Review: SmartWise eWeLink smart thermostat

This Sonoff-compatible thermostat is worth every penny. Mainly because it’s incredibly affordable for the feature set.

At ~40€, it costs about half the price of most comparable options, and compared to Western brands like Honeywell, you save about a hundred bucks.

This is a super short review of the product.

Experiences

I’ve used the thermostat for about 6 months, and will order a couple more. I’ve hooked it up with my Home Assistant installation, added some automations, and it works like a charm.

I use it with my electric floor heating in my otherwise non-heated vestibule/mudroom. I like to keep it above 7 degrees, but not above 15, and this automation works nicely for that.

For the 6 months, it has experienced some wifi outages (reconnected by itself) and one temporary bug in Home Assistant -integration (Home Assistant wasn’t able to set the temperature for a while – fixed with an update of the integration).

The thermostat has automations that use my target temperature to calculate when to start and stop:

That’s a reasonable failure rate in my mind.

Review

Okay, so here’s a super short review.

Is Smartwise eWeLink thermostat a scam?

Probably not. I have a couple, and they function great. Buying one is a bit tricky, since you want to buy the right kind (water/gas vs. electric), but as far as you buy the right kind OR your electric heating works with just 3/5A (I’ve seen both claimed), you should be good in any case.

What’s good about SmartWise eWeLink-compatible thermostat?

It’s Sonoff-compatible, so you don’t need other home automation if you don’t want to. However, it also works fantastically with Home Assistant.

It has temperature sensor, can control heating (water, gas or electrical), comes with the “standard” Sonoff-connectivity for integrations, works nicely with Home Assistant, and it also works without wifi if need be (has a fully-fledged if a bit pedestrian touch UI).

At this price point, it’s great value.

What’s bad about SmartWise eWeLink-compatible thermostat?

It’s only affordable if you buy it from AliExpress (which sucks). And while looks are always subjective, I’m going to say this one isn’t exactly dashing.

But if you can hide it somewhere, sure – go for it.

Is “Smartwise” a real company?

I doubt it is. I’ve seen this one called Smartwise, Sonoff (which it isn’t), Aubess and Moeb-something.

Last words: It comes in multiple variants, so make sure to pick the right one!

Where to buy?

I got mine on AliExpress. A lot of bad things to say about the platform, sure thing, but the inventory is sizable.

Price fluctuates between 20-50 euros typically (being higher for electric floor heating which requires higher amps, and lower for gas/water), but these are some options I found quickly:

I found this alternative, Sonoff-compatible thermostat, too. Would love to give it a try, but haven’t had the time to do that, yet.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004682039854.html

Likely the same item as above is this one – on Amazon.co.uk:

Or just click this: https://amzn.to/3GMfovY

And one more that’s using Zigbee – it says to be compatible with Tuya, but it’s cheap enough I might just order it and see if it works with eWeLink, too.