Eve Systems, formerly known as Elgato, has been making the Eve line of HomeKit products since HomeKit was first announced, and was actually one of the first companies to come out with HomeKit devices.
Eve recently expanded into lighting, introducing the Eve Flare and the Eve Light Strip. I tested the Eve Light Strip earlier this year, and now that its sister product the Eve Flare has arrived in the US, I thought I’d take a look at it to see how it measured up to the other available HomeKit–lighting options.
Design
Eve Flare is a sphere-shaped LED lamp that reminds me of Ikea’s white FADO lamp. I’ve used Ikea’s lamps for years with my Hue bulbs, so I expected the Eve Flair’s sphere-shaped form factor to look great with colored and white light alike, and I wasn’t disappointed.
Ikea’s FADO lamps are made of glass with a plastic base, but the eve flare assembly is all plastic because it’s meant to be portable. A plastic design makes it lighter and safer to move around than glass. There is a seam that I can feel at the top of the flare where the two halves come together, but it’s not very visible when the light is used.
The base of the Eve Flare has a flat side that allows it to sit flat on a table and charge in its included charging base. You can use the Eve Flare while it’s on the base, but you can also pick it up and take it with you outside, in the bath, poolside, in the kitchen, or anywhere else you want portable mood lighting. It’s similar to the Hue Go in terms of portability, though the Flare isn’t as big and bright.
The Eve Flare has impressive battery life. Eve says it will last up to six hours, but I guess that’s at maximum brightness. I set the brightness to about 40 percent and Eve Flare lasted over 24 hours. I unplugged the charger at 9:40 and when I got up the next morning, it was still on. Didn’t die until 6pm the next day. Battery level can be checked in Eve app.
Eve designed the Eve Flare to be IP65 water resistant, meaning it can withstand multi-directional low-pressure water jets for at least 15 minutes. This basically means that it can be used in the rain, by the pool, near the bathtub, and other places where it might get splashed or a little wet, but you don’t want to submerge it.
I don’t necessarily recommend it, but I took the Eve Flare in the shower a few times to test it out and it had no problem with the moisture and splashes there.
The Eve Flare is large, which makes it a little awkward to carry, but at the base, there’s a small metal handle that you can use to both carry the light and hang it on a hook if you want. The handle is metal so it’s not particularly comfortable to hold, but it’s sturdy when hung on something like a 3M adhesive hook.
There are two physical control buttons on the bottom of the Eve Flare. One to cycle through the colors set as your preferences in the Eve app and the second to turn the power on and off Unfortunately, there is no option to set up a color palette and automatically switch between colors.
Setup and reliability
Eve’s other lighting products, the Eve Light Strip, connect to HomeKit using WiFi, while the Eve Flare uses a Bluetooth connection. Connecting it to HomeKit was a matter of opening the Eve app, making sure the lamp was turned on using the bottom power button, and then scanning the code. The connection is fast with no WiFi step as it is Bluetooth.
I didn’t have any problems testing the Eve Flare’s connectivity, but I did notice that when controlling the light with the Eve app, there was an occasional delay between when I selected a color and when the color changed, possibly due to the Bluetooth connection.
I didn’t see the same delay when using the Home app or Siri to change colors when I was near the Eve Flare, although a time or two Siri told me Eve Flare was unavailable.
Further away from the Eve Flare, like in another room, responding via Bluetooth to HomeKit commands and changes made in the Eve/Home app is slower, but it still works. Overall, the Eve Flare was reliable and responsive to Siri and app commands, though I’d caution anyone planning a purchase to expect a little lag here and there.
Brightness and efficiency
The Eve Flare isn’t a bright lamp and won’t be able to replace a traditional table lamp, but it provides nice mood lighting when you don’t need a lot of light. It’s perfect for bedside tables at night, for example, or for cozy outdoor/night lighting.
It is designed to be used with other lamps rather than as a standalone lamp It’s not, for example, as bright as my Ikea FADO lamp with a Hue bulb inside, but it delivers rich, vibrant colors. It produces accurate colors, including purples and blues, which some Hue bulbs still struggle with.
Eve Flare’s colors are saturated and it looks so nice on a table that I can forgive it not being very bright. It’s also worth noting that it’s brighter than off on the charging base, something Eve says is normal.
The Eve Flare can accurately replicate most colors, and in fact, it can shade some better than hue bulbs (especially older hue bulbs), such as purple, green, and blue-green shades. The colors are truer to life and look brighter in dark rooms, but can also be used as accent lighting in a well-lit room. I thought it was a bit weak in deep reds and oranges, but overall, colors are vibrant and saturation/shades can be adjusted with the brightness controls.
Eve app
The Eve app is one of the better third-party HomeKit apps available, with a clean, intuitive layout that makes it easy to see and control all of your available HomeKit products. The Eve app actually does things I need to do when I can’t easily do it in the home app, like see all the views at a glance.
There’s a main “at a glance” screen where you can see any favorite product, and then there are tabs for Scenes and Timers, HomeKit products by room and HomeKit products by type. Like temperature, power, color, speed etc.
For the Eve Flare, there are in-app controls to turn the accessory on or off, adjust brightness or change color. There are some simple pre-set colors that can be adjusted so you can save your preferences, and there’s an easy-access color wheel to choose the color you want.
In addition to adjusting Eve Flare’s settings, you can also use the Eve app to integrate Eve Flare with other HomeKit products into ‘HomeKit’ scenes or create automations, such as setting the lights on at a specific time or switching on at a specific time. Color at a given time.
HomeKit integration
Eve Flare works with HomeKit, so you can incorporate it into HomeKit scenes and automations. You can control it with Siri commands, which I often do with the Eve lights because I can’t control them as well as my Hue lights.
I use Siri – voice commands to turn Eve Flare on and off, dim it, brighten it, and change its color. You can say things like “Turn on Eve Flare Magenta” or “Turn on Eve Flare Aquamarine” to change the color. There are many color options that work with Eve flares (and similar lights), some examples are available here.
bottom line
The Eve Flare looks impressive as an accent light in the home, but it costs $99. It can’t quite replace a traditional lamp (unless you don’t mind dim lighting), but it’s great for mood lighting.
You can get a similar look with an Ikea FADO lamp ($25) and a HomeKit-compatible smart bulb that colors, and some of these bulbs are quite a bit cheaper. You can probably get this setup for around $50 to $60 using an inexpensive colored ‘HomeKit’ bulb, but the Eve Flare is portable, battery-powered with a long battery life, and water resistant, all features that add up.
If you’re looking for a HomeKit-connected accent light, I don’t think you’ll regret getting the Eve Flare, but be aware that it’s a Bluetooth light and can sometimes have a bit of a delay in response (usually when opening the app to change colors after a long time). .
In the future, I think if Eve adds more automation, like adding the option to cycle flares through different color modes automatically without having to manually change colors or create complex ‘HomeKit’ automation.
How to buy
The Eve Flare can be purchased from Amazon.com or the Eve website for $99.95.
Note: An Eve flare was provided to McRumors by Eve for the purpose of this review. No other compensation was received.
