Eve Light Switch Review: A Smart and Stylish Switch With a Little Extra Baggage

Upon first glance, the Eve Light Switch appears to have it all—a stylish design complete with modern touch controls, support for the Thread mesh networking protocol, and, of course, Matter compatibility. However, as we all know, there's always more to the story.

In the case of the Eve Light Switch, that story consists of a premium upfront price of $49.99, missing app functionality for certain users, and a little extra baggage that can make installation challenging. So does the good outweigh the bad? Read on to find out.

Eve Light Switch Unboxing and Design

Having recently reviewed the Eve Energy Outlet, unboxing the company's light switch was eerily similar—albeit in a good way. Eve's packaging included everything needed for a successful installation: wire nuts, mounting hardware, a setup guide, and a screwless wall plate pre-attached to the light switch.

The Eve Light Switch sports a clean, all-white plastic exterior with a large capacitive touch surface encompassing most of its modern, Decora-style frame. With its expansive touch surface, it's not hard to envision swipe gestures dimming connected lighting, but unfortunately, that is not the case here—the Eve Light Switch only responds to taps for basic on/off control.

Near the top of the touch surface is a lone LED indicator light that supports three preset brightness levels, but unlike the Inovelli White Series Smart Dimmer, its color is not customizable. By default, the indicator light will mimic the switch's current state but it can also be set to "Always Off" if desired. Overall, I quite like the switch's modern aesthetic, and how it can be completely devoid of company branding if you so choose by forgoing the use of the included wallplate.

Taking a look at the Eve Light Switch's sides and back reveals its biggest design flaw—its comically large depth complete with five non-removable pre-attached wire leads. At 1.7" deep for the North American version, Eve's offering is already the largest smart light switch that I've encountered, and having protruding leads for ground, line/load, two travelers (one for 3-way applications), and the required neutral will undoubtedly cause some installation headaches—more on that later.

Eve Light Switch Specs and Connectivity

Turning to specs, the Eve Light Switch is right in line with other premium Matter-compatible smart light switches on the market today. To start, the switch can handle 15 amp loads up to 1,800 watts for LED bulbs or fans, and 5 amp loads up to 600 watts for incandescent or tungsten lights.

According to Eve, the switch is UL-listed which is a big plus in my book as having a known and trusted safety certification is paramount when it comes to a home's electrics. However, even with the certification, Eve's switch is meant for indoor use in dry locations, and only with copper or copper-clad wiring.

For smart home connectivity, the Eve Light Switch supports the latest and greatest wireless mesh networking protocol—Thread. Thread allows the Eve Light Switch to operate with all of the major smart home ecosystems without the need fora vendor-specific hub, instead relying on a Border Router to facilitate its communication between devices.

Thread offers other benefits such as performance and reliability similar to Wi-Fi and ZigBee. Plus, devices with constant power—like the Eve Light Switch—act as a mesh extender, greatly expanding wireless coverage, and increasing overall network stability with self-healing capabilities.

Eve Light Switch Installation, Setup, and Matter Multi-Admin

As previously mentioned, the Eve Light Switch is quite large so I opted to install it in one of the few single-gang locations that I have in my home. While wiring the switch was rather easy, I struggled when it came to cramming everything back into my electrical box ultimately leading me to abandon all hopes of ever having it sit evenly or flush with the included wall plate.

Thankfully, setting up the smart home side of the Eve Light Switch was a much more pleasant experience even with a few extra steps involved than usual. If you haven't already noticed, the Eve Light Switch that I have is an older Apple Home-specific model that needed a firmware update through Eve's iOS app to add Matter functionality.

Since Eve is now selling the switch with Matter compatibility right out of the box I will keep it brief, but I do want to highlight that the process went smoothly and only took around five minutes. Once updated I was able to add it as a Matter device to Apple Home with a scan of a newly generated QR pairing code, and it was then ready to be shared with other ecosystems.

As with most other Eve products that I have tested—aside from one instance with the Eve Energy Smart Plug—adding the light switch to Google Home and Alexa via Matter's Multi-Admin capabilities worked as expected on the first try. I only needed to tap the Turn on Pairing Mode and Copy Code in Apple Home, and then paste it into the Google Home and Alexa apps to make it available in all three platforms.

Eve Light Switch Performance and Reliability

With Thread and Matter handling the Eve Light Switch's connectivity across every ecosystem, performance and reliability have been outstanding. Regardless of which app or voice assistant I use, the Eve Light Switch always responds within a second or less, syncs its state quickly, and hasn't given me any bouts of unresponsiveness to date.

The same can be said for controlling the switch via the Eve for Matter and HomeKit app on iOS. While I generally prefer sticking to the primary ecosystem apps, I do enjoy how Eve's offers additional settings and features that just can't be found anywhere else—state logs, adjustments for Thread transmit power, and the aforementioned indicator brightness levels.

Despite being extremely satisfied with its performance, I do have a few minor complaints. First, is that the switch's solid-state touch surface takes some getting used to as it doesn't provide any travel or feedback other than a soft internal relay click and, as you might have guessed, the connected lights turning on or off.

Second is that the switch can only be exposed to Matter platforms as a light or light switch depending on the ecosystem. While this seems like it is a Matter limitation at the moment and not the fault of the Eve Light Switch, I can see it potentially causing some confusion if you share your home with others if you install it for a fan.

And finally, although Eve has recently released an Android app after what seems like years of waiting, it doesn't actually support the light switch. In fact, it only works with the Eve Thermo smart radiator valve, so Android users will be missing out on the logging feature and additional settings until the company blesses them with a fully-baked app.

Should You Buy the Eve Light Switch?

While its premium price, bulkiness, and missing Android features keep it from being the best Matter-compatible light smart switch around, the Eve Light Switch is definitely still worthy of consideration if you are in the market for one. The Eve Light Switch's performance is about as good as it can get thanks to Thread, works with all of the major ecosystems hub-free with Matter onboard, and its sleek design certainly makes it one of the better-looking options available.

And, although it doesn't seem like it now for Android users, Eve's track record of delivering updates to existing products means it is also one of the most future-proof. Just remember to account for a slightly longer installation time if you decide that it's the right fit for your smart home.