Homey Bridge review: Can it unite all your smart home devices?

I was initially dazzled by the promise of the Homey Bridge, a SmartThings-like hub that promises to connect and unify just about everything on my network: Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth, 433MHz, and infrared devices, all under one master controller that costs a mere $69. With support for more than 50,000 products from 1,000 brands, this European import sure sounds like a winner on paper.

Alas, high expectations can be a dangerous thing, and after putting the Homey Bridge through its paces, I can safely say that most smart home users won’t get much value from the product.

But let’s start with the pros.

The disc-shaped device looks like an oversized, black-and-silver hockey puck that connects to power via an included Micro-USB cable and AC adapter. It has no physical controls, but when powered up, a rainbow-hued ring rotates around its base, letting you know it’s working. (I haven’t found any way to shut this off.) The lighting effect might be a bit much for some users—especially if you want to install this in a room where you sleep—but otherwise the hardware is fine.

This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart home systems.

Christopher Null/Foundry

Christopher Null/Foundry

Christopher Null/Foundry

Pairing Z-Wave and Zigbee devices is as easy as with any other hub: Just put the devices into pairing mode and tap to connect in the Homey mobile app. These connections are quick, and connected devices can easily be controlled, renamed, and categorized into rooms, which are known as zones within the Homey app.

The Home Bridge has an infrared blaster inside its top, and that pairing process is just as easy. I was able to use to control an older Samsung television by simply picking “Samsung Most Models” from search results for Samsung TVs. All the key features of the television remote are replicated in the Homey app, and I found that Homey’s infrared signal was powerful enough to reach my television from some 20 feet away, despite the omnidirectional IR positioning.

Limited device support

I started to see the major limitations of the Homey Bridge only once I began connecting Wi-Fi devices. This process works a lot like connecting Wi-Fi devices to an Amazon Alexa system: You download a Homey app (similar to an Alexa Skill), then log in to this app with the username and password of the product to which you’re trying to connect. Once that’s done, you can work with these products through Homey’s interface and set up “Flows” that allow them to interact with one another, send you notifications, and so on.

Christopher Null/Foundry

Christopher Null/Foundry

Christopher Null/Foundry

I currently have about 15 different Wi-Fi-enabled brands of smart home products running on my home network, so I figured I’d have an excellent testbed to use with Homey. Ultimately, only two of those brands—four products total—worked with the Homey Bridge. Five of them, including Amazon Alexa, Nanoleaf, LG Thinq, Blueair, and Govee, weren’t supported by the Homey Bridge, requiring the more expensive Homey Pro hub (which we’ll review soon) to work. Many more simply weren’t supported at all, including Tapo, Wyze, AutomatePulse, Mila, and more. Lastly, Homey couldn’t find any of my Kasa Smart devices, although the brand is supported and the appropriate app was installed.

What I was left with was support for two Nest thermostats and my Netatmo weather station, and that was it. And even then, I had to figure out which was which and rename them within the Homey app, as the Nest devices were both imported with generic “Thermostat” names.

Compared to my Amazon Alexa infrastructure, which has support for every one of the products listed in the previous paragraphs, the Homey Bridge quickly began to look like a sad also-ran.

You’ll be compelled to sign up for a subscription

Christopher Null/Foundry

Christopher Null/Foundry

Christopher Null/Foundry

Compounding my disappointment was the additional problem that Homey Bridge will only connect to five devices, unless you subscribe to its Homey Premium service for $3/month (the first month is free). This service also gives you access to Homey Insights, which lets you track data from your devices—such as temperature—over time; plus, more advanced variables that can be used in the Flow system. The biggest of these, of course, is the relaxation of the five-device limit. For comparison, my Alexa network has more than 30 devices connected to it. No subscription required.

The Flow system works well enough, but with so few devices supported I was quite restricted as to what I could do with it. The IFTTT-like logic system let me set up some basic push notifications about temperature changing and automate my Zigbee plug to turn on if it got cold outside, but the utility of these was otherwise limited. And some Flow configurations just never worked. For example, Homey includes a Twitter app which theoretically allows you to send tweets on your behalf (“If the temperature is above 100 degrees tweet #hotinherrre.”), but I never found any mechanism to include it in Flow logic.

Lastly, the Homey Energy system includes an energy monitor, but it only reports energy usage from connected devices that relay power-consumption information. In my testing, Homey only ever reported 2.1 watts of energy consumption: the energy that the Homey Bridge itself was using.

Should you buy the Homey Bridge?

The Homey Bridge feels like it should be a much better product, but its combination of vise-grip-level restrictions and poor device support make it a distant also-ran in the crowded (and quite mature) world of smart home hubs. We’ll return with a fresh and more optimistic look at the newer and more advanced Homey Pro soon.