Aqara Door and Window Sensor P2, Matter Over Thread, Requires Thread Border Router, Contact Sensor with Remote Alarm and Local Automation, Supports Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa

I have not had any of the connectivity issues or reliability issues that some reviewers have had with this product. To date I have purchased 7 of these contact sensors, and they have all been rock solid, in fact theyve been some of the most reliable products in my smart home. If that changes I'll edit this review with an update. They all paired to Home Assistant using Matter quickly and without issue...except for one. One was actually giving me a decent amount of trouble with pairing. I ended up temporarily turning off my Wifi's 5Ghz network, factory resetting multiple times, and retrying multiple times, but it did eventually work, and that sensor has not given me any trouble since. The sensors are also pretty fast to update, and while it's a tad bulky for a contact sensor, the trade-off is that i've gotten great battery life out of them so far. I have no complaints

These are wonderful, but you have to do a few things if you're having issues. I tried connecting one and it was not working at all. So I tried to set up another and the same thing happened. Since both were not working I figured it was something with my network. Turns out my mesh router (Google Nest Wifi Pro) was conflicting with my router (whatever ATT gave me). The ATT router had its WiFi signals enabled for 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz so when the set up was happening, it was picking up both WiFi connections from my phone. I disabled the signals from the ATT router, and they still weren't working, but I wanted to try a third just in case, and it magically connected easily. Since that started working, I wanted to troubleshoot the other two that were still having issues. I figured hat during the setup, the devices remembered the settings so I needed a way to reset them and start fresh. I saw a video from their YouTube account that you can factory reset if you press the button 10 times. Once I did that, both connected easily. I bought 13 of these and never had an issue setting up the other 11 after the network issue / factory reset took place. They are easy to set up and don't get in the way. Finally I used the extra magnets that came with each device on my fridge, lol.

Worked for 10 minutes and then stopped responding. The adhesive was good though. Stayed up and didn't tear up the paint when I removed it the same day. For a door sensor, at least some reliability is required for security so I will look for a better product.

EDIT: although I did not request it, the seller did see this review and offer to refund the cost of the malfunctioning sensors, which I appreciate. I’m a little torn at this point - on the one hand, two of five are not working, which seems like a high failure rate, but one sample isn’t enough data to make that judgement. Could just be bad luck. Also, obviously they still don’t update via HomeKit, which I consider a flaw. However, the description does disclose that a hub is required, and the ones that do work are still working great. With that in mind, assuming someone has or is willing to buy a hub, and assuming the 66% failure rate is a fluke (or could be fixed with an update), these would be the best door and window sensors I’ve used so far. So I’m going to bump this to 4 stars, just make sure you understand the limitations and requirements to make them work at a 4 star level. First, the good - these are pretty nice, reasonably economical door and window sensors. Not the cheapest, not the most expensive. While a bit large and clunky, they're still attractive reasonably unobtrusive. Another nice feature is the distance from the sensor to the magnet that registers as "closed" is quite long compared to many sensors. That's a big deal because if you have trim around your doors, for example, you can mount the sensor on the trim and the magnet on the door and it will still work. With other brands, it simply won't work at all, or they include spacers you have to stack up until they are close enough in an ugly, kinda hack-ey way. Aqara's way is better. They also pair pretty easily, report excellent signal no matter how far from a Thread router they are in my (admittedly not very large) house, and the ones that work properly have worked every single time without a single failure or "no response" issue. I'm quite happy with their performance. Now, the not so good. I bought five of them. I am using Apple Home (HomeKit) via Matter over Thread. Three of them work great. Two of them drain the battery in under two weeks. Replacing the batteries, removing then re-adding to Home, factory resetting then re-adding to Home, and even moving them right next to the active hub/thread border router (an AppleTV 4K) doesn't fix them. Their signal strength reports excellent. They are connected to only one thread network, only one Thread router (just like the working ones, some of which are further from the router), it's winter here so they're not even being cycled. They just suck the battery dry. So there's one more thing I could try - a firmware update. And that's a problem. There is newer firmware available, but you cannot update the firmware via HomeKit. Since I have no Aqara hub I cannot update them. This is admittedly my fault. If you read the description carefully, it says an Aqara Matter Controller/Thread Border Router is required. However, since my other thread/matter devices all update fine through HomeKit, I just assumed these would too. I thought it was part of the Matter standard. No hub is one of the big selling points of Matter over Thread devices. I figured the hub requirement was just for additional features or something I didn't care about, like renaming the device or something. But apparently while it is possible to make updates available in Matter/HomeKit, it is not required to meet the standard. I need to be able to install updates. As these work on firmware 1.0.1.1, in my setup, I cannot. Since I can find no indication on the Aqara web site or any other source indicating that's a known fix for this battery drain issue, it's a roll of the dice to buy a device that serves no other purpose for me. I also started to sign up for an Aqara account to get support through that avenue, but when it asked for my birthday that was it for me. Maybe they would replace it under warranty, but then I'd have 5 devices I can't update without buying more hardware instead of three. Not sure that's even worth it. I gave up. I'm going to cut my losses. If you already have an Aqara hub (many of their cams are also hubs I think) or are willing to buy one, or if you don't mind the return hassle, or if my 66% failure rate isn't typical, or if you just don't care if you can update the firmware, these may be great for you. As I said, the ones that are working do work very well. Perhaps, if it is just firmware, by the time you read this they may be shipping with an update and work fine (or maybe even with updates enabled?) via HomeKit alone without the hub. If so, these are probably worth trying. For me, I think I'll just chalk it up to a learning experience and move on. I've already tossed the packaging (stupid of me), so I won't bother trying to return them to Amazon. Plus, they may not be defective. They may just need an update that I'm not willing to do. I'm just going to toss the bad ones, plan to phase out the others eventually. There are plenty of door and window sensors that work and can be update via HomeKit so this brand will probably be pretty low on my list for any home automation devices in the future. It's too bad, because the G100 camera is an absolute monster value that is just about impossible to beat, and requires no hub to work. If you need a cam (indoors or out!) you may still want to check it out. But the inconsistency between these two products, even though partially my fault for misinterpreting the hub requirement, gives me lingering doubts that will be difficult for me to overlook. So let's call it three stars - one added for every one that works and works well, and one subtracted for every one that doesn't.

I needed to replace a door and window sensor and thought I'd give this one a try, since it's Matter over Thread. While the sensor is a little bigger than I'd like, it sits high up on a door and doesn't stick out much. I forget it's there now. I added the sensor directly to HomeAssistant (because I have HA set up in my Thread network already) and it added quickly without any hiccups, so it's definitely possible. I did have to replace the battery it came with, since I think the battery had drained while sitting in the box, but that wasn't a big deal. The sensor works great and I would definitely buy another one. Whenever possible I prefer Matter over Thread or Z-Wave devices for use in Homekit to keep 2.4GHz interference down and to keep IoT devices off my wi-fi network, taking up IP addresses. This one was a good buy and I recommend it IF you already have a thread border router. If you don't use Home Assistant and just use HomeKit, I still recommend it because I was able to pair it with HomeKit and it worked flawlessly. I have an AppleTV 4k and a few HomePod minis as border routers, so your mileage may vary.

As others have noted the door sensor is kind of large but it's not much bigger than the Nest detector sensors that were discontinued which is what I'm replacing. The first one I bought was DOA. I could not get it pair at all. Fortunately, I bought two. I was hesitant to open the second one, but it worked w/o much incident the first time and placed on my bedroom window and returned the first. For the most part it worked great but periodically it would seem to go offline and had to be reset but eventually seem to stabilize. It might go offline for 30 seconds to a minute or so but it would recover w/o intervention but about a month ago I've started to see a lot of connectivity drops for extended amounts of time. May just need to reset some something but the sensor will be offline for 20 minutes or more at time repeatably. The third one I bought I placed the main unit on the trim which sites about .25 in above the door in a similar manner to my nest detector. This was big mistake as that .25 in elevation prevented the door from being seen as closed. The website says that with the M3 hub I would be able to adjust the sensitivity, but that feature is currently MIA. I attempted to swap the main unit and the accessory (accessor on trim and main unit on door) which would have worked except that the adhesive is not reusable, and it took some paint with it.

Easy to set up works great with all my devices my only problem is the battery does within a week or so is that normal ?

I was excited about this sensor as I had heard a lot of great reviews about it. There are a couple of issues I have noticed though, after having used it for a few months. Firstly, I am not sure but I think it get's affected by high humidity. The sensors stopped working within 2 months of receiving and installing. I thought it would be battery issue but it lasts for over a year for others. So I just opened it, took the battery out and put the same one in, and it started working. Again last week, after around 2 months or so, it stopped working, same issue same fix. I am noticing this could probably be happening around the time when humidity is very high (as my Denon receiver & PS4 also go bonkers during monsoons here). Has anyone else been facing this? Another minor issue that I noticed was, this won't connect in the Aqara app unless you have a separate Aqara Matter hub. As I luckily had an Apple TV, I could connect it with the HomeKit app. But, I am still restricted as I cannot use it to set direct automations and scenes in the Aqara app with the other products. As some reviews had said, probably the previous version would have been a better choice, as it's a bit smaller in size, is Zigbee control, and hence can connect in the Aqara app too. The pros - Quick and almost instant no-lag response with HomeKit. I get a notification immediately when my door opens or closes, both on my phone and on my watch.