Aqara Wall Outlet H2 UK Review

Design and installation

• Spacer gives more room if required
• Two sockets and one USB-C
• Standard wiring

As wall outlets go, the H2 is about as good-looking as it gets. It is clean, modern, and doesn’t scream smart home gadget.

Each socket has a subtle LED-lit button above it, making it easy to see and control what is on or off.

Installation is straightforward if you are comfortable swapping a socket. The first thing to do, obviously, is to turn the power off at the mains.

You simply wire it up like a standard UK double outlet, and you are done. It took me about 15 minutes all in and that was longer than it might be for you as, annoyingly, I chose a socket that also had a couple of others spurred from it; so I was dealing with 9 wires rather than just 3 – but the additional Earth port came in handy there.

Aqara includes a spacer in the box, which is handy if you are dealing with a shallow back box behind your existing socket.

I’d say my back box was somewhere in the middle and I could have probably got away with no spacer, if it wasn’t for all the extra wires I had to squash in.

Once installed, it still works as a normal dumb outlet. Anyone in the house can press the physical buttons to turn power on or off, without needing to understand apps, automations, or Matter.

Features and performance

• Thread or Zigbee
• Buttons can trigger scenes

Setup is very much classic Aqara, which is to say pretty painless. You power it up, open the Aqara Home app, and it should be immediately recognised as a new device ready to be added. 

From there, you get a choice that defines how this outlet behaves.

Out of the box, the H2 ships in Thread mode. You can add it directly to a Matter ecosystem, such as Apple Home, Google Home, or Alexa using any compatible Matter controller, or bring it into Aqara Home if you have a Thread-capable Aqara hub such as the M3 or the M200. 

Thread mode keeps things simple and also turns the outlet into a Thread router, helping extend your Thread mesh rather than just sitting on the edge of it.

If you want the full feature set, Zigbee is the way to go. Switching protocols takes about five minutes and is the same process you would use if you ever decide to change again later. 

Zigbee requires an Aqara Zigbee 3.0 hub, but it unlocks child lock, custom button actions, LED indicator settings, maximum power limits, and individual power monitoring per socket. 

You still get Matter compatibility via an Aqara Matter bridge, so you are not locked into Aqara’s ecosystem. One word of warning though, when I bridged to HomeKit and Home Assistant it only exposed the two sockets as smart in those systems, not the USB-C port.

Whichever protocol you opt for, each socket can be controlled independently, both in the app and using the physical buttons. 

The USB-C port is also smart and independently controllable (albeit with the Matter Zigbee bridging caveat I mentioned), which is something many smart outlets and power strips get wrong by leaving USB ports permanently live.

Button behaviour can be kept simple or made more interesting. In single-press mode, the buttons just turn power on or off. 

Switch to multi-function mode though and things get more playful. A single press controls the socket as normal, while you can set a  double-press or long-press to trigger scenes or automations.

Turning a wall socket into a smart button is slightly odd on paper, but in practice it works. You could press and hold to trigger your morning kitchen routine, for example, and suddenly it makes sense.

The LED indicators are customisable too. You can turn them off completely, use them as a locator light, or, in Zigbee mode, even assign different colours for different states. It is a small thing, but it helps the outlet blend into different rooms and use cases.

Safety features are baked in, with child lock disabling the physical buttons while retaining full app and voice control, plus built-in overheat and overload protection that cuts power automatically if something goes wrong.

Power monitoring is included, but don’t expect anything too in-depth. In Zigbee mode, you get per-socket monitoring with daily, weekly, and monthly consumption views; albeit with the USB-C power data lumped in with socket-1. In Thread or Matter mode, monitoring is combined across both sockets.

The data is useful for spotting patterns and building basic automations, like cutting power once a device finishes charging or sending a notification when the washing machine is done. It is not as detailed or granular as something like Eve Energy, but for a built-in wall outlet, it does the job without fuss.

The built-in USB-C port is one of the H2’s standout features. The single USB-C version I tested delivers up to 20W fast charging, which is plenty for phones, tablets, and accessories, and Aqara claims 30 to 50% charge in around 30 minutes for recent iPhones.

There is also a dual USB-C version of the H2. This model delivers 30W when using a single port, or 15W per port when both are in use.

The key thing is that the USB-C output is smart, controllable in the app, and can be included in automations, rather than being a permanently powered afterthought.

Should you buy it?