If you're wanting to dip your toe into smart home automation, these switches are a great place to start. Over the past couple of years I've installed around a dozen of the switches, dimmers, and an electrical outlet. I've also wired up 3-way and four-way configurations with them.I've also dabbled with other brands of Zigbee switches and dimmers. The cheaper variety though are always lacking in build quality and tactile feedback. These switches feel like traditional, high-end paddle switches that are designed to be physically depressed daily for decades. This is important to me because I don't want to feel like I'm downgrading the build quality of my home as I make it smarter.- These use the Zigbee protocol, not Wi-Fi, so they need a hub. Before you knock that though, consider the advantages of Zigbee vs. WiFi. Probably the most relevant is that each Zigbee device on the network can relay messages through other Zigbee devices. So the more switches/dimmers/outlets you have, the further the network can reach, even if the distance is further than your home Wifi will reach.- If you're controlling a bathroom or ceiling fan, get the switch. If you're only controlling lights, get the dimmer. The switch uses a relay to turn on/off the attached load, while the dimmer (probably) uses a MOSFET. MOSFETs shouldn't be used to drive inductive loads like motors. The dimmer might work for a while but may fail prematurely. Another reviewer complained about the energy usage of the dimmer, complete with a FLIR heat map. MOSFETs get warm, that's pretty unavoidable. However, if this "leaky" energy utilization is a concern, choose the switch over the dimmer to control your lights. When a relay is off, it's truly off (though you lose the dimmer functionality and there's an audible "click" when some thing turns on/off).- I originally used these with a couple of Amazon Echo Pluses (which can function as a Zigbee hub). This worked flawlessly and was easy to set up. I recently abandoned the Echo Pluses and now directly control my Zigbee devices with an open source home automation platform called Home Assistant (HA). I have a ConBee II USB Zigbee controller plugged into my HA server and am using it with the ZHA integration. I also have HA connected to Amazon Alexa, so I can still control the devices with my Echos, but with the added power of HA. HA has a significant learning curve but allows for some seriously cool automation.- These switches/dimmers/outlets report real-time power consumption (kW/h) of whatever electrical devices they're switching. This allows some advanced home automation tools (like Home Assistant) to do things like sense if a clothes iron has been left on for more than 10 mins and turn off the outlet. Or sense when the washing machine is done with a cycle, etc, etc.- Zigbee uses the same 2.4gHz spectrum as WiFi. This is very close to the (roughly) 3.1gHz spectrum that some high-end occupancy/motion sensors like the Lutron Maestro LED+ dimmer use. These occupancy sensors emit radio waves and sense when a person enters range by measuring the wave reflections. Long story short: If you install one of these motion sensors within ~2 feet of these Zigbee devices, the motion sensor will not function (it will stay either on or off 100% of the time.)- Above I mentioned that Zigbee devices will relay messages from the hub to distant Zigbee devices that are too far from the hub. This is only true once the switch is configured! If you want to install this switch in a distant part of your house, beyond reach of the hub's range, you will need to either temporarily install the switch closer to the hub or move the hub. If the hub isn't finding the switch during the pairing, this may be the problem.I really like these devices, but If I had to nitpick about anything, it would be to ask that the little blue LED that indicates that the switch is off be able to be disabled, either a tiny slide switch on the side of the unit or in software. The light isn't nearly as bright as a lot of home electronics, but I had to cover it with a bit of white clay because I was staring directly at a blue light each night while lying in bed.