SwitchBot Meter Plus review: A smart way to monitor comfort

Sometimes smart home products overcomplicate things. The SwitchBot Meter Plus, also known as the Thermometer and Hygrometer Plus, isn't one of those products. Here we have a thermometer and humidity sensor that you can use without ever even knowing it's smart, yet it makes for an excellent addition to a Matter smart home. 

Unboxing and design

Many SwitchBot products come with minimal packaging and a tiny box size to match. The SwitchBot Meter Plus comes in a tiny box only a hair larger than the device itself. Inside you get the product, a manual, a 3M sticker, and two AAA batteries. 

The Meter Plus measures 79mm tall by 64.5mm wide. Its sloped design means it's 21.6mm at its thickest point and 17.5mm at its thinnest. The digital, monochromatic screen measures three inches diagonally—which is nearly a full inch larger than on the regular SwitchBot Meter. It's surrounded by a rounded, white, plastic frame that likely feels at home alongside most non-smart thermostats and even the occasional connected one, like the Matter-compatible Honeywell Smart X2S.

The Meter Plus can be hung from a nail on the wall, and the included sticker helps you mount the sensor up high without putting holes in your wall. It also comes with a stand you can pop out to rest the device on any flat surface. I have mine placed on a low bookshelf in my bedroom. 

When just enough is good enough

The sensors comes to life as soon as you insert the batteries into the back. The temperature is always on the top half of the screen, and the humidity occupies the bottom. The sensor inside the Meter Plus can take readings of both up to four times a second. 

As a resident of the United States, I wanted my temperature reading switched to Fahrenheit, which I could do by pressing a small button on the back of the unit.

If you don't know what to make of the humidity number, which is provided as a percentage, that's okay. The Meter Plus will tell you whether the atmosphere in your room is comfortable via a smiley face displayed in the top-left corner. There are various possible readings, such dry, comfort, and humid. It stormed last night, and we kept the windows open, so the Meter Plus currently tells me our indoor climate is wet.

A battery indicator occupies the top-right. While the state of charge is important, don't think you need to treat this like a phone. SwitchBot claims you will only need to change the batteries once a year. 

If this were all there was to the product, I'd be happy with the SwitchBot Meter Plus. It's a small device that performs a simple task with minimal branding. I like the look, which is timeless in a way many tech products aren't. Not everything needs an expensive LCD panel.

Yet while I could stop here, I ultimately bought this product for its Matter support. Did it deliver?

Connecting to Matter

To connect your phone to the Meter Plus, there's are two requirements. Primarily, you need to also have a SwitchBot hub. The cheapest option is a SwitchBot Hub Mini, which will allow you to connect up to four devices to Matter. I currently have a SwitchBot Hub Mini set up in our bedroom, allowing both the Meter Plus and a motion sensor to be operable using Matter. Alternatively, you can read our review of the SwitchBot Hub 3, which connects up to 30 devices to Matter (though the Hub 3 has its own temperature and humidity sensors built-in). 

You need the SwitchBot app to configure your hub and select which device to expose via Matter. At that point, you're free to ignore the SwitchBot app for anything other than firmware updates if you like. I have the app installed on my Galaxy Z Fold 6.

An information-dense app experience

As I've said, the Meter Plus is a worthwhile product on its own, even without connecting to an app. Yet the app is your go-to destination if you want to observe changes in temperature and humidity over time. Samsung SmartThings shows me changes over the past 24 hours or the last month. 

The SwitchBot app gets more granular, letting you look at data over virtually any increment of time you wish. It also exposes other measurements, such as dew point and vapor-pressure deficit.

The Meter Plus can store over two months' worth of data. That's an advantage over the smaller model, which is limited to one month. If you want more than either offers, you need to back up your data to SwitchBot's cloud. 

The Meter Plus can also serve as a monitor of sorts, alerting you to changes in temperature or humidity. If there's a room in your house that tends to get colder than the rest, you can receive an alert when the temperature drops past a certain point. Or if you have a room where you keep houseplants that are sensitive to changes in either temperature or humidity, you can get notified when either one slips out of the comfortable range. You can set alerts based on each of the five conditions the Meter Plus can measure, so absolute humidity, dew point, and vapor-pressure deficit are fair game as well. 

It's inside the Switchbot app that you can also adjust the conditions you consider comfortable. After all, the default comfort indicator in the top left of the Meter Plus won't always be at the right temperature for everyone, since some people prefer a hotter or colder climate than others. 

A compelling use for the Meter Plus also has little to do with the functionality exposed within the app. Matter-compatibility allows you to integrate the information from the Meter Plus into your automations. We have a Matter-compatible thermostat, and by buying a Meter Plus, we can now trigger our home heating to kick in when the temperature in our bedroom gets too cold. This is a feature Google uses as a reason to upgrade to the Nest Learning Thermostat and various Nest sensors, but using Matter devices like the Meter Plus, you can get the same functionality of the cheaper Nest Thermostat model that costs half as much. This is one reason we recommend the cheaper Nest over the more expensive one for most people. 

Should you buy the SwitchBot Meter Plus?

The SwitchBot Meter Plus is an attractive thermometer that does not make you download an app to get good use it of it. That said, it's hardly the only option. Aqara, Philips Hue, Soniff, and others also offer thermometers that become Matter-compatible through the use of a hub—though, at $18, SwitchBot manages to undercut most of them slightly on price. You can shave a few more dollars off by going with the smaller SwitchBot Meter instead.

Still, some of the best Matter temperature and humidity sensors combine these readings with other features, like motion sensing. 

If you already have a hub from another brand, it's probably best to stick with its temperature or humidity sensor, but if you're just starting out, I've seen little not to like about what SwitchBot is offering here.