REVIEW UPDATE AGAIN: Well, as of May 2020, they have apparently hit financial troubles, and rather than continuing to allow these devices to work locally, they have decided to start charging a monthly fee. So first they sold a beta product with problems, once the problems have more or less been resolved, they decide that they have to change their business model and force people to pay a monthly fee for something that was originally advertised as not needing a monthly fee. I hope the FTC comes down on them for this garbage if they manage to stay out of bankruptcy. REVIEW UPDATE: It's now been almost 5 months since I purchased this, and I've been holding off on a review update to give the manufacturer time to get the issue fixed, but as it's been nearly 2.5 months since the issue was noticed with no resolution still, I figured it was time to update the review. My situation is strictly around the "robots" that Wink uses. I'm using a GE outlet to control a water pump to circulate hot water. This was done specifically to stop wasting water here in California while waiting for the water to warm up, and using the Wink, it has a robot set to turn off the pump after 5 minutes using a robot. I've had an ongoing open support ticket with Wink for 2.5 months as the robot just decides to take the morning off sometimes. It doesn't even try to fire, nothing showing in the logs. It's completely intermittent, so if I don't check the app the water can be running for hours- which defeats the purpose of having the Wink hub in the first place, as I've gone from wasting water to wasting natural gas to heat the water. I'll update again if they finally get it fixed, but as it's not working for the MAIN purpose of buying it in the first place, I'm not impressed. (And yes, I've spent several times on the phone with techs and sent them screen shots of the issue. They've had me try everything from firmware updates to deleting and re-creating the robot with no success) It seems that most of the reviews here are folks upgrading from the original to the newer Wink Hub 2, so I'll give my $.02 as a newbie to home automation. I've been wanting to get into this stuff for several years now, but the poor reviews/buggy hardware and software have kept me from taking the plunge, and with something like this, going in early didn't appear to be a great idea, particularly since I'd have to sell my wife on yet more technology. So, with the upcoming installation of a tankless hot water heater, I wanted to be sure that our experience would be a good one, and living in CA, not wasting water is important. So was my excuse for buying this- once the hot water heater is installed, I'll be controlling a GE outlet to turn on and off a hot water recirculating pump. But in the interim, I needed to see how the system worked. I have a Rachio Sprinker system already, so ordered a GE Z-Wave plug and Dimmer, the former for the recirculation pump and the latter for our first smart light in the living room. So with a few trial and errors on the light switch install (remember you MUST connect the neutral wire, oddity of the smart switches), had it all installed and went to pair, with my Hub plugged into the LAN in the office and the light switch in the living room- no dice. Fortunately the Hub supports WiFi as well, so was able to add my WiFi network to it via the app and took the hub into the living room and plugged it in- found the switch in no time. Decided to leave the Hub in the living room since it's a bit more central to the rest of the house, and it is not really noticeable behind the TV. So for the first test, worked well. A little bummed that there's not a web app like there is for my Rachio sprinkler controller, as that would be pretty handy to have, but so far it seems to work fine. Next test will be when the Echo arrives so that I can setup voice control, which is really why I bought it- being able to say hot water and have the recirculation pump turn on will not only be a nice to have, but eco friendly- Given the well thought out application for the Rachio already, not sure if I'll bother hooking it up to the Wink Hub, but may at some point. So the long and the short of it? Seems that home automation is ready for prime time. Good to see that it's finally here!

I been doing home automation projects since the X10 system was the BMOC. More recently I installed a Smartthings (ST) hub. After awhile is seemed I more tolerated than enjoyed my current Home Automation system. ST was slow, a whole host of lights would randomly go offline and whenever there was a power outage I lost total control of my lights among other things. The whole interface was clunky. Even the much slicker Hue interface couldn't help keep me looking for alternatives because most of my automation was through the ST hub. Today,. I moved to a Wink hub and I am loving Home Automation again. After installing the Hub 2, I added some GE Link lights. While the system does seem to work pretty well, except for the interface improvements, I was not wowed. Then I moved to the Wink Relay. The instructions were VERY clear. I had to look up who to determine the load from the line wire but that took just a minute and in about 10 minutes I had replaced the original ST scene controller (which I could never get to work) with the Wink Relay. Once connected to the my local WiFi the Relay updated itself and walked me through the set up and no time I went from useless blue lights to a very cool touch pad on the wall that controls lights in both my den and my home office. There are two hardware switches on the Relay, in addition to the touch scree that control lights in the switch box, or set to control other Wink linked devices Not only were the instructions ridiculously clear and easy to follow but the tools needed to most of the install came in the box. About the only thing they didn't mention was to remove the screen cover on the Relay before using it. I might have to talk myself into another one of these for the upstairs! After getting the Relay installed I moved back to the Hue lights, the rest of my non GE lights and wall switches, Removing them from ST and immediately installing them on Wink was easy. I was able to replace 25 devices in about 2 hours. Most of it fussing with the darn GE lights can be fussy. Alexa, Hue, Wink Relay and oh yeah the remaining ST devices are working quite well. Voice automation has been restored to most of my main duties, I have created a couple of robots already and tomorrow I will finish replacing the remaining ST devices and then remove the ST hub FOREVER! To be fair, I started with ST early and liked what I saw. I made it work for me but after countless system failures and seeing more than a few promises broken, using the ST system was like driving with a slow leak in a tire. You know you'll get there eventually but the rough ride and worry about what might happen until it gets fixed took all the air (if you'll pardon the pun) out enjoying the system. The system isn't perfect, I wish robots worked with Hue devices but I think that might happen soon. Another small thing is the group names used for lights get transferred into the Alexa app and can cause some confusion. Other than that my initial impressions of the Wink system are very positive. I am excited about home automation again and looking for more places to add devices. If you're on the fence about Wink or looking to move to a system that appears to be ready for prime time then check the Wink system out. For the record I have absolutely no connection to Wink or even know anyone else that has a Wink system. The excitement expressed in this review is from the smoothness I found replacing my ST system and having things actually work!

I purchased a Wink 2 hub as an upgrade to a Wink 1 hub that I used for 15 months. The Wink 1 had been an extremely reliable device that communicated dependably with my network of 15-20 lights, outlets, and locks. It had a few minor issues with timeliness - often, triggered events didn't respond for several seconds - and the Wink 2 hub promised faster response times, so why not? Today, after using the Wink 2 hub for about 75 days, I'm returning it to Amazon. This item has a vast number of design problems that make it a piece of garbage. === Specific problems === (1) Devices didn't migrate. My problems with the Wink 2 hub started almost immediately after plugging it in. One of the promises of the Wink 2 hub is easy migration of devices from a Wink 1 hub: just a few taps in the app, and everything transfers to the new hub. No repairing required. I followed the instructions. All of the devices were copied into the new Wink 2 hub profile - but all of them were immediately marked as unreachable. I had to start over from scratch. I had to exclude every single device from the Z-Wave network, and then re-pair and recreate it with the new hub. Not a good start. (2) Weird confusion of devices. My Z-Wave network includes several standard GE /Jasco outlets. The Wink 2 hub got two of them completely confused. The first one added OK - but when I added the second one, the Wink marked it offline. Worse, all commands sent to the second outlet instead went to the first outlet. I excluded both outlets and tried again: same result. I excluded them again and added them in the reverse order. The second outlet is now marked as offline (but is controllable), and the hub can't even *see* the first outlet to pair with it. There's nothing special about these outlets - in fact, they worked completely fine with my Wink 1 hub. I have no idea why they're problematic here. (3) Devices constantly falling offline. Besides the two outlets above, the Wink 2 hub currently reports two devices offline. Sometimes they're controllable even though the app says they're offline (and sometimes not), but the Wink 2 hub doesn't properly report their status. I had a similar problem with a Philips Hue Bridge. After completing the extensive pairing process between the devices, the Wink added the bridge - and then instantly reported that it's offline. The Wink works OK with it now, but it's not great, and status information is frequently incorrect. Worse, this problem appears to grow incrementally as well. Before completing a complete factory reset (see below), the Wink 2 hub had started reporting three devices permanently offline, and then four. (4) Nearly every day, the Wink 2 hub falls offline and has to be power-cycled. This one is maddening. About once a day, all of our devices stop responding, and we find that the Wink 2 hub indicator is flashing blue, indicating pairing mode. But we didn't initiate pairing mode; it just did it spontaneously. It remains stuck in this mode until we power-cycle it. When I called to report the problem, a Wink technician indicated that many customers had complained about this, and that a firmware was being pushed out to fix the problem. That worked for about two weeks... and then it resurfaced. A month later, it's still exhibiting this behavior every single day. === Troubleshooting === I wish I could give their support team a five-star rating for effort. I have spent about four hours on the phone with Wink Support trying to work through issues, and every one went the extra mile in trying to solve my problems. Unfortunately, none of their suggestions worked, and we're at the end of the road. Several Wink techs have advised me to initiate a Z-Wave network rediscovery. I've done that several times - no improvement, or even change, of any kind. The last Wink tech I spoke with advised me to factory-reset the Wink 2 device and start from scratch. I did that, taking the 30 minutes to exclude and add all of the devices again, following their specific instructions ("start with the devices closest to the home location of the hub; toggle each of them several times upon adding to strengthen the Z-Wave network; and move the hub close to each device during the pairing"). Result: 0% improvement; 100% of the same problems. === Conclusion === The Wink 2 hub has numerous, obvious design issues. It is a defective product that exhibits problems not experienced by the Wink 1 hub. I trust that the team will work to resolve the issues, and they may succeed (software can be remotely patched, but problems with an antenna or network controller can't). I wouldn't be surprised to see a recall / replacement program for this device, maybe with a Wink 3 that's more robustly designed and more thoroughly tested. But today (January 2017), what we have is a deeply defective, high-maintenance, unreliable, extremely frustrating home automation hub. DON'T BUY IT. BUY THE WINK 1 HUB INSTEAD.

EDIT 5/13/2020: Today is the day that Wink died. As of 5/13/2020, Wink is requiring (extorting) a $4.99/mo fee from it's existing customers to keep a service that was previously included as part of the upfront cost paid for the hub. The "no subscription fees" they touted in the past, which was probably a big reason many people bought these hubs, is no more. I came to this Amazon listing to see the backlash in the reviews and was embarrassed to see my glowing review prominently displayed. I forgotten that I had written it, and now I'm cutting it down. The company is clearly on the way and out this reeks of a quick cash grab before it completely disappears. To give existing customers only one week to pay up or lose control of their devices is shady as hell and a great way to alienate your user base. Wink doesn't seem to realize those who set up a smart home in the first place are going to be more technologically-savvy than the average consumer and will have no problems fleeing to a different ecosystem. You can't even log in to your account on the website anymore without subscribing first. The Wink app seems to still let you sign in. I have no idea if anything still works without a subscription as I moved my devices off my Wink Hub last week, unplugged it, and threw it in my closet of by-gone electronics that I think may be useful again one day but will realistically just end up in electronics recycling in about 5 years. For those who just purchased the hub within the return period before the announcement to the subscription model, you need to return it and get your money back. The product you bought is not the same as the product it is now. For those who are thinking of paying the monthly fee because you are stuck in the ecosystem, it's only a matter of time before the ship sinks and service stops entirely. I predict within 6-12 months. Better to buy a new hub and get out while you can. Preferably a hub with local control so that even if the cloud service ceases to exist, you'll still have control of your devices. Internet searches will lead you to some good options. I've already moved to a Hubitat, which has a much steeper learning curve and much worse interface, but is already acting more reliably than the Wink ever has. If you are worried about being able to access your devices to move them off your Wink, know that any hub is be able to send commands to unpair/exclude your devices and you don't need to subscribe to Wink to do that. If that fails, every third-party device has a way to do a factory-reset. Don't give them money just to regain control of your devices. If you want to keep using your Wink-exclusive devices, I guess you have no choice but to subscribe, but I'd start looking at alternatives soon before Wink completely dies. ORIGINAL REVIEW: I bought the Wink 2 when setting up a smart home system about 5 months ago. After a little bit of troubleshooting to get my devices setup, it's been completely stable the entire time I've had it. You have to research first and make sure whatever switch/outlet/light/sensor you're buying is compatible with the hub and not just assume it's going to work. Even if the device isn't listed specifically in the app's setup, most of the time you can connect to things as a generic switch or sensor and get it to work. The first thing to do if any device doesn't pair with any smart hub is to execute a command to exclude the device first because it could have been paired with a different hub previously (like testing at the factory or a refurbished customer return). Once you do that, pretty much everything will pair. I really like that it's both wired and wireless. Range has not been an issue, but if I need to pair a new device and it's acting up, I can just plug the hub closer to the device and it will still communicate with the network by wifi. I use only Z-wave devices and each can act as repeater/node to extend the network's reach. Between the 15-20 devices in my 4000 sq ft two story home, everything works both inside and outside. With any smart hub, the key is to have devices overlapping so there aren't choke points in your setup that would cause total system failure in a part of your house if that one device goes bad. The robots make automating things really easy. Here are examples of how I use it: - The main reason I bought this was because I was tired of having to adjust my 5 outdoor landscaping light timers as the days got longer and shorter throughout the year. At first I had the old fashioned plug in timers where you have to reset the pins to change the time, then I had them on a wifi timer, but that platform wasn't robust enough to do more than just allow you to change on/off time by the app. With the Wink, I can have it set to turn on at sunset and off at a specified time and never have to adjust it throughout the year. That alone makes it worth it. - I integrated it with my Arlo Pro cameras and installed Z-wave smart switches to my door lights. This allowed me to create another robot to automatically turn on the lights at night if the cameras detect motion if someone approaches the door as a security feature. - I'm prone to forgetting to turn off outdoor lights a certain times. I have a robot set up to turn off all the door lights in the morning in case I left something on overnight (or in case I meant to leave something on overnight but forgot to turn it off during the day). - I installed a garage door tilt sensor and a Z-wave switch for my garage lights. When I get home after dark, the overhead garage lights turn on automatically and off again when I close my garage door. The sensor also helps to answer the question of whether or not I forgot to close the garage door when leaving for work. - I integrated it with a smart deadbolt which will lock the door under certain conditions. So if I like this so much, why not 5 stars instead of 4? Wink has decided as a "security feature" that they will not allow unlocking of doors as part of automation. If you have a door lock installed, you can create a robot to lock them automatically, but you cannot unlock them. I suspect it is so that they cannot be held liable if someone triggers a sensor maliciously which allows the hub to lock the door. This is a level of oversight I can live without. If I decide I want my doors to unlock automatically and something happens, that's on me for trusting the system, which (although it hasn't happened to me yet) is obviously susceptible to failure. If someone breaks in, I'm not going to sue Schlage or Kwikset or the manufacturer of the door or doorjamb for allowing it to be broken, but I suppose there are people out there who would. I don't have the Wink integrated with a smart speaker like Google Home or Alexa, so I have no idea how it works with those. I'm not ready to start talking to my electronics yet.

I always wanted to get into home automation, but there were so many brands and none of them were compatible with everything I wanted. There was Philips Hue lighting, and Schlage deadbolt, Chamberlain garage door opener, light switches, etc. But every brand I looked at was missing some of the features that I needed until I found Wink Labs. They don't seem to make the devices themselves, rather they make a single bridge that will talk to them all. Pair this with a Wink Relay, about $69 on Amazon now, and you have the ultimate home automation system, it will work with all brands and all types of home automation devices and it is compatible with Amazon Alexa, too. I bought this to work with my Z-wave door sensors and my Z-wave light switches. I can control the lights and dimmers, as well as turn on my fireplace, lock my deadbolt, and several other things all with this bridge. All the pieces I have are random brands that met the need of what I was doing and were the best price. I don't even bother checking compatibility as I haven't seen anything the Wink Hub 2 and relay can't do. You simply plug it in and WIFI to the Hub, if you are doing WIFI, and from their tools you tell it your WIFI network and password, and you're done with the setup. If you have it plugged into Ethernet like I do it's even easier, you just tell their app to find it, and viola. When you add something new you follow the steps on their app, it really couldn't be easier. The Wink Hub 2 is pretty small. It's skinny and tall, and I put it in my office on one side of my house and it works fine with all the devices. Because it uses Z-wave each device works as a repeater, so as long as you can reach one device and it can reach the next you will be in range. I have never had a range or connection issue, it has always just worked. There have been a few updates, which is fine. I expect there will be more as they add more devices and support and increase security. I really can't say enough about this product. It opened my door to home automation, letting me pick and choose the brands I want, and never worry about connectivity. Between the Wink Relay and the Wink Hub 2 I have the entire universe of home automation covered. Using Alexa with wink is simple too. Once a device is paired with Wink and named you tell Alexa "Alexa, find home automation devices" and it looks for about 10 seconds. Once it is done you can control them by voice. Here are a few example: Alexa, set upstairs to 77 degrees. Alexa, set family room light to 40%. Alexa, turn on the fireplace. Now, I should note it will not unlock my deadbolt or open my garage door. This is actually a good thing. I don't want someone yelling through my window "Alexa, unlock my front door" and having it open my front door. So, I am fine with this, and it was done intentionally and I assume for this very reason. If you want to get into home automation the wink should be your first purchase. Don't buy a Philips Hue bridge and be stuck with just their products, for example. Buy the Wink and use all the products from all the brands. I would rate it higher than 5 stars if I could. It really opened the door to something I have wanted to do for a long time. [...]

11/25/2016: I bought the Hub2 and installed it yesterday. It’s wired connected to the router; as opposed to the previous Wink Hub which can only be connected through WIFI. The transferred from the previous Hub went well; without a hitch. Even my door locks were recognized. Two hours later I opened the app to check the lights and the hub was offline. The app doesn’t have an option to restart hub so I unplugged it, waited for a few seconds and plugged it back again. It reconnected and everything was back to normal again. Two more times on the same day that I know of, I encountered the same issue and all three times I went through the same process of disconnecting and re-connecting the hub. I traveled out last night and left some of the lights on for security. This morning I opened the app and turned those lights off without any issues. Three hours later I wanted to check my thermostat setting and the WinkHub2 is offline again. I know the issue is not the internet because I can access other devices from their respective apps. Also, I didn’t have that issue with the previous Wink Hub. I don’t know what the issue is yet, but there’s no way I can give a good rating for an item that, so far, hasn’t met the expectations. Sure, I can give Wink support a call, but what good is it going to do if I’m not home for the troubleshooting part? In my opinion, the app needs to provide the option to restart hub at any time, from anywhere. Right now I’m not sure if I’ll be returning it, but will update this post if something changes. 11/30/2016: I changed the title of this review to positive and changed the rating from a two to a four rating for two main reasons; the issue I mentioned above has not re-appeared since I updated the WIFI...the hub has work flawlessly. Also, this hub seems to react faster than the older hub it replaced, for all devices, but especially for my garage door and the door locks. I can now open/close the garage door almost as fast as with my remote control...with the app open of course...and the door locks take no time at all to open/close from anywhere. I did get a scare though when updating the WIFI as it requires a reset on the hub with a paper clip. I was afraid that I had to reinstall each of my 24 devices separately...that would have been a pain. However, after the reset and WIFI update, all my devices were connected and working just fine. August 9, 2018: The hub has work fine, but there are issues with devices being disconnected. Sometimes a light switch would disconnect, then it would reconnect a few days later. It can also take some time to turn off/on a device. Sometimes l can't even open the garage door or would take a while to respond. Now there's an issue with one of the door locks that shows it's disconnected. Customer service can take weeks to respond as we!!. It's getting to the point where I'm thinking the best thing to do is to go with another brand of hub that can be more reliable. This Wink company was the way to go a while back, but now it sucks. July 21, 2019: This Wink system requires someone who has experience and available 24 hours a day to keep it running. Sensors work one day, but not the next. The hub constantly loses its connection with devices, i.e. cell phone, tablets, etc. Connection with the Wink network is a sporadic at best. This is not what home automation should be as the whole system is unreliable. To top it off, there isn't much of any innovation, especially when it comes to keeping up with changes in the industry. This is one of the worst investments I've ever made and looking forward to replace it with a much more reliable system.

This product turned out to be a big disappointment for me. I purchased this Wink 2 hub to support a Schlage Touchscreen lock. Both products supposedly support z-wave. What I experienced was 1980’s-style incompatibilities and vendor finger-pointing. Installing the Schlage lock was a snap, but installing and connecting the Wink 2 hub was impossible to perform by an end user. A call to Wink support was required, and the problem was blamed on the Schlage lock “not being properly reset at the factory”. Oh, and you better hope that your installed door lock just happens to be twelve inches away from your router, or it won't install to a Wink 2 hub. If you have a 25- or 50-foot LAN cable, you should be ok. After that, the lock lost connectivity to the Wink hub, usually in a matter of one to four days. Another call to Wink support to reconnect. Again the problem was blamed on the lock, and the “solution” was to momentarily disconnect the batteries on the lock. Yes, this caused the lock to reconnect to the Wink 2 hub, but only for another day or so each time. When the Wink 2 hub drops the connection, it causes the lock to attempt to reconnect, which it continues to attempt until the batteries are drained. So, now you have a lock that (a) isn’t connected to the interned, and (b) doesn’t work using the touchscreen. You’re back to using a key. This, unfortunately, is what you get when you purchase a Wink 2 hub. At every turn, during each of my multiple calls to Wink support, the problem was blamed on the Schlage lock. Schlage support sent me out a brand new lock, with the warning that it probably wouldn’t work with the Wink hub. They recommended I get a Smart Things hub. Compounding the Wink 2 problems is the fact that there is no real user interface, just the mobile app. So, the hub can’t be rebooted remotely, nor can any other such steps be taken to troubleshoot unless you are physically present. This defeats the purpose of internet connectivity! My need is for a lock for my vacation home that will stay connected for up to six months and that can be operated remotely while I am out of town. Is this too much to ask for a cost of $300 total? I use an August lock at my main home, and it has performed flawlessly, with no dropped connections, and no battery problems. After wasting time on this problem for two months, I asked the nice folks at Wink to take back their faulty product and refund my money. I’m told the return policy is 30 days. In future, I will take more care to return a product within that time frame, and will not be fooled by the misdirection blaming another vendor, only to buy time while the warranty expires. In my experience, vendors who act this way don't last long, so don't consider your Wink 2 purchase to be "future proof". You are more likely to end up with an expensive brick, just like me. I’m not sure why I give this product two stars. It is not just useless, it is worse than useless, as it will drain the batteries of your lock and render it useless as well. It’s also the only technology product that I have purchased in the past ten years at least where I needed to call support just to complete an install. Really, these products should be removed from the sales channel, instead of taking peoples’ money and wasting their time with a product that is known to not work as advertised. UPDATE July 19, 2017 I unplugged the Wink 2 and put it away for a couple of months, and used the Schlage lock as a stand-alone lock. Last month, I gave it another chance, and reconnected the Wink 2 and saw that the lock was still recognized. I saw that the Wink 2 updated itself to a new firmware. It has now been running flawlessly for one month, with battery drain on the lock from 96% to 90%, which seems reasonable for one month of light use. There were no disconnections. I stand by my original rating of two stars for the Wink 2, and will avoid these vendors in future based on this experience. I will reiterate, however, that Schlage did send me a new lock (even as they told me it would not solve the problem), while Wink refused to acknowledge any responsibility. UPDATE October 1 2017 I have been away for over two months, no lost connections, batter fell from 90% to 78%. Problems seem to be resolved at this point. Rating changed to 4 stars.

5/17/2020 - Changing my rating to 1-star. I just found out that Wink will now be charging a monthly fee to use their service. I missed the email notification because I thought it was just junk email. While it's not a shock that Wink is now charging a fee, the reason for the rating change from 5-stars to 1 is that they gave the customers a week to decide what to do. Then they extended it to another week after everyone complained. Basically extortion because if we don't pay the fee we are cut off in that week. The unfortunate thing is that the Wink service has been pretty unreliable lately. The excuse that the fees will now make their service better is wrong considering I purchased the hub under the premise that there were no fees or subscriptions. While we have enjoyed the convenience of having the Wink home automation it's time to make the switch to another provider. We have a very highly automated home and are going to make the switch to Samsung. I'm sure there will be a learning curve and I'm not looking forward to re-programming the many lights and devices in our home, but it's time to move on. The $5 fee isn't terrible, I'm dumping them because of the way Wink handled it. 1/27/16 - Changed my review to 5-stars. Contacted Wink via phone and they provided great customer service. They have not yet been able to resolve my issue with local control operating my devices but the tech support guy said they are looking into it. Good service though. Crossing my fingers for a resolution. I recently decided to jump into home automation and purchased the Wink 2, a couple smart bulbs, garage opener and an outlet to give it all a try. Setup was easy and everything works fairly well. I love the Echo integration. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that there are limitations with the garage opener (GoControl) that prevent the door from automatically opening when I pull into the driveway (would've been cool) using the Wink and a geofence. Oh well, it's no big deal to press a button and the extra security is ok. During my install I experienced an internet outage (cable) and as a result my phone would not communicate with the wink hub (everything on the same wifi in the same subnet). I was under the impression that the settings would not only be saved on the cloud with the Wink 2 but also locally in the event of an outage. I tried looking for information on this "bug" along with instructions on how to check my firmware and have not had any luck. The website is pretty thin in terms of technical information. I sent multiple requests to Wink support asking about this and have not heard anything. Tried the website form and even sent emails. I would've given this 5-stars if customer service would've responded. I'm considering returning everything I purchased if there's no response from Wink. The reason I purchased the Wink 2 was because it was advertised as working locally when the internet was down. I'll send an update to this if I hear from Wink support.

VERY LIMITED. I'm an IT professional and know a few things about computers and technology and perhaps I am disappointed at the VERY limited phone-only interface. I WANT MORE; NO, I NEED MORE. I toiled with programming my own smart home type of setup on a computer (I did one in college a number of years ago), but it was simply not the best option for me at this time. Pros: - Easy to set up. - Looks good. - App doesn't chew up the phone battery. But that's about it... Cons: - Unable to integrate my security cameras with the hub; therefore, cannot take advantage of the PIR motion detectors and camera in one app. I was hoping to eliminate the false notifications with my non-PIR motion sensing alerts, but this was not the case. Limited to only Arlo, Arlo Q, Arlo Q Plus, Dropcam Pro, Nest Cam, Ring Stick Up Cam. What about the hundreds of other quality IP cameras out there??? - Linking two phones to the Hub seems to confuse the Hub. It doesn't know what command (robots) to process and simply doesn't process any commands. Causes me or my girlfriend to walk into a dark home at night, which is a problem... - Related to the above: unable to share robots or any command / shortcut between the phones. They act 100% independently. This is a problem, because I think it would reduce the Hubs confusion related to the having to process two identical commands from different phones. Then the phones could share a single command and it wouldn't cause confusion (it is supposedly stored and processed on the hub). - Some automations require creating several robots on each phone to enable/disable different functions.This could easily be resolved by allowing the IFTTT to have more than 1 IF THIS command. But alas, it doesn't. You are limited to just one IF THIS. You can have multiple THEN THAT commands, but again I found this quite limiting on how I wanted to complete my setup. - No webUI. When I try to log into the Link Hub 2 using a web browser (like thousands of other devices we encounter daily) I get this response, {"description":"not authorized"}. Not cool, not cool at all. I have setup hundreds, perhaps thousands of devices using webUIs of all sorts. The granular control that you get with a webUI makes customizing and advanced setup with these devices possible. The phone app serves a basic useful purpose, but it SHOULDN'T be the ONLY option to connect and setup the hub. Not having a webUI for a device like this is like not having a smartphone or computer for a business person (or simply the average American). I'm sure I will find more pros and cons as I get to use this device more, but I'm hoping I can accomplish more once I receive my Amazon Echo. *EDIT* No more Pros... More Cons found: - Randomly activating robots on both connected phones (doesn't matter if both phones are home, both are away, 1 is home & 1 is away) - Seems to freeze and become unresponsive often (unable to make changes without forcibly killing the app and opening again) - Spinning, spinning, spinning circle [on the app] indicating the device is trying to sync with the hub (but this happens for several minutes before it displays any updates, if at all; even when connected to the same network) - When one phone has been communicating with the hub, it seems to lock out the other phone. This affects every aspect and function including the ability to turn off lights (the most basic of functions for any "smart hub"). The only method I found to unlock the hub and allow the other phone to control functions is to kill the app on the other phone. Talk about stupid programming... - I went through troubleshooting this like crazy to the point I uninstalled the app and reset the hub back to factory and set everything back up again; still it has severe flaws. - Completely unreliable for above mentioned Cons. I learned my lesson and will not jump on something so new and untested again. I simply cannot wait for Wink to [maybe] fix the faulty programming in the app and hub, so I just returned this device and ordered a competitor's smart hub.

The Wink hub itself is pretty good. It looks like it should be easy and parts of it actually are. The setup process is very simple and despite all of it's many downfalls, I'm likely going to keep it. I bought the Wink Hub 2 thinking that it would consolidate my various smart apps down to one, but that's just not going to happen with Wink. If I get 2 or 3 things...ok, 2 things...to work with Wink I guess I'll be happy enough to keep it. The Wink set-up is extremely simple. I must have been done in under 10 minutes. I added my first and only smart device flawlessly--the MyQ garage door opener for Chamberlain. The value to the Wink vs. the Chamberlain app is that the notifications actually work. Sadly, while the Chamberlain app offers a way for you to be notified of actions with the garage door, the app fails so often that it's useless. Just google it and you'll see what I mean. It notifies you sporadically--approximately 5% of the times your door goes up and down. With Wink, I set up robots to determine if the garage door is opening or closing. These were very easy to set up. The app sends me a notification on my phone which is not sufficient for me because I'm not watching my phone 24 hours a day! The solution I came up with is to have the Wink app send me an email, which I now have set up a rule in my Hotmail account to automatically forward to my cellphone provider to convert to text. As a result--the Wink App effectively texts me when the garage door opens and closes. Wink does not offer text alerts, but it emails me. (This seems pretty ridiculous since the world operates on text now.) Thankfully, every cell phone provider offers an address that will convert the email to text. For example Verizon is [email protected], Sprint is [email protected], TMobile is [email protected]. I set up a rule to forward all email from "[email protected]" to my cell provider which gave me what I wanted -- a text when my garage door opens and closes. Beyond that functionality to cover up for Chamberlain's poor app, I'm not finding any real use for Wink. I bought Arlo Pro video cameras because the Wink site shows it's compatible with Arlo. Do NOT be fooled by the websites! Wink does NOT work with Arlo Pro. It works with the OLDER Arlo video cameras that Wink still sells. It does NOT work with the new version and may never. I bought Arlo because it was supposed to be good with Wink. While I now love the Arlo system, I'm still stuck with using a ton of different apps including now, Arlo's app. Arlo's app is fine and in the end, Wink is just pointless except for improving on Chamberlain's poor app. For smart lighting, my home is ancient--1994. The Smart Switches that work with Wink (Levitron) require a ground and neutral wire--my switches have neither. So, Wink can't work for lighting my ancient home. For doorbell, I have a Samsung Galaxy 7 and the Ring Doorbell doesn't work with it. Long story here, but if you google it enough you'll find out the problems here. After a couple of hours of tech support with Ring, it's just clear--my phone won't work with Ring. Since Ring is the only doorbell provider with Wink, I'm out of luck. Can't use Wink because the only doorbell it works with is Ring. Maybe if you have an iPhone, Ring might work with it, but if you've got Samsung--look elsewhere. I will try the Nest thermostat with Wink but i'm not hopeful. Actually, at this point, I just don't even care anymore. In the end, the Wink hub controls the MyQ garage door which is good enough for me. I thought it would be cool if there was a company who had one app that would consolidate many issues but Wink is not that company. The only reason I'm keeping the Wink hub is because the Chamberlain app doesn't even work and I just want to know if someone is opening my garage door.