The Eve Motion is the company’s second generation motion sensor that only work until recently with HomeKit Over Thread. However. Eve has opened up its early access beta programme so the Motion sensor can work with Matter and, in turn, other smart home ecosystems.
Although the Eve Motion is Matter compatible, for this review, I will focus on it working within HomeKit and the Eve App. I will touch on updating the Eve Motion sensor to Matter and my experience of doing so.
Just to be fully transparent, Eve provided this as a review sample. This means Eve provided the device for free, so I could review it. Eve has set no conditions for this review and, as always, I will be honest about my findings. Eve will see this review at the same time as you.
You can read more about our ethics statement and review promise
Design and features
The biggest changes, beyond the addition of Thread, its smaller at 2.56 x 2.56 x 1.34 inches and includes a new additional sensor, so it can now measure light levels. The motion sensor has a field of view of 120 degrees and a distance of 30 feet. It also features an LED that will flash when motion is detected, but you can turn this off if you desire in the Eve App.
Two AAs provide power and according to Eve, the motion sensor will last for 1 year before you need to replace them. The Eve Motion features a IPX3 rating, so its a good option for a bathroom or covered porch and a operating temperature between -18°C to +55°C.
On the back of the Eve Motion you will find a wall mount hole and the HomeKit setup code. Taking off the battery compartment, you will find the device reset button.
One of the things I like about Eve devices is the privacy focus and the Eve Motion is no different. All the automations and data collected from the Eve Motion is all kept locally and private, no cloud uploads or remote processing.
While the Eve motion still feels premium, it does not share the same look and feel as Eve’s other new products, such as the Eve Room and Eve Weather. These all features Aluminium body with a cleaner design.
Setting up Eve Motion
The device is fairly easy to setup and just involves installing the supplied batteries into the Eve Motion and waiting for the LED on the front to flash. Then to add to HomeKit you can either use the Eve app or the Apple Home app.
In my case I used the Apple App and followed the setup process if you are familiar with HomeKit devices. You start off by tapping the + sign and add accessories, scan the HomeKit setup code. After a few moments, you will be given the option of choosing which room the device will placed. Then giving both sensors names and toggling on any of the suggested automations.
The last step is placing the Eve Motion in your desired location. I placed it in my downstairs toilet to trigger the lights to turn on when someone entered.
HomeKit
Within the Home App, the Eve Motion is shown as a Motion and light sensor along the top bar within the room view. This view will show you if motion is detected or not and the light levels.
If you tap on either of the icons you are taking to the settings for the Eve Motion, which are pretty limited. You have the option to rename the device, current status of the device and battery level. Finally you can change the room the Eve Motion is assigned and view any automations for this device, plus create more.
You you can decide whether you’ll get the alerts for when motion is detected. Only during the day, only at night, or at specific times. You can also choose only to get notifications when someone is home, when you’re home, when you’re away, or when nobody’s home.
Automations
While the motion sensor can be used to alert you to motion detected, its automations in HomeKit that users will get the most benefit from. I set up an automation for my toilet light. This automation was created to turn on the light when motion is detected and to stay on for 3 mins.
You can also create others like open your smart blinds when motion in the living room is detected or to turn on an air purifier when you enter the bedroom.
During the last 6 months of so leading up to this review conclusion, the Eve Motion automation have just worked without any issues.
Eve App
Apple makes available data points within the HomeKit framework and Eve takes advantage of this additional data. The Eve app can show you the history of both the lux light sensor and the motion sensor.
If the motion sensor is in your home and you were gone all day, you could quickly see via the graph where something — or someone — tripped that motion sensor.
You can adjust the sensitivity level of the motion sensor between high, medium, or low and can optionally tell it to run only when it’s dark. Finally, you have the option to turn the LED that flashes on the front on or off.
You can also check out your Thread network within the Eve App and see how devices are connected and routed. To take advantage of the full routing information, you need the Eve Energy with Thread. I will talk more now about Thread and the benefits for the Eve motion.
Eve Motion and Thread
The previous generation’s Eve Motion used Bluetooth for its connection method. So because of this, users would sometimes complain of slow response or sometimes random disconnections. However, and as already mentioned, the latest generation Eve Motion features Thread with a fallback to Bluetooth connectivity.
Within a Thread network, devices have several roles and the Eve Motion is a sleepy end device. In simple terms this is a device that remains inactive in the network until its activated. So this means the device still takes advantage of Thread reach and response times, but battery life performance should be improved because it’s not always on pinging the main router.
In order to take advantage of Thread connectivity you need Thread Border Router, such as an Apple TV 4K or the HomePod mini.
While I placed the Eve Motion in my downstairs toilet for its primary use. I did place the device in various places in my home, including the garage and at the far end of the garden where other devices including Wi-Fi, would struggle.
Thread Performance
During my testing for this review, the Eve Motion, has been rapid to respond when I have been using it with the Nanoleaf Essentials smart light bulb in my toilet
I additionally wanted to see how fast Apple Home would identify the motion so I enabled notifications within the app. Within a second after tripping the motion sensor, an alert appeared on our iPhone.
So for me, Thread continues to live up to its promise and for a motion sensor. Quick response times are key for it being useful for this type of use case.
Eve Motion and Matter
Eve has recently launched the Eve Matter Early Access Program, which is essentially a Beta program for select devices, including the Eve Motion. Then on 28th March this year, Eve plans to launch its first out of the box Matter devices.
In the main, if you are all in on HomeKit, then I do not see any benefit upgrading the Eve Motion to support Matter. But if you are running a multi smart home ecosystem, then using the Eve Motion with the Matter update is going to enable that.
Upgrading the Eve Motion to Matter requires you to sign uo to the Eve Matter Early Access Program. Then once you have access you will then able to download and update the firmware of your Eve Motion. I have done this for the device I have and it went smoothly. However, because its still beta you only should do this if you are prepared for a few bumps.
But if you want to wait for the final release, Eve plan to ship the final public firmware in March along with the out of the box Matter ready Eve Motion.
Eve Motion Review Summary
Overall, I am impressed with the Eve Motion and the reliability and speed helps make the smart home a better experience. In my testing for this review, the Eve Motion was fast and reliable for triggering automations. Thread support made a big difference compared to Bluetooth. Plus all these automations and data is locally stored and processed.
Some might think the design being all plastic compared to other Eve hardware might not be the best choice. Plus the use of replaceable battery’s instead of a fixed re-chargeable might be inconvenient. However, both design decisions have helped keep the cost down in my view.
In terms of battery life, Eve promises 1 year and I have had this in my home since mid July. So over the last 6 months of testing for this review. The Eve Motion is still sitting impressively at 83%.
Now that Eve has started to deliver on the Matter promise it made in late 2022, users outside of HomeKit can now take advantage of Eve devices. However, as I have stated before, if you are an only HomeKit only smart home. Then upgrading to Matter offers no real benefit to you as a user.
You can buy the Eve Motion from Amazon for £39.99/$39.99 and in most cases, next day delivery and be setup in less than 10 minutes.
So that’s a wrap on the Eve Motion review and hopefully you have found it useful. Don’t forget to subscribe for more HomeKit and smart home reviews. If you have a question or a comment, then leave it below. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.
Eve Motion Review
Final thoughts
Overall, I am impressed with the Eve Motion and the reliability and speed helps make the smart home a better experience. In my testing for this review, the Eve Motion was fast and reliable for triggering automations. Thread support made a big difference compared to Bluetooth.
Pros
Thread
Light sensor
Smaller and cheaper
Cons
Basic design
My thread network has “crashed” and most of the devices (including Eve) have gone to bluetooth in the Eve app.
I have a LOT of Homekit devices in my home including 10 HomePod Minis. I’ve been on the phone with Apple Care (do they even know HomeKit exists?), trading e mails with Eve, (delete and re-add the HomePod Minis) that had zero effect, nothing has worked so far and sending emails to Nanoleaf. They want me to delete all my Apple devices and re-build my Homekit from scratch!!!!!
Can’t say that will be a great solution either. I need to understand why a network full of “Apple Hubs” can’t seem to generate a decent Thread network! Ive been running Homekit for more then three years now and this has been the worse issue yet. Everything slowed down after the IOS update and Siri constantly complains that “such and such” is taking too long to respond. Those eve motion sensors take up to 7 or 8 seconds to respond and turn on the lights! This is rubbish in my opinion. Also noticed the batteries on those devices are down to 60% in three weeks! more rubbish! I’m not going to delete and rebuild this Homekit again because the manufacturers don’t have an answer. We’ll see if there will be a good firmware (or IOS) update from one of them.