I recently had to retire my old Aqara G3 after it stopped working due to water damage. It had served me really well, especially with facial recognition-based automations in HomeKit (via Matter). One of my key automations was: “If my face is recognized, open the gate when I’m home.” With the G3, that setup worked perfectly and reliably for over a year.
Since the G3 was no longer usable, I replaced it with the G5 Pro, expecting at least the same level of performance—or ideally better. Unfortunately, the facial recognition on the G5 Pro has been really disappointing.
Here’s what I’ve tried so far:
• Installed it in the exact same physical location where the G3 used to be.
• Added 10 different face profiles of myself under the facial recognition settings.
• Set recognition sensitivity to High.
• Set recognition frequency to Always.
Despite this, the G5 Pro failed to recognize my face even once—even after standing in front of it for over 5 minutes, at various angles and lighting conditions. It just doesn’t seem to pick up faces as reliably as the G3 did.
This has effectively broken some of my most-used HomeKit automations, which now no longer trigger. It’s frustrating because I didn’t change my setup, other than upgrading the hardware.
Is anyone else facing similar issues with the G5 Pro’s facial recognition?
Has anyone had luck improving its performance—maybe through firmware updates or other workarounds? Or is this a known regression from the G3?
Would love to hear other users’ experiences before I consider switching back or exploring other options.
