Elgato Eve Button
Control the mood at home with just a press
£44.95 FROM Elgato, elgato.com FEATURES Bluetooth LE, CR2032 battery
Without Hey Siri, you have to tap your iPhone or iPad to control HomeKit scenes and accessories. That, or buy a programmable remote that can invoke a limited number of actions.
Eve Button isn’t the first of its type; second-generation Logitech Pop buttons work with HomeKit, too. Elgato’s 5cm-square and 1.3cm deep gadget has an advantage:, though: it doesn’t require a bridge (and a plug socket) to talk with Apple’s tech.
In the Eve or Home app, you can set what happens for a single press, double-press and long press. Each can activate one or more scenes, set the state of one or more accessories, or a combo of those. We noticed a pause between pressing the button and getting results. It wasn’t terribly long, just noticeably not ‘instant’.
We set the button to light up our living room when clicked, a double-press to do the same in our hallway, and a long press to turn off all lights and our HomeKit-connected power switches – handy when heading to work for the day, or to bed.
There’s just one design, which may not complement your decor. Button itself is competitively priced, though not what we’d call a bargain. Still, we quickly grew to appreciate it as a fixture near our home’s entrance (though it’s designed to be portable). Just bear in mind you need an Apple TV with tvOS 11 or an iPad set as your home hub to pass on your commands.