A fresh picture and video have emerged from a fresh EU-designed Zigbee-based intelligent plug. We have what appears to be a developer in the very brief video clip below, recording a test on his / her phone, turning on an EU-style intelligent plug named after' Zigbee' in brackets with Chinese characters. You can also see that the Mi Home app has the capacity to monitor the use of electricity.

The video also demonstrates that it is being tested in the Mi Home (Xiaomi Home) app, so we can glean from this the following; if this is based on Zigbee, which it appears to be, then it would have to go through a hub–most probably the Aqara hub. As it is still being tested, it is likely that when it is lastly published it will be fitted to operate with ZigBee 3.0, which would prevent it from working with the present Mi Gateways. This would also show a strong probability that the intelligent plug would also be exposed to HomeKit, given that HomeKit is also subjected to the US Aqara intelligent plug, along with the Taiwan Mi Smart plug, based in Zigbee, which is fundamentally the same product as the US model.

Mijia recently released its own smart plug that closely resembles the current Ikea Smart plug, although it's purely wifi-based in the case of this plug, so it doesn't need the hub and is not compatible with HomeKit, only working with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. This fresh Aqara Zigbee plug also resembles the EU intelligent device Eve uses for communication using Bluetooth. So, apart from the lower form factor, together with the reputation of ZigBee being more stable and quicker (usually) than either wifi or bluetooth, and having the capacity to generate a mesh network, this is certainly a superior alternative if you're on the EU market for a intelligent plug.

We don't have any other info on this device at the moment, so no details of how strong it is, for instance, and of course there is no guarantee of HomeKit assistance, however probable it may be, so we will post an update if we have more data to report.