GE CYNC Smart Dimmer Light Switch, Neutral Wire Required, Bluetooth and 2.4 GHz WiFi 4-Wire Switch, Works with Amazon Alexa and Google Home, White (1 Pack)

Blown away at first click
Just received the Wire-free with dimmer and white tones switch yesterday, 4/28/23. Interestingly I did receive it in the C by GE packaging, so it is older stock if it makes any difference. I like that it comes with the choice of adhesive strips or hard mounting with screws. I opted to use screws but decided to forgo the anchors. Our upstairs has white wood paneling on all the walls, so the screws were gonna suffice no harder than you have to press on the buttons. The install instructions included were really helpful. It took me a bit to figure out how to pry the faceplate off the mounting plate. There’s a notch on the bottom of it for your fingernail come to find out. Having the black line that runs vertically every so many inches helped me eyeball its leveling. It was kind of a bad spot to mount it but that’s really the only way too the way our room is laid out.Once I got it installed, it took no time at all to set it up on the app. It did have a software update, v.2.0.035 i think. It took some time using my data because the Wi-Fi has been down. But gave me time to see the ASMR protective film to peel off the faceplate. Very satisfying lol.If you read my review on the A19/BR30 Direct Connect Full Color bulbs (or see the pictures and video once I get around to capturing them), we have four lamps in our bedroom. Two bedside lamps and two room lights against the adjacent wall. The bedside lamps are set to 2700K Candlelight at 15%. I have scenes made set to the other main color temps as well, but the super warm light makes a white room feel more relaxing and less stressing on the mind and eyes. Plus it is generally enough light throughout the day. We just turn the lamp on when we wake up. We have darkening but not blackout curtains over the windows in the bedroom because the HVAC system doesn’t have any vents going to upstairs so it is brutal up here in the warm months even with our s***** 5000BTU window unit bussin’ it down with everything it’s got. And then come winter the heating side of the HVAC committed sudoku before we moved in so we have to use sunlight and space heaters in every room or it gets below 40° on winter nights. Oof what a sharp 180 off course that went. Anyways, so the switch was grouped to the room lights. I had them set to a 5000K 30% scene. It worked fine until I was at work and my fiancé would need the lights on but we get wrote up at work for phone use so I can’t turn them on. So then we tried the guest account for her, but she’d end up changing the brightness to a random number like 57 and it would make the awful OCD in me shake, so I had to give this a try. And by God I’m glad I did.I thumb tacked the user guide above it as you’ll see so that she would remember how to use it when I’m not there. But she’ll get the hang of it because operation is super simple. Only 6 buttons. And a little GE logo that made me think it was a motion sensor from a distance lmao. I’ve already got it down pat, tho sometimes I bump On/Off by mistake. But it’s design makes total sense. And the white tones control is cool and accurate. The warm end of the scale is on the left, cold on the right.—PROS—- Small, sleek design- Packaged well and instructions are really good- Works flawlessly and has a quicker response time than the app- Buttons make a solid, soft click and feel durable- Nice having the option to temp mount with command strips or hard mount- Can literally mount anywhere- Very user friendly, if we had kids they could work it by the time they learn to stand—CONS—…wait is there any? No actually, so far there isn’t.—OPERATION—- On / Off- Brightness Up / Down — 10% increments 10-100% with a slight fade as you cycle. Also can hold it down to “scroll”.- White Tones — Left for Warmer, Right for Cooler— 2700K Candlelight— 4300K Warm White— 5000K Natural White— 5500K Daylight— 5800K Sunlight— 6000K Cool WhiteOverall, I give this bad boi a solid 1000/10. GE knows what they are doing. They definitely are improving on products that allows the older “dumb” homes to get some levels of smarts. If our HVAC worked proper, I’d willingly invest in the Cync Thermostat. I’ve been drooling over it since I first seen it. And the price feels worth it, just not with the current setup. Now if we get a double wide with a heat pump, that thermostat combined with my nerdiness for how things work and experiment with efficiency, I’d milk the hell out of a heat pump’s efficiency. I read some debatable reviews on it, but worst comes to worst, if it doesn’t work I can return it and put the old one back on or get a different smart thermostat. So yeah, keep up the good work GE. Just continue to improve as you do.EDIT 12/9/23: As of a recent update for the A19 full color bulbs (ver. 1.0.353 iirc), they now have an expanded dimming range down to 1%. So now this switch controls brightness from 1, 10, 20, and so on. The switch itself didn’t need to update which was quite handy. We broke up and I got a travel trailer to live in til the housing market gets affordable. Don’t have a WiFi connection currently so I had to grab all the bulbs and a lamp, run to Walmart and ping off their free WiFi. The truck has a 110v outlet that I could plug the lamp in and begin the laborious process of connecting the bulbs to the WiFi and updating one at a time. Strangely the BR30 and PAR38 floodlights have not been updated to support the expanded dimming range. Or the light strips. Otherwise still a good switch and I plan to buy more when I get into a home.

The app had problem finding the switch during the setup process. I had to relaunch app couple times in order to get it to work. You are only able to update switch firmware during the installation process. If you skip or fail the firmware update, you won’t be able to control the lights at all. If you run update after installation, the app will tell you that you are up to date but it is not true. You have to reinstall the switch in order to trigger the update installation.

Debido a que la aplicación Cync no está disponible en México, no es recomendable adquirir este producto para su uso en México ya que no se puede configurar para aprovechar toda su funcionalidad.

The app for iOS makes it almost impossible to reliably configure this device.