UK-based Centrica Connected Home has released its Hive smart home solution in the US, offering several subscription-based plans designed for dwellings of all sizes. Dubbed Welcome Home, each plan comes with a hub that connects to your home Wi-Fi and offers a variety of smart components—including switches, light bulbs, and a thermostat—that you can control from your smartphone. It works with Amazon Alexa voice commands and supports If This Then That (IFTTT) applets, but it requires a two-year contract and a monthly subscription (starting at $9.99), and you can't buy individual components. It works as advertised, but there are far more flexible home automation alternatives available.

Pricing and Plans

Unlike smart home devices from companies like Belkin, iDevices, and Nest, Hive components are sold as a plan, which eliminates upfront device costs, but you'll end up paying for them over time with a mandatory two-year subscription.

There are three Hive Welcome Home plans. The Starter Plan (reviewed here) costs $9.99 per month and comes with a hub, two Active Light smart light bulbs, two door/window sensors, and an Active Plug smart plug (pictured below). The Standard Plan costs $24.99 per month and gets you everything in the Starter Plan plus two additional Active Lights, a motion sensor, and an Active Thermostat, while the Premium Plan offers a hub, three Active Plugs, four door/window sensors, eight Active Lights, two motion sensors, and two Active Thermostats, for $39.99 per month.

The company also offers a Home Check Plan that costs $19.99 per month and includes a hub, two door/window sensors, two Active Lights, a motion sensor, an indoor camera, and a 16GB SD card. Hive does not sell individual components at this time; you're limited to the plan choices.

A package similar to the Standard Plan from iDevices, the Smart Smart Home Essentials Kit, is pricey upfront. For $400 you get a thermostat, a wall plug, an outdoor switch, and two smart light sockets. But you don't have to make any commitments, and you can add individual devices as you go along. Moreover, you don't need a hub. Most importantly, the components will always function as promised. If you cancel your Hive subscription, you'll still be able to control the devices locally, the majority of app functionality and services associated with your subscription (like Actions, which I'll describe shortly) will no longer be accessible.

Design and Features

At 1.0 by 3.7 by 3.7 inches (HWD), the glossy white Hive hub is relatively small. It contains a LAN port for connecting to your home router, a power jack, a reset button, and three LED status lights. It uses ZigBee circuitry to connect to other Hive devices, but is not compatible with non-Hive ZigBee devices, nor does it directly interact with other smart home devices such as the Nest Cam or WeMo Insight Switch. That said, Hive does support Alexa voice commands and will work with a handful of devices that support the If This Then That internet service.

The main door/window sensor component (the part that attaches to the inside of your door) measures 0.8 inches wide and 2.7 inches long, and its magnetic companion is 0.3 inches wide and 2.7 inches long. It comes with a CR123 battery and adhesive mounting strips. The Active Plug measures 4.0 by 2.0 by 1.2 inches (HWD) and has a manual On/Off button that glows white when on and amber during setup. It plugs into a three-prong outlet and does not block the second outlet. Finally, the Active Light is a 9-watt dimmable LED smart bulb with a warm 2700K color temperature and a standard E26 base.

The Hive system can be controlled using the free mobile app (Android or iOS) or with the web-based dashboard. Both options open to a home screen that displays circular icons for each installed device. Clicking on an icon takes you to a screen for that device; the door/window sensor screen tells you if the sensor is open or closed and displays a history of openings and closings, and the smart plug screen contains an On/Off button and lets you create a daily schedule for turning the plug on and off. The lighting screen also has an On/Off button as well as a dimmer, and it too can be scheduled to turn on and off at specific times and days of the week.

All Hive devices can be programmed to work with each other using Actions. For example, you can have the smart plug or light turn on or off and have a push notification and/or email sent when a door/window sensor is opened or closed. You can have actions run all the time, or schedule them for certain days and times. There's no way to have the Hive devices work directly with other non-Hive devices such as a D-Link external siren or a Nest Cam Outdoor, but you can use IFTTT applets to do things like have the lights turn off when you leave a specific location. At the time of this review, only the Hive Active Light and Active Thermostat offer IFTTT compatibly.

Tapping the person icon in the upper right corner of the home screen opens a menu where you can manage installed devices (rename, remove, check firmware) and install new ones. Here you can also access the Actions menu to view and enable current Actions and add new ones. Other settings allow you to change passwords, view account details, and access online help.

Installation and Performance

To install the Hive system, I downloaded the mobile app and created an account. Once the account was verified I plugged in the hub, connected it to my router, and followed the in-app instructions to enter my hub ID (located on the base). Within 30 seconds or so the hub was identified and I was prompted to begin installing devices (one at a time). To install the first door/window sensor I removed the plastic battery tab and waited around 30 seconds for it to be identified and added to the system. I named it and moved on to the next door/window sensor. When it was installed and renamed, I screwed one of the Active Lights into a lamp, turned it on, and waited 30 seconds or so for it to be added. Installing the remaining light and the Active Plug was just as quick and easy.

The Hive door/window sensors responded quickly when triggered in my tests. I created actions to have Active Lights turn on when one sensor was opened, and off when the other sensor was opened, and the action worked perfectly. The lights and the smart plug had no trouble following the schedules I created, and responded immediately to my Alexa voice commands to turn on and off. I created an IFTTT applet to have the Active Lights turn off (using my phone's location services) when I left the house and it worked every time.

Conclusions

The Hive Welcome Home system offers an easy way to smarten up your home without a lot of upfront costs, but you'll have to commit to a two-year plan and pay a monthly fee of $9.99 for the length of the contract. Setup is a breeze and the devices work well with each other and respond quickly to Alexa voice commands and IFTTT triggers, but you'll have to pay that monthly fee as long as you own them for full functionality. And as of now, you can't buy individual components like you can with the iDevices system. You're better off purchasing a mix of Wemo sensors and Philips Hue lights if you're just looking to control lighting and a few appliances. Adding a Nest Learning Thermostat to the mix might cost more than the Starter plan does over two years, but you'll be able to use all of the devices at full capacity for far longer.

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Further Reading

• Smart Microgrids: The Future of Sustainable Power
• Google Assistant Sensitivity Option Starts Rolling Out
• IKEA Finally Starts Selling Its Smart Blinds Online
• MIT's SprayableTech Creates Interactive Surfaces Anywhere
• How to Measure Home Power Usage