It’s SUPER smooth. No clicking as you turn the knob (the v1 has a notable clicking that the comparison table above describes as ‘granular’), which means you can dim more smoothly even when doing it manually. When dimming remotely, both the v1 and v2 support transition time, but the v2 does it much more smoothly.
It has minimum brightness calibration. Unlike the v1 which still illuminated my test bulb when set to 3%, the v2 didn’t show any sign of life until 22%, but has a dedicated hardware button to reset the bottom of the brightness range. I did this in <10 seconds and now the v2 is also able to illumiate my test bulb at a 3% brightness setting.
It has a neutral. My house has neutral to the switch so I prefer to have power-consuming switches connected directly to a neutral. But this may be a downside for you if you don’t have neutral available in your switch back box.
The reset/zigbee-connect procedure has changed. The v1 required push-push-and-hold which I could never remember and is easy to get wrong. The v2 has a dedicated reset button that you press 5 times to reset, though this means you can’t perform the pairing without removing the face plate.
Power metering!?: It claims to be able to do “electrical measurement” and “simple metering”, but those aren’t coming through to Home Assistant for me, possibly because they aren’t yet supported by the Zigbee2MQTT adapter for the SM323? [UPDATE] The power metering works great.
The instructions are comprehensive and written in clear English. Overall a very impressive product from Samotech and a slam dunk for me, I’m buying a bunch of them.
Having to take the faceplates off the wall to do a reset is a hard fail for me… I’ve had to repair 3 times this year (once for moving to a new adaptor, two times for issues with Z2M) If i had to go around and pull 13 switches off the wall to get them back in, i’d be crazy mad. Such a shame theyve got rid of using the knob for pairing/repairing
If you purchase the unit from Samotech with THEIR faceplate, they’ve elegantly solved this problem.
The faceplate has two components, the first is metal and see through plastic, this is screwed into your back box. The metal part covers the SM323 and they’ve created small holes that line up with the reset and brightness button on the SM323.
The second component of the faceplate is white plastic and fits over the first component and clicks into place. If you ever need to access the reset button, simply lift off the second component with a small screwdriver and you’re good to go!
(You can also purchase the faceplates separately.)
I bought 8 of these for a new house back in January. On paper they tick many boxes (Nice smooth motion, neutral wire, Zigbee router). Unfortunately though I’ve found that of all the smart home ‘things’ we have, these are the most complained about by my family!
For installation, all of my 8 are in double faceplates (Selectric 5M), and they don’t quite fit - I had to file the sides of them down to get the backbox lugs to fit past them, and to avoid them being fitted at a slight angle which would make the spindle stick. Messy, and I was worried it might affect their operation - it may explain the other bits below! In fairness, they do explain this on their website, and they do offer a pre-made 2-gang option now (not at the time I bought them).
They are extremely sensitive and fiddly - 2 of the faceplates can’t be screwed tightly against the wall (leaving a little ugly gap), as if they are, pressing the faceplate itself toggles the light on/off! That’s without there being any pressure on the spindle itself, which doesn’t make any sense to me - it’s as if the unit itself can be triggered by exerting pressure on it.
On 3 of the 8, pressing the switch to toggle them doesn’t reliably work - there’s a bit of a knack, you have to dim the light slightly first before pressing it. On 1 of those 3, toggling the light makes it flash off/on/off. These problems feel like a firmware bug.
And now, one of them has dropped off the network, and because I hate taking the faceplates off so much, I’m going to have to power cycle the lighting circuit to re-pair it, which will of course mean re-pairing all the other units on the same circuit, which I fully expect to cause other units to start misbehaving…
In retrospect… I should have just installed rocker switches, as nobody uses the dimming anyway
I agree with this actually , though I think I’m doing a bit better just because my needs are a bit different.
They definitely don’t fit in 2-gang faceplates! It’s very annoying. In my case I have mostly 3 and 4 gang plates and where I had 2s I just fitted a single gang and found a different way to control the other circuit… not ideal at all.
Toggling the light on/off accidentally is likely because you’re putting pressure on the Bright and reset buttons which are stupidly on the front face of the models I have. I solved this by adding a small piece of tape in between the dimmer and the faceplate to stop the plate pushing the buttons. Again, not great.
I still think they’re the best option for me, since they do very smooth dimming, support very low brightnesses (if paired with good bulbs) don’t have physical ‘stops’ so they don’t get out of sync with the state of the light, and don’t buzz. But in a few spots, I think a retractive/momentary switch would have maybe been a better solution.
, though I think I’m doing a bit better just because my needs are a bit different.