New Aqara Wall Hub and Smart Outlet Announced for China

After the successful release of Aqara’s Ceiling Light T1M to the international market (video HERE), the company has forgone any form of relaxation, and released yet more products for the Chinese market; A smart wall socket, and a Smart wall mounted Zigbee gateway.

We’ll start with the latter, the Smart Wall Gateway V1, which isn’t actually their first wall mounted Zigbee gateway, but does offer more than it’s predecessor – the Smart Wall Socket H1 (with hub). At first glance it appears to be a pretty minimalist panel, with a USB-C port in the middle, and even though this port offers a useful 5W output, the V1 also acts as a Zigbee 3.0 gateway for Aqara products.

It can also connect to 2.4 & 5.0GHz WiFi, whilst also offering a wired connection via a PoE/LAN port at the back. To make things even more interesting, the V1 also contains an IR blaster like is found in the M2, M3, and G3.

the V1 comes in two finishes, and as you may have guessed, is designed for Chinese homes, suitable for an ’86’ style switch box. As it’s a Zigbee hub, it can’t control devices that use Thread or Matter, like the recently released M3 can, but it is a Matter compatible bridge, so Zigbee devices connected to it, can be exposed to your Matter platform of choice via the V1.

The Smart Wall Socket H2 os also not a new product type for Aqara, although once again it’s a step up from previous iterations. Aside from offering the typical Type I three pin socket, it also offers a Type A socket, as well as two 20w fast-charging USB ports – one for USB-A and the other USB-C. Included is energy monitoring (via the Aqara app), and a power button with included LED to actually turn the outlet on or off, which isn’t normally an option for basic outlets. As for it’s output parameters, it only offers 10A at 220~250V, so it’s not going to be of much use outside of China.

Thanks to Eric Yao for the tipoff