Lutron Caseta Smart Home Dimmer Switch and Pico Remote Kit, Works with Alexa, Apple Home, Ring, Google Assistant (Smart Hub Required) | P-PKG1WB-WH | White

Fantastic if you do not have a neutral available or want to add additional switches without wiring. 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).

Very easy to install. Not cheap but very convenient way to install an extra switch