Disclosure: I bought this a few years ago from writing of this review. Amazing product! This has been an essential part of my smart home. In the box, they provided screws, wire nuts, instructions, the switch, pico remote, pico remote bracket, and the hub. The instructions were easy to understand for those who may be nervous about electrical, really went into detail about what to do. I used this device as a replacement for a 3-way switch. The installation was fairly simple for that setup. The dimmer switch has two black wires and a green wire, one black wire gets wired to the incoming power and the other wire is connected to the two traveler wires, and ground to ground. On the other side, all three wires are connected together with a wire nut. Screw in the device and the bracket to the wall, the pico remote slides onto the bracket easily. These switches were both part of a two gang box (light and fan), and the faceplate for it fit perfectly over it. The overall look is nice, the dimmer switch has a set up small green lights for the dimmer level... not to noticeable with the light on. One thing I noticed off the bat was that the pico remote has an additional button on it for setting the brightness to 50%, the dimmer switch does not have that button. Setup was simple too. Connected the hub to power and ethernet, downloaded the app, created an account, and it looked for the hub instantly. Found the hub and then started looking for devices. The hub found the dimmer and the pico remote quickly and I had them added to my account. I assigned the room they were in and that was it for setup. I went a step further and linked Lutron to my google home account for voice control. Eventually, I moved to Home Assistant with this Lutron (will connect with Lutron integration or Homekit). As stated before, I bought these a few years back. To this day, they are still functioning the same as when I first installed them. I haven't noticed any issues with them since buying. I'd say these are very durable for a home. I did purchase a few more to put around the house and setup more automations with them. Very happy with Lutron! Read more
We were renovating our home office in our attic and as part of it had to update our electrical. I researched tons of smart home products, and decided against anything that required special bulbs (Hue) and anything that wasn't Homekit compatible. Why Homekit? Because the data isn't stored on the cloud, isn't sold, and must be encrypted per Apple standards. Using the Homekit app on our phone is a nice perk, but 99% of the time we use the Lutron app. The switches once installed and linked to the hub are incredibly easy to use as just normal dimmers with decent sized buttons so even grandma is happy. Setting preset dim levels is easy too, so most of the time it's a single touch on, single touch off - already better than 99% of non-smart dimmer switches out there. Pricey - yes - but you get what you pay for. We bought this starter set to get the hub, and then separate switches. My electrician used standard GFI wall plates, and the Lutrons require about the same installation space as a traditional dimmer switch - not overly deep, no special install. The hub is easy - we have it downstairs with our router and it feeds all of the switches in the house plus anything else we want (I'm considering the compatible shades for some of the rooms with a lot of sunlight). It's quite small - a single Ethernet cable to the back of our router, and a small plug into the outlet. I have a dumb email account I never use as our Lutron account - just as I do for our TV and 99% of other smart products (there are even sites that give you a 10 minute email account that is purged afterward - for free). The glitch - some of the "open box" orders I placed to Amazon were incomplete. Some had defective switches with corroded wires. Because this was part of a renovation, I didn't find these problems until after the 30 day return window, so I had to call Lutron's support, and they arranged replacements under the 5 year warranty. Also some switches worked, but despite system resets and Lutron's excellent technical support (call as a "pro"), they could not connect to the hub despite sitting next to other working switches. The app is very good. Setup via the app is easy. There's one kill switch at the top of the app screen that will turn off all Lutron-connected devices in that room at once - very handy when my kids leave lights on. Once the switch is connected to the app, it's automatically in Homekit. If you are using low-voltage lights (many spot lights are ELV), Lutron makes a special ELV dimmer that you have to use if the lights are in total < 10w. We don't use the remote since it is connected to only one switch and we have many - but I'm adding Lutron Casetas to other rooms that need a three-pole (two light switch) connection - so you use a standard Caseta and the Pico remote with a wall mount (comes with) and a magnetic cover (extra). Super-easy. I waited 4 months to post this review to see how the system would respond to wifi outages, power outages, lightning storms, etc. and it's been fine. When wifi is out, the switches work as normal dimmers. When it comes back on, nothing needs to be reset (which is more than I can say for other systems I've tried like Wemo). Lutron Casetas are expensive, reliable, relatively easy (watch the open boxes and ELV fixtures), and the LIVE tech support is very helpful. Each switch contains info and diagrams for installation and connecting to the hub. I wish they carried more Pro products because these are excellent. Read more
I've been eyeing this whole Lutron Caseta for quite a long time now. Replacing my X10 system from 30+ years ago. But to do the whole house will get quite expensive. I prefer this over individual smart bulbs, as that can get REALLY expensive, especially when replacing many bulbs. This was a breeze to connect to the hub, to Alexa, to my iPad and Android, and to integrate with the modules and Pico remotes. I wish I hopped on board earlier. Amazon had a little sale on these, so I went full in. By the end of the day my entire home was set up with multiple switches, modules, the hub and Picos. The switches and modules look very sleek and modern, without standing out like they are trying to win a design award. Just a nice basic modern look. Honestly, some of the other brands are very nice looking, but not in a classic way, much more like a passing fad. I can't attest to the operability of the other brands, since this Lutron set up worked out of the box. Also, it was the only one I found that worked on older homes with out the third wire. My home was built in 1893, the elctrical probably is from the 1950's or earlier. Bam! It worked. Oh, and YES, you can brighten from a "dead off" position without having to go first to full brightness as on some brands. The ONLY issue: With the wall switches, it will not remember the last brightness setting. (Pico's will, with a pre-programmed dim/bright level - center round button). On either, you can brighten up from zero as I said. Read more
