Description
- PEACE OF MIND: Set lights to automatically adjust with changing seasons so your family always comes back to a well-lit home; you can also enable the Smart Away feature to randomly turn your lights on and off to look like you’re home even if you’re away.
- MOST CONNECTED: Caséta connects with more leading smart home devices – including Alexa, Apple HomeKit, the Google Assistant, Serena shades and Sonos – than any other smart lighting control brand
- CONTROL YOUR WAY: Caséta puts the smarts in the switch so you can control your lights a variety of ways – via the free Lutron app, your voice, or from the wall. You can create personalized schedules to turn on, off, or dim lights at set times to best fit your everyday routines, or activate favorite lighting scenes with the touch of a button
- RELIABLY SMART: The Caséta Smart Hub doesn’t use Wi-Fi, so you get super-fast, ultra-reliable smart lighting that works right, without slowing your Wi-Fi down with more devices
- SET IT AND FORGET IT: Always keep your smart light functionality. Even when the Wi-Fi goes down, there’s no need to reset your schedules and scenes or reconnect everything when it comes back online
- GET MORE, SPEND LESS: One Caséta smart switch can control many bulbs at once; make many bulbs smart, even your existing bulbs get smart control of multiple styles of dimmable LED, incandescent, and halogen bulbs
- WORKS WITH EXISTING WIRING: Unlike other smart dimmer switches, Caséta works in any home, of any age, as it does not require a neutral wire
- EASY 3-WAY SETUP: With the included Pico remote control, create a 3-way by mounting the Pico to almost any wall surface without cutting holes or pulling wire. You can also replace existing 3-way switches by mounting the Pico over the back box; wall plate bracket, PICO-WBX-ADAPT, required for mounting Pico and sold separately
- Includes: (2) Caséta smart dimmer switches, (2) Pico wireless remotes, (2) wall plates, and (1) Lutron Caséta Smart Hub
Create Your Free Price Drop Alert!
vic_by –
Be aware that the dimmer (main module) doesn’t have a way to set your favourite or last brightness level. You can only turn it on 100% with On button or 10% or so with Up button. The favourite setting exists only on Pico remote (central button). Lutron support recommended to purchase PD-5NE item which does have Favourite button but it’s more than double price on Amazon.
Amazon Customer –
Works great!
Best for:
1) if you have an older wiring and want to upgrade switch
2) if you want to add a 2nd switch (3 way) to your light from another area (e.g. a second bedroom for balcony lights, bottom/top of stairs, living room lights or kitchen lights from opposite end
All you need are the 2 wires.
Actual switch doesn’t feel as convenient but this is more of a personal preference. I do prefer the Kasa dimmer switches but they don’t offer a 3 way. Lutron has an upgraded version but I think you might need 3 wires so if you have an older home this is what you want.
Sonny Bessant –
I was given a Caseta dimmer light switch and needed the lutron bridge to remotely control the switch. Buying the Smart Start kit is a much better value than buying just the bridge. I can now control another light.
Allan C –
Works flawlessly, even with no neutral wire. No remote control failures, which is better than other wifi-based dimmers I’ve used. I’d give it 5 stars if it was a little less expensive.
JP –
I was once a newbie with Caseta – but no longer, so I hope this helps you. This kit is the first purchase you need for Lutron’s system. Once you have the hub, no more kits are needed for future switch purchases. One hub can manage up to 75 switches (and I think the Hub is included in that count).
Some buyers complain about having to wire in Lutron’s hub to your network with an ethernet cable. But you can’t beat the speed and reliability of a wired network connection. Given that Lutron’s product works reliably and is 100% responsive all the time, this is a non-issue for me.
Since I put in the first few Casetas, we truly love them and have started to replace switches all over the home. Which brings up another issue… if I had chosen a WiFi connected switches (and I did briefly for use in limited locations, more on that later) I could potentially be adding a much larger number of connected devices onto my network. If your WiFi isn’t all that great to begin with – think entry level routers – this could potentially impact network performance and your connectivity with your switches. For me, that’s just a no go. I really want my WiFi to work well for the things that need to be on it.
The PROs of the Lutron Switches:
Setting the switches up is straightforward and fast. The setup process works like expected each and every time. I cannot say the same about other non-Lutron WiFi products.
Having problems setting them up or is a switch not acting right? Lutron’s support is the bees knees. They have helped me several times and each time they are great.
The switches are incredibly responsive both in person and via the app. There are no delays in turning things off and on. The ceiling fan switch is especially a godsend for our old ceiling fan – no more standing on the bed to pull strings or getting up out of bed to adjust things.
Lutron and Ring also teamed up and added some camera integrations where movement and/or doorbell pushes can activate lights. It works quite well, but the feature was a little buried in the Lutron app. Big bonus – the integration will also turn off lights after 15 minutes.
About the app (and this is a biggie)
Purchasing good hardware is one thing, having an app that you only get to experience after you purchase the hardware is downright crazy. But that’s the world that smart switches seem to live in, so here’s the scoop on Lutron – and the apps for a couple other systems I tried.
Lutron’s app is well designed and intuitive. You can quickly add new devices, program in schedules and scenes. The app also interfaces with my Lennox thermostat to display the current temp in the home (with the help of Apple’s Home (home kit) app that’s running on a dedicated iPad that never leaves the home). The Ring cam integration is good too.
Having tried WeMo and Leviton’s WiFi connected switches, my take on those apps is that they are incredibly clunky. This seems like a misstep, especially when you are going to spend most of your time interfacing with the app than the switch.
Since I also use Apple’s Home app with my family, every time a switch gets added into the Lutron hub, it seamlessly shows up in Apple Home. This is of course magically great. Since I didn’t want to add another app into the mix for my wife and family, it’s nice that there have been zero issues with cross platform integration, everything works seamlessly.
The Lutron App also has a geofence capability that will turn on/off lights when you arrive and depart from the home. Haven’t used that yet, but it’s cool. Another side benefit, Lutron’s app has an Apple watch app that you can control lights and fans with.
The CONS:
Edited – The Caseta hub for whatever reason didn’t have auto off timers built in. That said, the addition of their motion sensor product effectively solves this issue.
If you have Ring cams, you can turn on the Caseta integration, and a motion or doorbell can turn on lights and after 15 minutes, turn them off again. This works beautifully.
Other thoughts:
Edited – I used IFTTT (If This Then This) before Ring and Lutron added their cam integration as a trigger to turn on/off lights. IFTTT works, but there was always a bit of a delay to turn on lights if you use it. Plus if you’re internet went down, it didn’t work.
Before the Ring integration, I used a couple WeMo switches for my outdoor lighting as they had auto-off timers. But their setup and app was super clunky. Happy to be rid of them.
As software support is now kinda important for app driven switches, making sure you get a switch from a company that’s going to be around a while is more important than it used to be. It would be bad if your OS on your phone, requires your apps to get an update and your smart switch maker is MIA.
Side note – For the two years I had WeMo switches, changes in Wifi forced me to individually reconnect all switches to it, and it was a horrible process to get them re-paired with WiFi. Lutron has never had this issue, being wired into the network.
One switch I purchased from Amazon warehouse (open box) had issues with setup and Lutron’s support was fantastic. They sent a replacement switch so quickly and were really nice about it.
Bottom line – stick with Lutron, it works really well.
Jacko Rosales –
Me gusto mucho este kit porque trae todo lo necesario para empezar, la instalación de los apagadores es como cualquier otra, y lo bueno es que no requiere un cable neutro extra a diferencia de la mayoría de los atenuadores inteligentes que están en el mercado, el bridge es muy simple, elegante y de bajo perfil, la configuración desde la app es de lo mas fácil.
Me gusto lo fácil que es usar la app y que prácticamente no hay delay en su uso y lo que tardan en prender las luces, ademas que con la app también puedes vincular productos de sonos para crear escenas.
Lo que mas me gusto es el hecho de poder controlar las luces desde cualquier lugar, es decir el bridge lutron te permite ver que luces están prendidas en tu casa sin necesidad de tener un hub adicional conectado a la nube.
Yo lo utilizo con alexa (a pesar de que aun esta en ingles) y con homekit de apple y todo funciona perfecto, hasta el momento el sistema no me a fallado me encanto, lo recomiendo mucho.
Keith –
ultimately we had to return these as we were able to relocate a door so we did not to relocate the switch.. but we have the same switch elsewhere in the house and it is perfect and very good quality
Ted Pavlic –
The majority of my dimmers in my home are Lutron Caseta dimmers with their proprietary ClearConnect wireless communication protocol. Lutron dimmers and the Pico switches can be paired together without any further smart-home integration. However, they also can be incorporated into most smart-home systems. I have paired them with a
Wink Hub 2
that gives me access to my dimmers via Amazon Alexa and Google Home (although I could have used Lutron’s own
Caseta Wireless Smart Bridge
with Google Home or Amazon Alexa as well). If you are used to conventional switches, the look and feel of the Lutron Caseta dimmers will take some time to get used to, but the simplicity and functionality outweighs the awkwardness of switching. They also provide a memorable flare to guests who have conventional switches at their own homes. In other words, unlike other smart switches that try to hide as mechanical switches, these switches are all digital; they cannot hide.
If you are wiring up a dimmer in a room where a neutral wire is available and you do not have plans to need more than a single switch, other smart dimmers like the
Leviton DZ6HD-1BZ Decora Smart Z-Wave Dimmer
are going to look more conventional and be far more configurable. Dimmers like the Leviton DZ6HD-1BZ are also less likely to cause problems with a wide variety of different types of lights, whereas the Luton Caseta dimmers can be poor choices for light loads that operate under very small amounts of current. Most Lutron dimmers (in the Caseta line as well as other “dumber” lines, such as Maestro) have been optimized for wiring simplicity, which comes with strengths and weaknesses.
One major strength of the Lutron Castea dimmer is that it is designed to work without a neutral wire. Most new houses will have a neutral available in every junction box, but this will not be the case for “older” houses. The Lutron dimmer stays powered even when the light is off in the same way most “dumb” lighted switches/dimmers do it – it continues to pull a small amount of current through the circuit. The current is small enough that it will not turn on the device, but it is large enough to keep the dimmer operating, providing a subtle green nightlight glow while also responding to wireless commands. Lutron uses its smarts at running switches on very low power to create remote control devices, like the Pico remote (which include not only dimming controls but a “favorite setting” button), that can be powered by watch batteries for at least a decade if not longer. These can be mobile, mounted where a traditional 3-way switch would go (in which case it may be necessary to “wire nut” some of the switch’s leads together to remove the conventional 3-way functionality), or just mounted to a wall using their mounting bracket. I recently replaced a 2-gang wall plate with a 3-gang wall plate that let me slide in a Lutron Pico remote into the third spot, and now it looks like there was a 3-gang box there the whole time. Furthermore, I was able to add a third switch to that room using a Pico-remote mounting bracket and a
Lutron Claro 1-gang decorator wall plate
(although a traditional wall plate would have also been fine) where there previously were no switches whatsoever. So that is the real strength of the Lutron Caseta line; it is so simple to add switches. Switches can also be paired to multiple dimmers simultaneously. So groups of lights that would otherwise be controlled separately can be joined together into a virtual circuit.
The flexibility of Lutron Caseta comes with costs. Because it does not use a neutral, there is always current in the circuit, even when the light is off. This means that if you use an LED light that operates on very little current (such as a candelabra with a mini-screw connector, as is used in some ceiling fan light kits), the small amount of current necessary to keep the dimmer listening on the ClearConnect network will be enough to cause a small glow or flickering in the light. Fortunately, the dimmer can be adjusted to use as little current as possible, thereby allowing for some troublesome lights to be tamed. However, there are limits to this tuning. The other downside is that the Pico remote has a battery (although it does last very long; I have never had to replace a Pico battery yet after 5+ years). If you are replacing a traditional 3-way switch with a Pico remote, you will have to wire-nut some wires together behind the remote in the wall in order to “short out” the old 3-way switch configuration, and I am not sure that this wiring configuration is always going to follow building code.
In general, I’m very happy with my Lutron dimmers. They have been easy to install and operate and extremely flexible. They look very different, and they use a proprietary mesh-network communication protocol (ClearConnect, which is distinct from Z-Wave, Zigbee, and others). But there is a Lutron bridge that can connect that network to popular smart-home systems (and Wink has support directly within its hub, and so no bridge is necessary if you use Wink). These switches are expensive, even relative to other smart-home switches, but that is the price of their flexibility as well as Lutron’s brand-name strength in dimming technology.
Some people also do not like that the Lutron Caseta dimmer has no screw terminals; wires are solidly fixed to the device, and so wire nuts must be used. Fortunately, the dimmer itself is not much deeper than a conventional switch (and possibly a little less deep than an old-fashioned rheostat dimmer).