Moodo, a smart home aroma diffuser, sounds like a good idea, and while it does offer pleasant aromas for your home or office, its set-up is a pain in the patootie.
First some background: the new white Moodo model looks good and captures the holiday spirit with its winter scent family. All are offered in a $159 bundle, which is pricey. However, Moodo is offering 40% off its smart home aroma diffuser and one scent family through Dec. 25. If you order by Dec. 19, the Moodo will arrive on time to be gifted on Christmas Day.
Tthe Moodo connects to your WiFi network and can be controlled by pressing the controls on the device, via an app, or even by a smart home assistant such as Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, or IFTT or Siri.
You start the setup process by downloading the app (available for iOS and Android), then putting it in pairing mode by pressing the top left fan button and the plus button until the power button starts blinking. After that, the app guides you through the rest of the process. In theory.
I had to try repeatedly before I could implement a Moodo Wi-Fi network. Sometimes the device refused to reset, preventing me from starting over from scratch.
What’s more, the Moodo device is compatible with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi only. And while it can connect with Wi-Fi, there’s a hardware limitation on credentials length; the Wi-Fi name and password are limited to 22 characters length each.
The set-up process involves directly connecting to the Moodo’s own Wi-Fi network in your phone settings before manually entering your home Wi-Fi network name and password.
The Moodo network you initially connect to has a hardcoded password of 12345678. It’s easily searchable on the company’s website, in the product manual, and in the app itself. However, as noted by PCMag using a hardcoded password that’s universal to all devices doesn’t follow digital security best practices and could introduce a weak spot in your home network.
What I eventually did was simply use the Moodo manually, implementing fragrances by pressing the buttons on the device. That worked fine, but kinda defeats the whole “smart” device approach. That said, the winter scents are pleasant and include (with Moodo’s descriptions):
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Fireplace: “Hints of chestnuts, leather and burning firewood combine to deliver the relaxing ambiance of warmth from the fireplace on a cold night.”
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Snow Angels: “Crisp mountain air emphasized by the indescribable smell of snow falling.”
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Christmas Cookies: “Christmas morning comes to life with the delicious scents of orange peel, cinnamon bark, gingerbread and vanilla.”
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Christmas Tree: “The quintessential Christmas scent comes together with the combination of fir needle oil and balsam absolute with cedar tree oil. Take a journey to a Canadian forest or give life to your artificial Christmas tree with this capsule.”
If you want a Moodo, it does have a built-in battery that allows you to use it without a power cord. It will run for about four hours with the fans blowing — and, yes, the Moodo does make a bit of noise as its fans push aromas into the air.
I can understand the fan noise. However, with its buggy app and complicated (or, in my case, unsuccessfully set-up process, the aroma dispenser falls into my “nice idea that didn’t work” category.
Apple World Today Rating (out of 5 stars): ★★1/2
