Thermacell LIV 2.0 Review: Does This Smart Mosquito Repellent System Work?

Four years ago, I moved back to Texas from California. After just two weeks, I realized I needed to do something about the mosquitoes. In the 25 years since I left, they seemed to have gotten bigger, smarter, and thirstier. Within days, my skin was covered in itchy bites.

I immediately set out to solve the problem. Before long, I was paying a local company to send someone to my house every three weeks with a backpack sprayer. The service cost four figures a year and was highly effective at repelling insects—but only for 48 to 72 hours after each treatment. Once the spray wore off, the mosquitoes returned with a bloodthirsty vengeance.

It took me two years to find a better solution, which I reviewed in detail for WIRED. Thermacell is a leader in mosquito control, and its LIV smart mosquito repellent system is the company’s top-of-the-line product. Thermacell makes several small repellents for personal use, but LIV is designed to protect a larger outdoor area semi-permanently. You can turn it on when you need it and shut it off when you’re safely indoors.

Two years after that review, Thermacell has upgraded most of the LIV components—the cabling is the only part that remains unchanged—and renamed the system LIV 2.0. The company recently sent me the new hardware so I could test whether, and how much, the technology had improved.

Thermacell LIV 2.0: How the mosquito repellent system works

Conceptually, LIV 2.0 doesn’t introduce any major changes. The system’s brain is one or more Wi-Fi-connected control hubs. Each hub plugs into a wall outlet and connects by cable to a repellent device. The devices release an insecticide and can be arranged in a daisy chain around the area you want to protect.

The repellents can be placed up to 20 feet apart. Each one contains a replaceable vial of metofluthrin, a chemical mosquitoes dislike. Keep in mind that the repellents generally repel mosquitoes rather than kill them.

For the original LIV installation, I used two hubs and five repellers to ring the pool. This year, I added a sixth repeller to reinforce a corner where we believed mosquitoes were entering through gaps in the screen fence.