Elgato Eve Degree Review: HomeKit Temperature, Humidity Monitor

If you’re looking for a sleek-looking temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure sensor compatible with Apple’s HomeKit, check out Elgato’s Eve Degree, which was announced in late May. The company sent us a unit for review, so let’s take a look at how this sensor fares in the home.

Elgato says their Eve Degree is “masterfully crafted from anodized aluminum”, and upon unboxing the sensor, it is definitely beautifully designed, in a simple yet elegant way with its minimalist LCD display. It has IPX3 water resistance so it can be placed both indoors and outdoors.

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Here is the Eve Degree’s operating range:

  • -18 °C – 55 °C / 0 °F – 130 °F
  • 0% – 100% Humidity
  • 260 – 1260 mbar / 7.7 – 37.2 inHg
The Eve Degree is very small and compact (it measures 54 x 54 x 15 mm / 2.1 x 2.1 x 0.6 in), and its aluminum perimeter has chamfered edges, reminding us of Apple’s iPhone 5 design. It comes included with a CR2450 battery (battery life rated at one year), which is user replaceable, powering the device’s Bluetooth Low Energy connection.
In our images, to show you how small it really is, we’ve included a toonie in our pictures:

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On the back, there’s a single button, which when depressed, toggles between temperature and humidity. Changing from Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice versa is done through settings in the Elgato iOS app. You’ll be able to hang the Eve on your wall, as a screw area is built into the back as well.

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The Eve Degree is not only small and light, but it’s very thin as well, leaving a small footprint in your home.

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Adding the Eve Degree to your home is very simple. Just launch the Home iOS app, then tap on Add Accessory, and you’ll see the Eve Degree pop up. Just tap it and follow the steps, assigning the device to a room in your home or adding it to your Favourites.

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With the Elgato app, you’ll be able to see data collected by your Eve Degree, as temperature, humidity and air pressure can be viewed in graph form by hour, day, week, and month.

The Eve Degree has come in very handy in our son’s bedroom, as we can monitor the temperature and humidity easily from our iOS devices, even remotely (if you have an iPad or Apple TV 3/4 as a HomeKit hub). By tapping the blue ‘three dots’ menu, you get more details, such as the number of measurements the Eve Degree records every day. On average, it has been recording 144 entries per day, or 6 entries per hour, every ten minutes, starting from one minute past the hour:

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Since the Eve Degree is HomeKit compatible, you’ll be able to set automated scenes. For example, when the temperature reaches a certain temp, you can have your Koogeek HomeKit Smart Plug turn on, which could have a fan plugged in. Or get your Ecobee smart thermostat to control your HVAC system for you automatically. The possibilities are endless.

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So far, the Eve Degree has worked well in our home, and we have not had to reset it or run into any issues connecting to it from our iPhone. The only downside we can see is having the button on the rear means if this was wall mounted, checking humidity or resetting the device means you need to remove it from the wall. Also, if the back had a magnet, the Eve Degree could easily attach to a fridge.

Now, the Elgato Eve Degree costs $69.99 USD, which works out to $92 CAD on Amazon.ca ($8 cheaper vs Apple), so it’s not exactly a budget temperature/humidity/air pressure sensor, but more on the premium side. That aside, HomeKit compatibility is awesome, as asking Siri to find out temperature and humidity in our son’s room, anytime and anywhere, is priceless.

[RELATED: Elgato Eve HomeKit Light Switch Review; Elgato Eve HomeKit Motion Review]

If you’re looking to have a clean looking and smartly-designed HomeKit sensor for your home, office or elsewhere, the Eve Degree is one worth checking out—if you can stomach the price (especially when simple digital thermometers can cost $14). But if you do splurge, your friends and family will never complain about your ugly temperature sensors ever again, as the Eve Degree is downright beautiful.

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