Serena Shades by Lutron Review - A Smart Home Essential For HomeKit Users

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou seriously need to consider putting some smart shades in your home i know i'm a big smart home guy but of all of the smart home tech that i've outfitted my home with i think these shades have been one of the most transformative whether in our living room our baby room our finished basement or here in the studio having a home kit connected shades has made a huge difference and i'm going to tell you why in this video as i review the new honeycomb shades from serena by lutron these serena shades come in multiple different patterns and styles and everything else i'm going to tell you about it in this video welcome everybody to apple insider it is andrew here and i am a huge fan of apple homekit i have reviewed pretty much everything that you can put into your apple home and serena shades by lutron are some of my favorite products to recommend recently i've added two new shades to my home now serena by lutron comes in a few different styles you can go with your typical roller shades which i actually actively use in my living room there is the wooden slat versions that have recently been updated to work with apple home kit and then there's the fairly new honeycomb shades which come in a standard version and an architectural version in my case i picked up two of the architectural versions these come a wide variety of different fabrics and colors that you can choose to match your home's aesthetic we went for this dark blue heathered look that i think works well in both our babies room and in our currently being remodeled basement i loved the look of them and they were super easy to install these shades can be mounted above or on your window frame or they could be mounted on the inside in my case for both of my installs i mounted them inside of the frame and they were super easy to do they took me literally just a few minutes with some basic tools that you probably already have around your house like a drill after just a few minutes i had these installed by myself including a six foot one across a set of double doors that i was able to do all by myself without even requiring a second person if you don't feel like undertaking the install there are professional installation options that lutron offers once everything was installed and mounted on the frame i had to slide in a few batteries mine are the battery powered versions that run off of d batteries and they can last an incredibly long time my serena shades in the living room that is massive and running on a bunch of d batteries has lasted almost three years and i haven't had to change them yet of course how often you have to change the batteries but depend on your window size the weight of the fabric that you're using and how often you're opening and closing those windows with the honeycomb shades they easily open if you have a smaller size there'll be two little temps you can push to the side and the front of the thing drops down where you can access the batteries hidden within larger ones you may have three or so tabs that you'll have to open up but again pretty easy to open to access all of those batteries to replace them when you do need to the shades connect to the caseta smart bridge so this is lutron's smart home bridge that connects directly into your router what's nice about using a bridge rather than connecting to your homeless wi-fi or anything like that is that it reduces the load on your network you don't have to add a bunch of new devices to your wireless network you're not relying on if that network is available so if your wi-fi ever goes down your shades will still operate and you don't have to share any personal information with lutron you don't have to share your wifi credentials or your wi-fi network name the smart bridge communicates with all of your lutron caseta wireless stuff via its own rf frequency it creates this frequency and it just creates a mesh network across your home it's not a typical one like zigbee or z-wave or anything like that but in my testing it has been rock solid and has great range if there are far outskirt parts of your home that a typical bridge will not reach there are extenders that you can use to make sure your home is blanketed in this really high performing wireless network lutron's serena shades work with all of the major smart home platforms you got samsung smartthings you got amazon's assistant google assistant but for me i'm partial to apple homekit when it's added to homekit you can control it through the home app you can control it with your voice via siri or tie it into any other automations or scenes that you want to create here's the few that i use in my home every morning i say good morning to siri who unlocks the door turns on the lights and opens all the shades in the rooms that we're going to be occupying you can also set it for a good night scene so when you say good night siri locks the door turns off all the lights in her home adjusts the thermostat closes the garage door and closes the shades as well every day when i walk into the studio i tell siri that it's a work day she sets up all of my lights appropriately around my desk and will even open the shades to the proper amount and when it's time to film i tell siri that it's showtime and the shades closed can be a perfect filming environment if you have like the baby room you can tell siri it's time for a baby's nap and the blackout shades will close down giving you that perfect sleeping environment another popular use case is when you come and go whenever you leave your house your shades can automatically close and as you arrive home your shades will open up to greet you it's perfect to allow your dog to run to the window so they can see you and say hi and as an added benefit if you can control them while you're away from your house you give the appearance that somebody is still at home so you can adjust the shades regularly on a schedule anything like that and it looks like somebody is still in your home if you happen to be out of town on vacation that way your shades aren't just closed up for several days on end giving your home that somebody is away look and feel you don't have to just open or close shades you can control exactly how much they open or close so you can open them 50 75 60 32 whatever it may be and siri will understand all of these requests with any smart home connected product it's always important to have physical controls and luckily lutron has this in spades see you can use your smart home stuff and automations to control those shades but you can also do it using their handy pico remote their pico remote is a tiny wireless remote that you can just leave free floating on your table or can be mounted to the wall you tap this little piece of double sided tape to your wall and you can remove the remote at any time but when it's mounted to the wall it's really easy to be able to use to control your shades it gives you that physical control whether you have children guests or older relatives that may be with you that aren't comfortable using a smart home app or their voice and siri so with this you can open the shades all the way you can close them all the way or you can adjust in smaller anchor intervals up and down there's also this handy button right there in the center if you go and press that little center button that's the favorite button it's set in the lutron app and when you press that it goes to any predefined spot so in our baby room there's a specific level that we like it to be at so we press it and it just opens up to that level same thing for the living room like a good like 80 open similar in the basement and here in the studio so set your favorite level it'll automatically adjust just to that because these work with apple homekit you don't just have to use lutron's pico remote though you could use any other smart home control that you have heck you could tie it to a light switch in the room if that light switch works with home kit whenever you turn on the lights the shades will open and when you turn the lights off the shades will close you can tie to a motion sensor so you walk into a room and the shades open you leave and it closes or you can use other buttons and controls here i have the eve button right here this guy you just press it down click it and it can control things or we have the wemo stage scene controller this here has three buttons down and you can control something with each of those this is what i use in my uh my bedroom i hit the top button to open all of the shades in the room hit the bottom one to close them all in the middle one to set to a predefined favorite point that's about 75 percent open it's just down a little bit because i'd like to see kind of the color of the shades as they're opened and control how much lights come into the room it's really handy to be able to use these or any other smart home controls that work with homekit that you already have serena shades by lutron have been amazing they're incredibly high quality custom built to order with your color and measurement for your home and they take mere moments to install and with a larger serena or the with the larger caseta wireless system from lutron you can add all these other accessories whether it's remotes to control the shades uh remotes to control light switches smart plugs anything else that you want to add that work with that lutron caseta hub and you have the benefits of homekit to control with siri and through all of your home pots and other apple accessories these have been one of the best investments that i have made in my home and i think you guys should consider it as well if you'd like to get a set of serena shades or several and tie them all together there's a link down below in the description or if you want to expand your caseta wireless system maybe just pick up some smart plugs and the wall switches that's an option too i have a link for the smart bridge starter kit also down below in the description and i want to know have you guys tried installing smart shades yet and was your favorite feature about them let me know in the comments or on twitter at andrew underscore osu and i'll catch you guys in the next video youyou seriously need to consider putting some smart shades in your home i know i'm a big smart home guy but of all of the smart home tech that i've outfitted my home with i think these shades have been one of the most transformative whether in our living room our baby room our finished basement or here in the studio having a home kit connected shades has made a huge difference and i'm going to tell you why in this video as i review the new honeycomb shades from serena by lutron these serena shades come in multiple different patterns and styles and everything else i'm going to tell you about it in this video welcome everybody to apple insider it is andrew here and i am a huge fan of apple homekit i have reviewed pretty much everything that you can put into your apple home and serena shades by lutron are some of my favorite products to recommend recently i've added two new shades to my home now serena by lutron comes in a few different styles you can go with your typical roller shades which i actually actively use in my living room there is the wooden slat versions that have recently been updated to work with apple home kit and then there's the fairly new honeycomb shades which come in a standard version and an architectural version in my case i picked up two of the architectural versions these come a wide variety of different fabrics and colors that you can choose to match your home's aesthetic we went for this dark blue heathered look that i think works well in both our babies room and in our currently being remodeled basement i loved the look of them and they were super easy to install these shades can be mounted above or on your window frame or they could be mounted on the inside in my case for both of my installs i mounted them inside of the frame and they were super easy to do they took me literally just a few minutes with some basic tools that you probably already have around your house like a drill after just a few minutes i had these installed by myself including a six foot one across a set of double doors that i was able to do all by myself without even requiring a second person if you don't feel like undertaking the install there are professional installation options that lutron offers once everything was installed and mounted on the frame i had to slide in a few batteries mine are the battery powered versions that run off of d batteries and they can last an incredibly long time my serena shades in the living room that is massive and running on a bunch of d batteries has lasted almost three years and i haven't had to change them yet of course how often you have to change the batteries but depend on your window size the weight of the fabric that you're using and how often you're opening and closing those windows with the honeycomb shades they easily open if you have a smaller size there'll be two little temps you can push to the side and the front of the thing drops down where you can access the batteries hidden within larger ones you may have three or so tabs that you'll have to open up but again pretty easy to open to access all of those batteries to replace them when you do need to the shades connect to the caseta smart bridge so this is lutron's smart home bridge that connects directly into your router what's nice about using a bridge rather than connecting to your homeless wi-fi or anything like that is that it reduces the load on your network you don't have to add a bunch of new devices to your wireless network you're not relying on if that network is available so if your wi-fi ever goes down your shades will still operate and you don't have to share any personal information with lutron you don't have to share your wifi credentials or your wi-fi network name the smart bridge communicates with all of your lutron caseta wireless stuff via its own rf frequency it creates this frequency and it just creates a mesh network across your home it's not a typical one like zigbee or z-wave or anything like that but in my testing it has been rock solid and has great range if there are far outskirt parts of your home that a typical bridge will not reach there are extenders that you can use to make sure your home is blanketed in this really high performing wireless network lutron's serena shades work with all of the major smart home platforms you got samsung smartthings you got amazon's assistant google assistant but for me i'm partial to apple homekit when it's added to homekit you can control it through the home app you can control it with your voice via siri or tie it into any other automations or scenes that you want to create here's the few that i use in my home every morning i say good morning to siri who unlocks the door turns on the lights and opens all the shades in the rooms that we're going to be occupying you can also set it for a good night scene so when you say good night siri locks the door turns off all the lights in her home adjusts the thermostat closes the garage door and closes the shades as well every day when i walk into the studio i tell siri that it's a work day she sets up all of my lights appropriately around my desk and will even open the shades to the proper amount and when it's time to film i tell siri that it's showtime and the shades closed can be a perfect filming environment if you have like the baby room you can tell siri it's time for a baby's nap and the blackout shades will close down giving you that perfect sleeping environment another popular use case is when you come and go whenever you leave your house your shades can automatically close and as you arrive home your shades will open up to greet you it's perfect to allow your dog to run to the window so they can see you and say hi and as an added benefit if you can control them while you're away from your house you give the appearance that somebody is still at home so you can adjust the shades regularly on a schedule anything like that and it looks like somebody is still in your home if you happen to be out of town on vacation that way your shades aren't just closed up for several days on end giving your home that somebody is away look and feel you don't have to just open or close shades you can control exactly how much they open or close so you can open them 50 75 60 32 whatever it may be and siri will understand all of these requests with any smart home connected product it's always important to have physical controls and luckily lutron has this in spades see you can use your smart home stuff and automations to control those shades but you can also do it using their handy pico remote their pico remote is a tiny wireless remote that you can just leave free floating on your table or can be mounted to the wall you tap this little piece of double sided tape to your wall and you can remove the remote at any time but when it's mounted to the wall it's really easy to be able to use to control your shades it gives you that physical control whether you have children guests or older relatives that may be with you that aren't comfortable using a smart home app or their voice and siri so with this you can open the shades all the way you can close them all the way or you can adjust in smaller anchor intervals up and down there's also this handy button right there in the center if you go and press that little center button that's the favorite button it's set in the lutron app and when you press that it goes to any predefined spot so in our baby room there's a specific level that we like it to be at so we press it and it just opens up to that level same thing for the living room like a good like 80 open similar in the basement and here in the studio so set your favorite level it'll automatically adjust just to that because these work with apple homekit you don't just have to use lutron's pico remote though you could use any other smart home control that you have heck you could tie it to a light switch in the room if that light switch works with home kit whenever you turn on the lights the shades will open and when you turn the lights off the shades will close you can tie to a motion sensor so you walk into a room and the shades open you leave and it closes or you can use other buttons and controls here i have the eve button right here this guy you just press it down click it and it can control things or we have the wemo stage scene controller this here has three buttons down and you can control something with each of those this is what i use in my uh my bedroom i hit the top button to open all of the shades in the room hit the bottom one to close them all in the middle one to set to a predefined favorite point that's about 75 percent open it's just down a little bit because i'd like to see kind of the color of the shades as they're opened and control how much lights come into the room it's really handy to be able to use these or any other smart home controls that work with homekit that you already have serena shades by lutron have been amazing they're incredibly high quality custom built to order with your color and measurement for your home and they take mere moments to install and with a larger serena or the with the larger caseta wireless system from lutron you can add all these other accessories whether it's remotes to control the shades uh remotes to control light switches smart plugs anything else that you want to add that work with that lutron caseta hub and you have the benefits of homekit to control with siri and through all of your home pots and other apple accessories these have been one of the best investments that i have made in my home and i think you guys should consider it as well if you'd like to get a set of serena shades or several and tie them all together there's a link down below in the description or if you want to expand your caseta wireless system maybe just pick up some smart plugs and the wall switches that's an option too i have a link for the smart bridge starter kit also down below in the description and i want to know have you guys tried installing smart shades yet and was your favorite feature about them let me know in the comments or on twitter at andrew underscore osu and i'll catch you guys in the next video you\n"