Aqara G2H Pro Launches in Select EU, International Territories (U)

After the initial announcement in Mainland China just before Christmas 2021, the Aqara G2H Pro has now officially been released in select territories, which includes the UK (£64.99), France, Germany, Italy, and Spain (around €75,95) for Europe, along with South Korea, Hong Kong, Macao and of course Mainland China. currently, the new addition to Aqara’s camera lineup seems to be limited to Apple Stores in these locations (both online and physical), although it shouldn’t be too long before the Pro is also available on the equivalent Amazon stores.

• To no one’s surprise, the G2H Pro is of course HomeKit compatible, coming with much the same essential functionality, which includes a built-in Zigbee 3.0 hub, whilst also adding hub compatibility for Google, Alexa, and IFTTT. The Pro also now allows your live streams to be viewed on Google and Amazon screen-based devices, which isn’t the case with the standard model.

• Visually, the new G2H Pro is almost identical to the original model, with mostly internal upgrades to make the leap to ‘Pro’. The only outward difference is that instead of the blue LED of the G2H, we now have an RGB LED to let you know what different functions the camera is performing – pairing, recording, updating firmware etc.

• Onto the internals, and the Pro is still 1080p, at 20fps, or 24fps for HomeKit Secure video, which it is compatible with. Motion detection is the same, although when it comes to the Aqara alarm system, this is where the Pro finally exposes the alarm to HomeKit, with all four modes supported.

• In terms of the lens, there’s a slightly wider field of view, going up from 140º to 146º although whilst the G2H has lens correction to adjust for the fisheye lens effect, we’re told the G2H Pro doesn’t have this and won’t be getting it via any future upgrade.

• The Pro can also accommodate SD cards up to 512GB, which is a large leap from the original at just 32GB (officially). The Pro can also support 128 child devices, compared to the original 64.

• Only 2.4GHz WiFi is supported compared to the G3 which also supports 5GHz, although also like the G3, it supports WPA3. One aspect that may be a slight drag is that as the new device is pretty much identical to the original, the camera still uses a Micro-USB connection for power. Speaking of which there will be no power supply provided.

• The G2H Pro also has a new additional privacy feature, that allows the user to mask certain portions of the camera’s field of view. This is particularly useful if you have the camera pointing outside your home, which will possibly also be able to view your neighbours’ areas, so this hopefully avoids any potentially sticky privacy issues.

• Finally, the Pro will support NAS, like the original G2, and will also have a timelapse function, advanced privacy protection, and user-defined ringtones, which means you’ll be able to upload sounds of your own and use them in specific automations.

What is missing at the moment, is a release for North America, which is even odder considering the UK only just saw the release of the G2H last July, whilst the US has had the same camera since October 2020. At the time of writing, the G2H Pro was still not listed in Apple stores in the relevant territories, so we’re not sure of the retail price for the relevant countries just yet.

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