Sensibo Sky review – turn your air conditioner into a smart device

A good smart product is one that can add control and convenience to your life. Sensibo Sky is one of those products and it makes it possible to control your air conditioner from anywhere at any time.

Sensibo is a small device that can be linked to your home network and turn your existing air-conditioning set up into a smart system that can be controlled using an app.

Whether you’ve got a split air conditioner, a mobile air-conditioner or ducted air-conditioning, Sensibo will now let you take complete control as well as monitor and automate the process and even help you save energy.

The device is compatible with any air-conditioner that comes with an infrared remote control.

And it just takes minutes to set up.

It is a small unit, less than the size of a deck of cards and it can be mounted in view of the air conditioner using the two-sided tape on the back.

But it does need power so you need to have it near a plug as well.

At first we thought the device had a built-in rechargeable battery because we’d seen standalone images of the sensor.

But we soon realised there was no internal battery and it needed a constant power supply.

For our review, we linked the Sensibo to our LG ducted air conditioner. It has a traditional control plate with a LCD screen to indicate the temperature and the ability to turn the temperature up and down and switch between cooling and heating.

The set up required us to plug in the Sensibo unit to power and link it to our wi-fi network.

Then we had to simply aim our infrared remote control at the top half of the Sensibo and press the remote’s on button so it could learn the available commands.

Our control pad is on the second level of our house and the remote (which was stored in a bracket under out stairs) wouldn’t work from downstairs.

By the time we were in range with the remote we were virtually only a couple of metres away from the panel.

But now with the Sensibo I can turn on the AC from anywhere in my home and also adjust the temperature.

Our Sensibo is positioned on the opposite wall to the air-conditioner control panel –  which means they are about 7m apart.

The device is basically an IR (infrared) blaster that sends the same signal the original remote would to get things happening.

And I can also switch it on when I’m not even home – a handy feature on a hot day when you want to come home to a cool house.

Or if you want to come home to a warm one in winter.

Users can also set up a location based trigger for their air conditioner to turn on or off.

Sensibo can be set up to automatically turn on your air conditioner when you arrive and also turn it off when the last person leaves the house.

You also have unlimited seven days scheduling so you can set certain times of the day for your air-conditioner to be running and when it needs to be switched off.

And yes you can also control Sensibo with Google Home and Amazon Alexa so your air conditioner can switch on and off with your voice.

One of the only things we didn’t like about the product was the fact we couldn’t see if someone had turned the air conditioner on manually.

During our review period someone had turned on the AC at the switch but it didn’t register on the Sensibo app that it was actually on.

So clicking on with the app kept it on and then when we had to hit the off switch on the app to turn the system off.

But not knowing the status of the system was the only downside. Apart from this minor issue we couldn’t fault it.

Sensibo is available now and is priced at $159.

VERDICT

Sensibo Sky does a great job at turning a regular device like an air conditioner into a smart device to open it up and make you easier and more convenient to use.

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