Chuck Out Your Remote - This Tiny Gadget Made My AC Smart

I love gadgets, but unfortunately, I don’t really have the budget to upgrade everything in my house to be smart. This is no more apparent than my clunky old air conditioner unit, which has been in the apartment longer than I have - and although it works fine, it's a total energy and money waster.

However, during the hot summer months, I really need an air conditioner but can't really handle not have one running at all hours of the day. It's an unfortunate reality, but the choice is between boiling to death and saving money on my energy bill, or spending a lot of money on energy just to be comfortable.

The Sensibo Air: You Need This in Your Life (and Your Room)

My online research on how to make my air conditioner more environmentally friendly and energy-saving led me to Sensibo. This company offer s acouple of products that make your AC smart. Their latest AC product, the Sensibo Air is just $169, and allows you to control your AC from your smartphone from anywhere.

Their site told me that the Sensibo Air could take my old air conditioning unit and make it not only responsive from my mobile phone, but that it could also make it smart and automated. And that that it could set up my old AC to be triggered by movement, location, or even by hitting certain temperature presets which would turn it on or off. Even if I accidentally left the AC on, the Sensibo Air would automatically turn it off once I went a certain distance from the apartment. Since I'm now working from home and spending a lot more time in my apartment, (who isn’t?) AC is something that I heavily rely on and can't do without.

If everything the device was saying was true, which I found pretty hard to believe, it would mean I’d found something that would help me save money and energy every month, but that would also save me from buying a new and expensive air conditioner. Sensibo itself estimates that 37% of AC users forget to switch off the AC at least once a week. When a third of the entire world's energy is wasted on cooling and heating spaces.

So, I bought the Sensibo Air and put it to the test. Would it actually deliver on its promises?

Unboxing, Installation & Setup within a minute

I received my Sensibo Air by mail and could hardly wait to get it out of the packaging. The Air came is a super sleek looking eco-friendly package that was easy to open. I was surprised to learn from the packaging that the Sensibo Air is Apple HomeKit compatible, this is sure to be a huge boon for Apple fans. Not to mention it also works with Google Home and Amazon Alexa voice commands... "Alexa! It's boiling in here, turn the AC on to 50° Fahrenheit " - Yes this actually works.

The inner flap of the packaging asked me to download the mobile app, I found it easily on the app store and had it loaded onto my phone. The app is also available on Google Play and is compatible with any smart phone.

Moving right along, I took out the device, which had a nice weight and feel. Eyeballing it I would say that is was roughly the size of a pack of sticky notes and fit nicely in the palm of my hand. Upon removing the additional packaging a USB adaptor and USB2 cord were included as they are used to power the Sensibo Air.

Don't believe me? Well the writer at homekitnews.com created a short video detailing the setup process and he clocks it in at taking about 60 seconds.

A user friendly app packed with features!

Now that the app had finished downloading I was prompted to plug in the device, flip it over and scan the unique QR code to initiate setup. I would post a picture of it but I can't risk having some of my more devious readers hijacking my AC 😂  . I followed the in-app instructions and within 1 minute I had my AC connected to my phone trough the Sensibo Air!

Geolocation features to save you money and keep you cool

A cool feature that really saved a lot of worry and energy was the Geolocation feature. Since I'm one of those people who often worries that I've left something on while I'm out the house, and usually do, the Geolocation feature saved me a lot of anxiety. What it is, is invaluable: you set a certain distance – say, a hundred meters – from your home, and the Sensibo Air detects when you leave that distance, automatically turning off the AC, despite what other conditions you set it to do. Once it detects that you've entered that distance, it will automatically turn on the AC, meaning you can walk into a nice and cool house. That alone is worth the price tag for me, saving me countless amounts of worry, not to mention accidental energy-spending.

7-day smart scheduling - automate your AC

If you're looking to buy the Sensibo Air for your office, then it also has an invaluable Smart Scheduling feature, which allows you to set the AC to turn on or off at specific times. In fact, my manager also bought a few Sensibo Airs after I recommended it, and set up the Smart Scheduler so that the ACs in the office wouldn't turn on either in the evenings or the weekend, saving energy all-round.

Climate react triggers - never feel uncomfortable

The most impressive thing however, is that I can easily set up my AC to turn on and off based on whether or not the room reaches a certain temperature. What that means is, I could easily preset the AC to automatically turn on and off based on temperature and humidity triggers that I set up beforehand. For example, I set up the AC to turn on automatically once the room reached over 26 degrees, and to turn off automatically once the room reached a temperature of under 26 degrees. It meant I could really ‘set it and forget it’, and not worry about over using the AC. With data showing that the summer of 2020 has seen a rise in AC usage by 43% over the past five years, that's a lot of money that can add up very quickly.

The Sensibo Air was priceless for when I left my dog at home, especially during the long summer days when the room can get unbearably hot very quickly. Using the Climate React feature allowed me to enable the AC to turn on automatically when the room got too hot. 

So, is it worth buying a Sensibo Air?

YES!

From its ability to upgrade my clunky old AC unit into something smart, that I can even voice control from my phone, all of the amazing features that allow me to be micro manage my AC's use, it's worth its price tag a hundred times over.

Not only that, but I actually saved money on my energy bills. For the first time in my life, after I had been using the Sensibo Air for about a month, I was really looking forward to seeing my energy bill. I was pleasantly surprised to see I’d saved about 40 to 50% on the energy bill for the summer months, especially compared to the same period last year, and even saved about 30% on what I'd spent on the previous month’s energy bill too.

That's incredibly impressive.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the Sensibo Air has changed my life. Not only has it saved me money and energy, but it's really made me a lot less anxious about accidentally leaving running the AC all day, or leaving my dog at home while I'm at work.I've even bought another Sensibo Air for my bedroom AC, which has improved my sleep quality, because the AC triggers when the room gets slightly too hot keeping me comfortable all night long.So, not only have I saved on my energy bill each month, but I'm less anxious and sleep amazingly...all for a one time purchase! Not only that, but I don't even need to invest the money in buying a brand new AC, because it's like I have one already!

The Bottom Line

This is a great product. It has solved a number of issues that I have always had with my dumb AC.  The Sensibo Air is worth every penny just based on the fact that the app was so intuitive and packed with tons of features that most other smart AC companies miss out on. Not to mention that it basically paid for itself, with all the money I saved on energy bills.

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