Review: Eve Aqua Smart Water Controller

Want automatic irrigation for your yard but don’t have an in-ground sprinkler system? No problem. Thanks to smart water controllers—like the third generation of Aqua from venerable smart-home-product manufacturer Eve—it’s possible to water your lawn from your phone while you’re on vacation in an entirely different time zone.

The Aqua is a spigot-connected water controller that requires nothing more than an old-fashioned hose and an off-the-shelf sprinkler—or you could swap your hose for drip irrigation tubing. Once installed, the Aqua connects the exterior hose fitting of your choice to your home’s wireless ecosystem and your smartphone, allowing you to tend to your garden as you see fit, all with the plumbing you already have.

As someone deeply familiar with the home-irrigation-system landscape (I’ve been testing products in the category for more than eight years), the Aqua’s setup intrigued me. It doesn’t require any additional hardware—like a Wi-Fi bridge—to operate, making it more streamlined than most competing smart water controllers available today. However, no advanced feature or sleek design is more important than a product’s primary function, which in this case is managing water flow, and I notably found the Aqua both leaky and complicated to use.

Setup

Photograph: Chris Null

The Aqua isn’t tiny. Measuring about 4 x 4 x 3 inches, it was definitely noticeable as an accessory on my spigot. Composed of two shell-like halves that squeeze together, the interior secrets away two AA batteries that supply all the juice needed to power the device. The only external control on the Aqua is a single button on the front that manually turns water on and off. While competing products often require an external hub that plugs into a wall outlet, bridging the connection to your Wi-Fi network, Aqua’s wireless controller is built-in, meaning I needed to manage only one device, not two.

To install the Aqua between my spigot and hose, I threaded the device directly onto each. If you are using drip tubing instead of a hose, you’ll use the included adapter to connect an irrigation line to the Aqua. While the directions are relatively simple, I had an issue getting a great seal on the spigot side of the Aqua, even with pliers. The location of the handle made it impossible to squeeze a tool in to tighten up the connection, which meant that, ultimately, I was never able to avoid some level of water leakage from this area. (An Eve representative suggested using plumber's tape to improve the seal or adding an angled adapter or hose extension to the setup to make the angle less awkward, but I didn’t test either method.) It is however easier to get a good seal on the lower connection that attaches to the hose, as there’s not as much hardware to get in the way on the underside of the Aqua.

Testing the Hardware and Software

ScreenshotEve app via Chris Null

Once batteries are installed, you can onboard the Aqua to your 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi network within the Eve app, or you can use HomeKit to connect directly to Apple’s iOS Home app. You’ll need the Eve app to use most of the advanced operations on the unit (like child locks and water-consumption measures), but for simple manual control and timer operations, iOS Home works fine.

That’s a good thing, because Eve’s iOS app is a surprisingly convoluted piece of software that may frustrate even seasoned smart-home enthusiasts—at least that’s how I felt while trying to navigate the app. A complex collection of scenes, timers, and rules determines how your watering schedule operates. While the intention here is to appeal to a sense of flexibility and power for how you manage your watering schedule, the whole thing feels more complicated than necessary. The interface is too busy, with too much unnecessary information crowding each screen. Configuring a simple on/off timer feels like a logic puzzle on this app. To be honest, a wholesale redesign of the Eve app is probably in order.

ScreenshotEve app via Chris Null

Perhaps if the Aqua shipped with better instructions, the app confusion would be a nonissue. But I was surprised to find that the unit contained nothing but a spare and brief start guide. The hardware is easy enough to deal with, but I expect most users will need a little more hand-holding than Eve provides (or plenty of patience) to master the app.

Fortunately, after I finished setting up my schedules and no longer needed to tweak them further, I got the hang of the device and found it to work quite well. The unit responded quickly to on-demand commands, and schedules went off like clockwork. In several days of testing, the Aqua never failed me once.

A Pricey Proposition

Here’s the bad news: The Eve Aqua is one of the most expensive smart hose controllers, significantly more costly than the Rachio Smart Hose Timer (which I found simpler but still effective when I tested it) and the Orbit 90204Z (a model I haven’t tested but which is similar to other Orbit gear that I’ve tried and liked). Like the Aqua, both competitors offer app-based smart features—but for around $100 or less. That said, the Aqua is notably less expensive than the IrriSense 2 smart irrigation system, and all of these options are much more cost effective than digging an in-ground sprinkler system.

Unlike other smart water controllers, the Aqua does not require a separate Wi-Fi bridge to operate, making it seamless to use. But that advantage loses a lot of its shine when it comes time to deal with a complicated setup process and a leaky-faucet effect once up and running.

Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting and exclusive subscriber content that's too important to ignore. Subscribe Today.