Those who follow me on YouTube will know I’m a big fan of smart home tech but also a fan of tech being accessible for as many people as possible and so affordability being an important factor.
Recently, I’d seen a lot on social media (thanks to promoted Facebook ads) on a new company called ‘Hey! I’m Home’, a company who seek to provide affordable smart home devices and, a company with a vision to be the one company who meet your smart home needs, thus reducing the need for lots of different apps.
So, are their products any good? I picked up a Smart Bulb and Smart Socket to find out.
The Shopping Experience
The experience of purchasing through Hey! I’m Home is a really good one, the website is easy to use and there’s even a package builder to help you work out what you need for your home.
Shipping is speedy (even over the Christmas period) and your box of goodies has a personalised ‘Packaged by…’ note and a getting started guide.
I love the simple branding of ‘Hey!’ and their products are in slide-open boxes with no additional plastic.
Design
The smart plug is rounded and has a pretty small form-factor. There’s a button on the side and an LED indicator.
The bulb looks like a bulb (no surprises there!) and has a screw-fit by default but comes with a bayonet adapter. This approach is great because you don’t have to worry about moving to a house with different light fittings (for the most part).
Pricing
The smart plug costs £19 and the bulb £14 which makes the smart plug sit in the middle and puts the bulb towards the lower end (especially given that it’s a colour bulb).
Set Up
The instructions that come with it make setting it up these devices nice and easy and you just need the Hey! app on your smartphone. If you want to use it with Amazon’s Alexa you’ll also need to add the ‘Hey’ skill in the Alexa app.
Usage
The app loads nice and quickly and lets you group devices by room or view all of them. There’s quick ‘on/off’ options on the home screen or you can click through to adjust more things.
The smart plug lets you schedule and monitor power usage whilst the bulb let’s you choose brightness, colour, intensity of that colour and set scenes (there’s also a music mode but I couldn’t get that to work).
In addition to this for all of your Hey devices you can set automation rules based on time of day, weather, other actions (e.g. if you have a motion sensor) or you can create on/off actions you can add to Siri Shortcuts (great for Apple users).
The Interesting Twist…
As I used the Hey! app I found myself thinking that I’d used the app before and sure enough, it’s nearly identical to the Smart Life app I use for my cheaper (£10) Teckin smart plugs…so I factory reset one of my cheaper smart plugs and tried to add it to the Hey app…and it worked!
So I did some digging and this is why that works:
The Hey platform is built on TUYA and Microsoft Azure. The latter is to keep your data safe and for GDPR compliance whereas TUYA is a smarthome app that many manufacturers (often of budget products) use already. That means, if you find the right budget smart plug then it can work with Hey!
The Verdict?
If you’re thinking of starting a smart home then Hey! provide a simple way to do this without you feeling overwhelmed by the choices (thanks to their handy tool). Their products have a fun feel and work well with an app that’s nice and speedy. They also work with Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri which is a must for any smart home product.
The only real downside is for Apple users as their products don’t show in Apple’s home app and there’s not an Apple Watch app yet. I’d love to try out their camera or doorbell sometime but as I personally buy any tech I review I’m not going to do that just yet (especially as my Ring doorbell works well).
Do ask any questions you have or head across to YouTube for a video review
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