Homey Pro Mini launches with lower price tag, trimmed features

if you have ever seen Getting into Atom’s was great smart home ecosystem, centered around its do-it-all Homey Pro hub, you might be excited to try it out but then turn your nose up at its $399 price tag. Previously, the only other way to get into Homey was with its cloud-based Homey Premium subscription. This requires a monthly fee, doesn’t allow local/private connections, and requires the $69 Homey Bridge if you want a centralized hub for non-Wi-Fi devices.

However, today Athom has launched a new option: Warm and professional mini version. As the name suggests, it is a smaller version of Homey Pro. In exchange for giving up some of the Pro’s features, the Mini’s price is significantly lower: $199, about 50% of the cost of the Homey Pro.

You can see what the Homey Pro Mini looks like in the photos above and below. Read on to learn more about what you’ll get (and won’t get) and when you can snag one for yourself.

Before we talk about what you lose by going with the Mini instead of the standard Pro, let’s talk about what you keep. The processor inside is the same: a 1.5GHz quad-core ARMv8 CPU. This means you should see the same performance as the Homey Pro (very fast). It also supports most of the same connection protocols, including Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Matter and Thread. It accesses the same Homey Pro operating system, which includes the ability to create advanced processes (“process” is Athom’s name for Homey automation). You also get all the insights and energy tracking tools within the operating system, as well as the ability to connect the Mini to one or more Homey Bridges, further extending the hub’s capabilities and functionality.

Interestingly, the Homey Pro Mini even has one distinct advantage over the Homey Pro: it has a built-in Ethernet port. Inexplicably, the Homey Pro doesn’t have this. You’d need to buy a pretty expensive adapter to do this, even a fairly Homey Pro one more More expensive than this Mini model.

Okay, now let’s review what you lose by choosing the Homey Pro Mini over the standard Homey Pro. Notably, you’ll lose Z-Wave, Bluetooth, Infrared, and 433MHz protocols. Thankfully, adding Homey Bridge solves this problem (except for 433MHz in the US, which is dictated by national regulations rather than the technology itself). That means if you want a Mini and all these deals, you’ll spend $268, which is still well below the Homey Pro’s $399 price tag.

You also lose the opportunity to have an unlimited number of apps. You can install any number of apps on the Homey Pro, but the Mini only supports 20 apps. This is probably due to two factors, the first is that Athom wants to give people a good reason to market the Homey Pro, and the second is that the Homey Pro Mini only has 1GB of RAM, which is 50% less than what you get. Pro. Athom tells us that the average Homey Pro user has 14 apps installed (I only have 13 installed), so this isn’t as big of a limitation as it might seem at first glance.

Finally, you also lose RGB lighting. This may not seem like a big deal, but the Homey Pro’s RGB lights are very useful. For example, you can have the Flow trigger light turn red if there’s a problem with a connected device, or green if the air quality is good today. It’s disappointing to miss this.

Overall, the Homey Pro Mini seems to be a great entry point into the Homey ecosystem. Sure, it lacks the bells and whistles of the Homey Pro, but most people reading this probably don’t have a smart home sophisticated enough to need all the features it offers. If you don’t want a monthly subscription and want a completely local/private smart home, but don’t want to spend a fortune, the Homey Pro Mini is worth a look. Hopefully we’ll be able to review the Mini soon!

Homey Pro Mini is now available for pre-order at: Warm website. Shipments will begin in April 2025 in the United States and Canada, and availability in Europe has not yet been announced.