Should You Buy A Smart Light Switch: An Unbiased Take

Lighting up your home the smart way will pave the way for future advancements. But be careful not to fall in the trap of fascination over utility. The smart light switches have been around for over a decade now. To some people, they are a necessity. While others are still skeptical about it. Let us take a closer look at them to know more.

Should You Buy A Smart Light Switch?

The smart light switches come with their fair share of pros and cons. Read on to know about all of them to judge better yourself.

Pros

Over time, the smart light switches have evolved a lot to inculcate a number of benefits. Few of them are as follows:

Dimming Made Easy

Not all bulbs can be dimmed with a smart light switch. You will especially face problems with the CFL bulbs. But, if you have a compatible model installed then you can take full benefit of the dimming feature. The best part is that you don’t even need a dimmer pre-installed in the wall for this feature to work.

Just pair up the smart switch with the bulb. And manage the brightness level easily during different times of the day. You can easily manage it through your phone app. And in some cases, you can make the required change from miles away via your phone if you have Wi-Fi. This synchronization of the smart bulb and the switch can even manage the brightness levels automatically during different times of the day.

High Compatibility

The smart light switches manufactured today are designed to have improved functionality when paired with the popular platforms. This includes the Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit, Wink, Next, or IFTTT and many more. The mobile apps of these platforms can easily integrate the switches with the home network. And you get a bunch of extra voice commands, scenes and better controls to fiddle around with.

This improves the applicability of the switches in the big picture. Your smart light switch can easily be connected with the home security or the alarm system to optimize its usage. The future updates will further help you in staying updated on this constantly evolving technology platform.

More Convenience

Technology is synonymous with convenience for us humans. The main reason that most of us do anything at all in life is to make our life easier now or for our future selves. The entire smart home automation sector works on making human life better and more comfortable. The smart light switches are no different. They can be whatever you want them to be.

You can use them as the simple on-and-off toggle switches if you like. Or they can be the smart gadgets that know you better than yourself and can create the perfect lighting for you during different hours of the day. Use your voice or the mobile app to set the lights as you want. Or set scenes for the entire home for the smart light switches to take care of the rest. They will even turn off the lights anywhere in your home for you when you forget to do so.

Lower Electricity Bills

You cannot replace all the lights at your place with smart lights at one go. But you can easily buy one smart light switch to reap all the cost-saving benefits of the smart home automation. These switches can save you upto 60% on your monthly bills by combining their dimming and occupancy sensing feature.

You can also use the affordable LED bulbs in combination with that which consume almost 90% less electricity as compared to the traditional bulb options. On an average, the lighting expenditure constitutes about 12% of the monthly electricity bill. You can make a big dent in this number with even a single smart light switch. It can be used to regulate a number of bulbs at your place.

Security

One of the cheapest and most efficient ways to improve your home security is with a smart light switch. They keep everything well-lit and thus safe when you are away. You can easily set the schedules to turn the light off at dawn and on in the evening. Anyone seeing your home from the outside cannot tell when you are away on a vacation.

Read: Is Your House Safe? Here Are 7 Tips To Enhance Home Security

The motion sensor-enabled smart switches turn the light on immediately when triggered. In case someone tries to break-in, the smart outdoor lighting will be instantly activated making the entire landscape well-lit. No vandal will dare to cause any sort of trouble in such a scenario and will meekly slip away from the back. You can also combine it with your alarm system to alert the authorities and the neighbors just to be extra safe.

Different Scenes for Different Moods

Just create an optimum light situation for your current activity and save it as a ‘scene’ in your smart switch mobile app. You can reuse it later when you are performing the very same activity to enjoy the best possible lighting without wasting much time. You can set a ‘scene’ for watching movies, doing office work, reading, waking up, night light, hosting a dinner and other frequent situations.

This way you won’t have to set the lighting every time you are performing the very same activity. Soon you will have a full repository of all these highly useful ‘scenes’ that will spare you enough time to focus on other important things. You will always have flawless lighting to create perfect memories or capture one!

Useful Mobile App

Almost all the smart light switches come with a mobile app. This means that you won’t have to actually walk all the way to use the switch. You can be in your home or in the front yard or even in the other corner of the country. You can manage and operate it all from that very helpful smart mobile app.

All the important alerts and updates will be directly sent to the app. You can view it to quickly assess the current lighting situation of your home. And then turn off the lights when not in use. Or, schedule the lights to turn on when you are just a few miles away from your home. The possibilities are limitless.

These are the many benefits that one can gain from the smart light switches.

Cons

Everything comes with its own downsides. Let us take a look at the ones for smart light switches.

Portability

The smart light switches are not something that you just pick and go. Firstly, you need to physically integrate it with the light board. And if you want to take it with you then you will have to reverse that entire process. It is a lot harder than just ejecting the pen drive. Though it surely will be just as easier in the future. You need to replace it with a conventional switch before vacating your place for the next resident.

Not everyone is on board the smart home automation train as of now. They will be in the next 5 years for sure. But till then it seems like you need to pay the price for wanting to live in the future. The new place that you shift to might not have a compatible set up. Or maybe the smart hub is incompatible with these specific smart light switches. There are still a lot of challenges in the logistics of smart light switches.

For Tech-Savvy Only

Tech-savvy people know and want to stay updated in terms of technology. If you are not one of them then you might not like the smart light switches that much. If you find yourself being fatigued by the various features of the smart light switches then this upgrade is not for you. Maybe you like to live a simple life.

Or, you are just coming out of an online burnout. The reasons can be plenty. But, under no circumstance, you should buy it just because you feel that you have to. Buy it only when you have the need and the desire to get it installed.

The Tendency to Micro-Manage

Every new shiny object fascinates us for the initial few days. Or, even months. And with constant updates, it is like every few months we have a brand new gadget. So it is pretty easy to get lost in the myriad of options and features of the smart light switches. They are designed to be easy and addictively amazing at the same time.

And sometimes it feels like a waste of money. if we are not using all the fancy add-ons that come with it. You might not even need all those freebies. But, if it is there you are sure as hell going to use it. That just makes sense somehow. The micro-managing, just like in other gadgets, hits us hard with this one too.

The above-mentioned cons of smart light switches are something to ponder about.

Conclusion

So are smart light switches for you? That only you would know. This detailed pros and cons list will definitely help you make the right decision after you read it thoroughly.

Maybe your family and friends are in a similar fix too. Forward this article to them right now and help them make smarter choices today, just like you!