The Best Smart Window Shades and Blinds from buzai232's blog

The Best Smart Window Shades and Blinds

Smart shades and blinds that extend, retract, or tilt automatically are indeed a luxury, but they’re also just plain useful. (And they can help save energy and boost home security, too.) Lutron’s Serena Shades are our top pick because they work flawlessly, are the fastest and quietest shades we tested, and are compatible with all the popular smart-home platforms. Also, they look great. If you prefer blinds over shades, we think Lutron’s Serena Smart Wood Blinds are the best smart blinds because they adapt to the position of the sun throughout the day, ensuring you always have the right amount of light without having to adjust them at all.Get more news about motorized blinds,you can vist our website!

Lutron’s Serena Shades are the best self-install smart shades we tested. They’re easy to install yourself, simple to set up, battery-powered, and custom-made to fit your windows. They work with every major smart-home system and all of the voice assistants, when paired with Lutron’s Caséta Wireless Smart Bridge (a small device that plugs into your Wi-Fi router and lets you control your devices remotely; it’s the same one that connects Lutron’s Caséta smart light switches). The Serena Shades are expensive—around three times the price of our budget pick, IKEA’s Fyrtur. But if you want the nicest-looking, smartest window coverings that you can order and install yourself, Lutron Serena Shades are the best choice.

If you don’t mind a more-modest selection of fabrics and styles and don’t need deep smart-home integration, the SmarterHome's MySmartRollerShades (formerly Tilt) are a good option. They are easy to install yourself and to control with the app (if noticeably slower than our top pick), and they come in a decent, albeit limited, selection of colors and styles. The simple ordering process is a refreshing change: Every shade is the same price, no matter the size or style. These shades run on a rechargeable battery that connects to an included solar panel. But there’s no remote control, aside from the app. Also, the hub for smart-home control with Amazon Alexa and Samsung SmartThings costs $109—and it is out of stock until 2022.

If you (or someone in your home) has a specific style and design in mind when it comes to window coverings, you’ll want to look at Graber Motorized Shades. The shades use Graber’s new Z-Wave wireless motors and gateway device (which costs up to $200; you could instead pair directly to an existing Z-Wave hub you may have, including SmartThings). We love the online selection process, which guides you through styles and designs to best suit your needs. And the new Graber VirtualCord Motorization app works well for scheduling, creating Scenes, and adding voice control via Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant through Google Home (not Siri/HomeKit). There are also multiple options for power, including a rechargeable battery pack that tucks up behind the shade, plus a number of remote-control options (again, with a hefty price tag). Self-installation is an option, but it’s not as straightforward as with our other picks.

If your window openings fit one of the eight available sizes of IKEA’s Fyrtur shades (ours didn’t), and you like the industrial exposed hardware and gray blackout fabric look (we do!), then these inexpensive smart shades are a great, budget-friendly option. The shades can be controlled using Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home, as long as you buy IKEA’s $70 Dirigera internet gateway (a small device that wirelessly connects your shades and is plugged into your router). The Fyrtur shades are well made, and in our testing they worked reliably. And the removable, rechargeable battery lasted six months before needing to be recharged. That said, the included remote is a bit finicky, and installation and setup can be just as frustrating as it is when you’re putting together an IKEA cabinet. But considering the reasonable price for these shades, we think it’s hard to complain. If the installation challenge is daunting, or you’re considering the YouTube videos that show you how to “hack” Fytur shades so they fit your window, we’d say skip the headache—there are better options.

The Lutron Serena Smart Wood Blinds have the best smart-home integrations and most innovative features of any of the smart blinds we considered or tested. But they’re also the most expensive, starting at $599. They are custom-made to order and available in eight color options. And they work with Lutron’s smart-home ecosystem for control with the Lutron app, which also enables integration with Amazon Alexa or Google Home (strangely, there’s no HomeKit or SmartThings compatibility, as there is with Serena Shades). An excellent Natural Light Optimization feature tilts the blinds automatically as the sun moves throughout the day, ensuring your room has balanced light while minimizing glare. Serena blinds can also be set to close and open automatically whenever you leave or arrive home. And they can be configured on a Schedule or included in Scenes (a series of settings changes among one or more devices) with other Lutron devices. Although the blinds can be tilted on command, you can’t use a controller to raise or lower them—you have to manually push them up or pull them down, as you would with other modern blinds.