Netatmo Smart Weather Station review: Your very own meteorologist

If you’ve ever complained about your favourite TV or radio meteorologist getting the weather wrong, the Netatmo Smart Weather Station might be just what you’re looking for. It allows you to record your own hyperlocal weather data right from inside (and outside) your own home, tracking patterns, getting predictions, and looking back at historical data, too. Sure, it’s not the cheapest product in the world and its target market is pretty niche, but it makes a nice addition to any smart home ecosystem.

If you saw the words “weather station” and immediately pictured big, ugly, hulking pieces of equipments with dials and spinny things all over the place, think again. The Netatmo Smart Weather Station is small, understated, and, dare we say, chic. Both the indoor and outdoor module are made from aluminium, making them blend into most household aesthetics easily.

Installation of the Smart Weather Station is simple. Simply download the Netatmo Weather app, find a spot inside your home to plug in the indoor module, place the included AAA batteries in the outdoor module and place it outside (somewhere covered and not in direct sunlight, if possible), then follow the instructions on the app to complete setup. Once complete, you’ll have your very first temperature, humidity, pressure, CO2 and sound level readings.

Users can also get a quick CO2 reading simply by tapping the top of the indoor module. You’ll then be shown a coloured light indicating the current CO2 levels (green for low, yellow for moderate, red for high). It’s nice to check every now and then to check how well (or poorly) ventilated a room is.

Though you can get instant CO2 readings from the indoor module itself, most of the data recorded by your Netatmo Smart Weather Station is accessed via the Netatmo Weather app. The app’s home screen shows you everything you need to know at a glance, including the current temperature, humidity, pressure, “feels like” temperature, CO2 level, and sound level, with a snapshot of the rest of the week’s weather as well.

Turning your phone on its side allows you to get a more granular view of your weather station’s current and past data, enabling you to observe patterns and cycles.

You can also compare your data to other users from as close as a few streets away to the other side of the world using the Netatmo Weathermap.

So, now that you have all this data, just how accurate is it? To find out, I compared the data from the Netatmo Smart Weather Station’s outdoor module to the data from the nearest Bureau of Meteorology observation station, which is located only about five kilometres from my house. After examining about a week’s worth of data, I found that the readings from both proved to be very similar, with the Netatmo station occasionally overestimating temperature by one or two degrees. As for humidity, Netatmo’s readings were largely quite similar to BOM’s, though occasionally they did differ quite drastically–on a recent rainy day, BOM measured humidity at 90%, while Netatmo measured just 76% at the same time of day.

Weather or not (sorry) the Netatmo Smart Weather Station is a necessary addition to your home is up to you. Yes, I could easily live without it, but there’s a nice peace of mind that comes with knowing about the air quality in my house, and having hyperlocal weather predictions at my fingertips definitely comes in handy. It’s not for everyone, but if you’re set on turning your castle into the ultimate smart home, it’s a nice accessory to add to the collection.