorPush has its work cut out: it covers a much narrower remit, monitoring just temperature and humidity, and it’s not waterproof. But the HT1’s tiny size means that this is a much more specific monitor. You can place one in a humidor, in a guitar case, in your fridge, or whatever environment is critical to you in terms of atmosphere. That’s not to say it doesn’t work in a broader sense. We found it reacted fast to changes in temperature when put to work monitoring a room, and it can log a huge amount of data between Bluetooth connections. A very good sensor then, but that data’s stuck in the app; we can’t yet find a way to hook it to an automation service, even with the optional G1 Wi-Fi Gateway (£99.95).