Lutron Caseta Wireless Smart Lighting -FULL REVIEW- & Fan Control with App Comparison

this is a full review of the Lutron cassette a dimming system I'm going to talk about what the system is and how to use it pros and cons versus other smart lighting options I'll do some comparison shopping for lights and fan control a quick unboxing troubleshooting with tips and tricks the Lutron app Amazon's app home kit some automation let's see if Lutron is right for you [Music] first off let's talk about what these are these are smart dimmer controls for either your lights or to operate a fan they work perfectly fine without a hub but you can automate them to become smart with a hub connected to your network you can buy any portion of the caseta wireless system on Amazon I've included links in the description these are affiliate links I get a small commission if you buy them if you use the links it doesn't cost you anything extra but it helps support the channel and if you end up finding this video helpful please subscribe so if you're just starting out and you want to try to do the automation I would get a package that includes a Pico remote here a switch or a dimmer to install in the wall and it includes the hub so you can make your switch smart and automate it if you already have a cassette a wireless hub you may just want to buy an extra switch keep in mind if you have multiple switches going to the same fixture you'll want to get this package it includes the mounting plate for the pico remote this package comes in a nice box you get the wall plate with the switch and the pico remote I have other videos that go over the full installation but for this 3-way you just put the Pico remote wall plate right into the wall on the back of the Pico remote you slip out the adhesive plate and then you slide the Pico remote right into the installation plate on the wall you can use whatever wall plate you want on front of it here I use a screw loose wall plate obviously I need two parts so I had to buy that separately but that just snaps on from the Pico remote just looks like a regular dimmer with a favorite button now I'm gonna list some of the pros and cons that the entire cassette a wireless system for you to decide if it's right for you the biggest Pro with the system is when you have multiple light bulbs per light switch for example in my dining room I have one chandelier controlled by one switch but I have five lightbulbs now I could put five smart bulbs in each one of those spots but guess how much money that's gonna cost me so instead for about the same cost as one top-of-the-line smart bulb I could instead buy one dimmer switch and control the whole chandelier the car - this is that you won't get the pretty colors these are not colored bulbs if you just want lighting this is a great way to go if you want the fancy colored scenes then you'll have to buy the individual bulbs or look at other options the other consideration you'll want to make is that only certain LEDs are fully compatible with the Lutron system they have a website - where you can search by the model number of your dimmer and find the bulbs that fit or you can search by the bulbs that you have and find a dimmer that's compatible with that worst-case scenario is you get the dimmer and it doesn't work perfectly and so you have to buy different bulbs the nice thing is that the bulbs are not nearly as expensive as the smart bulbs and there are a lot of options for different styles of light bulb that would work I actually didn't know this when I bought these Lutron well the first switch that I bought the brand of light seemed to work perfectly but when I installed it in other areas I noticed that the brand that I had the most light bulbs of was not on the compatibility list but I found a few tricks as a workaround more on that later ok quick recap on the pros and cons if you don't care for the colored lights the dimmer is a lot cheaper than the individual smart bulbs but the con is if you don't already have compatible dimmable light bulbs you'll have to get some the pro being that these are a lot cheaper than smart bulbs the second biggest Pro with having a smart dimmer is probably the biggest con with having a dumb switch in a smart bulb because really if you have smart bulbs in your house they're controlled by dumb switches so you're trusting and hoping and relying and wishing upon a star that nobody in the family will come along and ah there goes the smarts out of my smart bulb because it has no power so these companies have come out with these switch cards so it's like hey you can't use your switch anymore you have to control your smart lights with your phone or your smart hub kind of dumb right so these switches the smarts are actually in the switch which is where the power source is you control it with the switch or the smart phone or your smart hub so the other question is what happens when the internet goes down can you still control your lights yes with other smart bulbs not so much so that's a big Pro with the dimmers is that you can still control your lights from the switches including dimming them even if the internet isn't working now the smart portion of the lights doesn't work without the Internet if your networks down there's no way for your phone to talk to your lights so that's the same as the smart bulbs but at least you'll have control over your lights from the switches now speaking of the Internet one of the reasons I chose setup I Lutron is because of the wide compatibility they have with other devices it works with Amazon Google home kit you can also do thermostats Honeywell ecobee others Sonos audio shades and fans Serena hunter smart things if this then that stringify all these other ones really if I'm installing something into the wall I want it to be compatible with the most possible things I can in my opinion there are three industry leaders for voice recognition for home automation and those are Amazon Google and homekit I think the best way to future-proof your home automation is to make sure it works at least with these top three controllers okay let's talk about fans particularly about turning a dumb fan into a smart fan if you look for wireless smart fans online there are a few options but not a whole Lutron's obviously they're because they're dominant in the market there's other options take a look at this one this one you have to install this unit inside the top of your fans you have to take your fan down install the unit I mean it gives you a remote control which is nice but look what it's compatible okay so it's compatible with google amazon play an app store like oh it means like app store I have to download your app and I can not only control my fan if I go to your app the manufacturer app problem but not compatible with home kit okay let's look at another here is one by GE smart fan control it says it looks like it is a switch looks like you replace your switch and then it says it works on any device so you get one of two options and let's see what is it compatible with it's compatible with Amazon Google in fact there are a lot of things here that it is compatible with smart things ring alarm wink it seems like you if you're in the z-wave ecosystem this is your only option but what does it not include homekit ok one more ok let's look at this fan by hunter modern design it works with Google Amazon and home cat so that's a big plus looks really nice nice modern look we tried one of these fans from Hunter we actually installed it got it all working it worked fine they had the remote with it which was you know good I don't really care for an extra separate dumb-looking remote I only have one remote I can never add a second remote or anything and you know when we used the remote it made this super annoying beep any time we turned on the light from the remote or turned on the fan or change the fan speed it this beep was so annoying and we just had to send it back look at the reviews on this I mean not great reviews good not great Wi-Fi functionality didn't work defective anyway if you really want a new fan a new looking fan and you want to spend 300 bucks this is a good option but for everybody else I'd sake Isetta is the way to go ok I got a little sidetracked with that but I just wanted to show you some comparisons if you're looking at other options okay here's the unboxing I opened the fan control ever whatever it's an unboxing nobody nobody cares just show me what's inside just skip to what's inside it includes your instructions there nobody cares about those extra crab from Gazeta whatever whatever okay it includes the wire nuts for you the screws to put the switch in and the wiring I will go in a more detailed of how to wire it in a different video you do need a neutral wire for this installation so check out my other installation instructions for that magic so actually turned my dumb fan smart giving it a control for the fan and a separate control for the dimmable lights so Lutron arguably has the best most versatile smart fan control on the market alright our cons list is rather short so let's identify some cons the equal things l1 con I suppose is that you have to install the things it's not quite plug-and-play you have to use a screwdriver and turn off the power and wire it into your house but it's not so complicated that you can't do it if you have absolutely no idea no clue how power works then yeah definitely good an electrician to install it but really anybody could do this okay not everything is perfect when you're trying to use something digital to control power specifically with regard to lighting and dimming you'll notice as I slowly bring up the power one click at a time most of the visible light range is in the bottom third or the bottom half of the dimming range when LEDs first came out they had a real difficulty at least in the stagecraft arena when they were first developing these because the lower end of the light spectrum is not necessarily a one-to-one ratio meaning 10% of power isn't necessarily 10% of the lights that come out of the light bulb so for professional LED lights they actually developed a mathematical equation to determine what percentage of power equals what percentage of lights so it's actually equivalent it doesn't appear like Lutron has done this now they have created a protocol for adjusting the dimming range so for instance they say if you're noticing a flicker or if your lights don't turn all the way off then you can do this procedure to reset the dimming range I will leave that link in the description the caveat is that you should use compatible light bulbs in my example there I was not using compatible light bulbs and it still worked so really the problem is just a matter of adaptation listen to my example here so she actually did turn my lights to 20% she did turn him to 30% and then I tried 25% and that's where that comes in so it seems like my range is starting at 20% until I adjust my dimmer so we'll add that as a con the dimming range needs adjustment between the different light fixtures okay now for that Trickett that I promised earlier so this is in the bathroom I turned the light all the way off on the dimmer and a problem with the non compatible bolts is sometimes the light you get that small glow the glow even when it's off so the trick is to take a compatible bulb one compatible bulb in a two socket light will take away that dim glow and then the lights work great now the light bulbs will dim at slightly different ranges so you'll notice from off - I'll slightly bring it up you'll notice that the one incompatible bulb comes on first and then as I bring it more up the other compatible bulb brightens so that's one workaround if you have a whole bunch of incompatible bulbs there's a possibility that if you buy some compatible bulbs that you don't need to replace every single bulb you can just replace half of them or a small portion of them this is really only an issue with a two bulb fixture so you'll notice on this one I turned the lights all the way off with two bulbs I have the soft glow now these are supposedly incompatible bulbs they're not on Lutron's compatibility list you'll notice there's just still some extra wattage that's coming through to the fixtures now you'll notice that as I add a third incompatible bulb it will take the glow out of the other two bulbs so it's really not a problem with a three bulb fixture so the first con that we wrote that you need compatible bulbs that's kind of a half-truth along the same lines the dimmer is very sensitive in the lower range so when you're using the dimmer switch if you want just the right amount of lighting sometimes you have to bump the dimmer with the very short button presses in order to get the correct lighting and when it's not a really low setting sometimes it looks it gets kind of flickery depends on which bulbs you have it does kind of look like a flickering flame which is cool if you like that effect but annoying if you don't we will call that con a sensitive dimmer switch now one of the best ways you can get around this is just by using the automation let me show you how some of the apps work so I'm gonna open Lutron this is the app that is for free it comes from the manufacturer in device as you can see it separates all the devices into the room these are the same rooms you set up when you add the device into the app you'll notice that I have the master bedroom light and fan on so I click on the light and I have to click again to turn it on or off I don't love that feature but I do love how responsive it is let me show you alright this is my kitchen and living room I have the fan on low I'm gonna turn that off now I'm going to show you how fast and responsive this works starting with living room light now the chandelier now my cameras here are synced in real time I'm gonna skip the turning off because it's just as fast turning off and skipped to show you the fan turning on as you see incredibly responsive and I've used it for several months and it's incredibly reliable no matter what app I use it from the biggest downfall is maybe the voice recognition sometimes it doesn't recognize the specific name of the device that's the only time it's unreliable but that's on the voice recognition not on the Lutron system the point of automation is not to individually turn on devices it's an option but scenes make it a lot easier so let's add a scene we're gonna call this scene dinner I want to set a cool icon for it and we'll go next so for dinner time I want our main lights to be on full the living room fan to be on low and what else let me see how about the chandelier we'll turn that on I think that's it well click done that's all we have to do you've added a scene any time want to trigger that scene I just pressed that button do lights at a fan turn on it's great another thing that we could do is set up a schedule so let's add a schedule I'm gonna do this only other weekdays so taking off Saturday and Sunday look next let me see let's do 1700 we'll call this something for dinner I suppose we'll call it cooking so then you just select all your devices that you want you can also set a different level for different devices if you want whatever your heart desires chandelier will save whatever 55 percent 48 percent something in there save it and it created a schedule so anytime 5 o'clock rolls around that scene will happen well you can also do scenes in your other apps so for instance I'm going to show you the Amazon app in Amazon there are routines you can have routines trigger scenes there are rumors that Amazon was going to update this app so I'm not gonna spend too much time going into it right now but I want to show you how fast the lights trigger from this app from the Amazon app there's a slightly longer delay but it's literally milliseconds so you likely probably already have this app you know that you can go to all your devices and it was every single device you have in the house this isn't the best way of getting around but it gives you the option of turning on individual devices that are not yet assigned to rooms or scenes one thing I do like about this app is you can one tap a device to turn it on or off or one tap a certain bedroom and it turns all the devices on in the bedroom so in this app I can also set up scenes there are a whole lot of scenes in this app because it also pulls in scenes from other apps like I have a lot of Phillip Hughes scenes in there I mostly got the Amazon echo for the voice control it's very good a voice recognition most of the time but the app I don't love anyway you could set up routines in here just as you can in the other app you can add groups or rooms and have a trigger with a certain voice command so a lot of opportunities for that Amazon may not have the best app out there but the nice thing about Lutron is you have different options for instance I like homekit there are a lot of reasons I like homekit for instance my first light in the kitchen is a Lutron light light 2 & 3 are from Philips you really while you're using the app there's no way that you'd know that there was a difference unless you for instance looked at the light color difference look how responsive it is I'd say it's just as responsive as the native Lutron app itself just one tap to turn the fan on high and one tap to turn it off now if you long press on a light here I'm adjusting the fan light brightness you can either let go of your thumb and then tap it again to adjust the brightness or just long press and hold as you drag it up it's just a well-written well coated they coated it in 100% speed so low would be 25% medium 50% and so on it's also super helpful to add a scene just press the plus button add scene I'm gonna do a custom scene you can call it whatever you want and then you're gonna add accessories it pulls up all your accessories you simply click the accessories you want to include in the scene and then just tell it what do you want that device setting to be set at for the scene so for instance the fan you could say I want this fan on low or off and it shows up right there is a scene in your room you can also decide if you want the scene on the home page to trigger scene you just press it admittedly it's not completely perfect like it says failed because I couldn't reach one of the devices but it actually triggered every device that I wanted for it dinner times one that I find useful just turn on the kitchen lights turn off every other thing I said another one called cooking it turns on the kitchen lights but doesn't worry about anything else you can also set any of your accessories as a favorite and add it to the home screen for easy access so if I want to tap on my phone to control devices home kid is definitely my preferred app it's very cleanly written and it's just a solid UI and since it's connected to home kit I can use my Apple TV remote to control all my devices who doesn't love that that's it for this video here's the pros and cons to help you decide if the Lutron system is right for you if you liked that video please subscribe smash that like button and put any questions or comments down there in the comment section you know at the end of the day sometimes you I mean you may think it's silly to automate every light in your entire house and you know maybe it's a little bit frivolous but for me it's being able to get this stuff that doesn't matter out of the way and focus on the things that do matter for instance I have a daughter who doesn't like to sleep in the dark so for me to be able to go into her room and dim the lights from the wall and turn the hall light on 25% or whatever yeah I mean if it if it helps her than it makes it all worth it I mean plus I don't have to get up in the middle of the night and turn the lights off or so that's a plus for me I mean anything I can do to give her you know a little bit more light in her life no pun intended or a little bit more hope in the future that the things are gonna be okay and things are gonna work out that it makes it all worth it anyway thanks for joining us I hope you have a great day [Music]

Channel: Kyler's Studio

Views: 64,032

Keywords: Lutron Caseta Wireless Smart Lighting, Lutron Dimmer, Smart Home, Smart Lighting System, HomeKit Smart Home, Alexa Smart Lighting, Google Assistant Smart Home, Apple HomeKit, Smart Dimmer Switch, Best Smart Lighting System, Lutron Caseta, lutron caseta installation, lutron caseta 3 way, lutron caseta wireless, lutron, caseta, smart home, lutron caseta wireless dimmer, lutron caseta wireless dimmer kit with smart bridge, smart switch, lutron caseta, caseta lutron

Id: HugTnN57gC0

Length: 22min 50sec (1370 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 04 2020