Leviton DZPA1-2BW Decora Smart Plug-in Outlet with Z-Wave Technology, White, Repeater/Range Extender

This works great, once I got it properly installed. However, that took 3 days and about 7 phone calls to Leviton support. Thats mostly because I was doing a 3-way installation where one box has the load and line and the other box only has a 3-wire bundle (this is called a dead-end box). The instructions only cover a 3-way where one box has the load and the other box has the line. The diagram in the instructions also cost me hours of head-scratching- Im not an electrician, so maybe its my fault, but hopefully you can learn from my experience. Here are some tips and detailed instructions, based on my electrical setup. Maybe I can save you some time and frustration. 1. Put the connections in under the terminal plates. For some reason, their online video shows the method of wrapping each connection around the terminal screw. But getting the wires wrapped tightly was not always easy, and making changes was time consuming. Just stick the flat wire in under the plate and be done with it! 2. If, like me, you are not an electrician, use the wiring diagram for the single pole application for your dimmer and ignore the diagram for the dimmer in the 3-way. If you are looking at the front of your switch, you will see that your line black (hot/from power) goes to the black screw on the right top. The neutral (white) goes to the silver screw on the left top. And the load black (to the lights) goes to the red screw on the left bottom. If you compare the two wiring diagrams, youll see that the position of the YL/RED terminal appears to switch from the right to the left side of the switch. I thought this had something to do with the way the 3-way circuit worked. It doesnt. It has to do with some technical writer who wanted to draw a straight line from YL/RD to YL/RD. The customer support agent who finally helped me realize this critical mistake chastised me for not looking at the labels of each terminal. These labels are on a sticker on the back of the box, however, so if youve connected your ground, its really difficult to see the back of the box. 3. If you are installing a 3-way, make sure you get the DD00R-DLZ remote. DO NOT GET THE DD0SR. One Amazon page has a chart that says the SR is compatible. It is definitely not. 4. If you call customer support, realize not all agents are equally capable of helping you. One agent told me it was impossible to install this switch in a 3-way dead end setup. Luckily, I had already talked with 2 other agents who said it was possible, so I corrected him. He also said that I could leave out the line neutral, because it was unnecessary. Guess what? The line (power/from circuit breaker) neutral is absolutely necessary to complete the circuit. 5. In a 3-way dead-end setup, heres how you will have to connect the two switches. First, make sure you have a 3-wire bundle running between the two switches (this actually means 4 wires including the ground). Mine are black, white, and red, so I will refer to them using those colors, but as long as you have three wires and a ground, youre good to go. On the top right (Black terminal), I have the black line (power/ hot) under one side of the clamp and the Black Traveler that goes to box 2 under the other side of the clamp. Two wires- one terminal. Below that terminal, on the bottom right, I have the Red Traveler that goes to box 2 under the clamp of a silver screw (this is the YL/RD terminal). On the bottom left, on the red screw (RD terminal), I have the black load (goes to my lights). For the final terminal, on the top left (the WH terminal), I had to use a wire nut to clamp together the White/ Neutral line (from the power) with the White/ Neutral Traveler that goes to Box 2 AND a pigtail (a short piece of wire). The pigtail is then connected under one side of the WH clamp and the White/Neutral Load (goes to lights) is under the other side of the WH clamp. Two wires- one terminal. One agent told me I could pigtail all 4 wires together, but it was easier to just connect 2 wires to the terminal. 6. The other box was easy peasy, once I had Box 1 straightened out. The Black Traveler goes to top right BK terminal, the Red Traveler to the bottom right YL/RD terminal, and the White/ Neutral goes to the top left WH terminal.

I bought mine used from Amazon Warehouse and it works just fine. It paired without any issues to my Vera Edge. The only complaint is the range is kind of lacking. If I dont position it just right where its located, the Edge will lose sight of it. This is an issue with a lot of my devices here in PR, though.

09/11/17 Edit: * Restored the review to 4 stars -- the problem behavior I noted in the 08/31/17 vanished after a few days, and the switch now responds normally/quickly on the first try when using Alexa. 08/31/17 Edit: * Lowered to 3 stars after a few days of use -- when attempting to control this device via Alexa/Smartthings it often fails on the first try with the response Sorry, <device name> is not responding.. If I try again immediately, it works. Not sure this has anything to do with the particular switch, but currently none of my other devices behave this way. Original review: * Good price -- $35.99 which I purchased, free Prime delivery. * Staightforward installation -- though this is ZWave Plus, it doesnt appear to be any smaller than previous generation/competitor switches. Still tight to fit into existing switch boxes. * Paired easily with Smartthings V1 hub. * Much louder click in operation than older GE/Jasco switches installed in my home.

So I have worked with numerous smart switches, some even that need to be installed, and this is the easiest to deal with. Dimming is smooth and doesn’t jitter, and setup was easy. I use smart things and that integrates with Alexa. Since it’s also dimmable, you can tell Alexa to turn on to a percentage. Anyways if you’re looking for an easy way to turn on and off lights and integrate some plug in lights to your smart home, this will make it easy! I got 3, I put one in my bedroom, one in my dog room, and one in my living room! Now my dog knows when I get home and has a light that turns on automatically when I’m gone.

I welcomed the new design over the older Levitons (like the VRMX series): Instead of a single paddle, its now a rocker (great if you cannot see the light youre switching like an outdoor garage light). The dimmer rocker is also a huge improvement over the old horizontal dimmer that was next to impossible to engage (you had to push hard with your fingernails). I have an older hub (vera), and the switch can pair in legacy mode. I was able to do so relatively easily. The bad: not all the functions are accessible through the paddle. You have to program some of the features over zWave (like the dim rates). Its not a huge deal, but Im puzzled why they made that choice. Another annoyance is if youre dimming a light (pressing down on the dimmer rocker), instead of stopping at the minimum dim-point, the switch will turn off. All in all, its nice, but could be better.

Ive converted all 5 circuits of our outdoor lighting (LED BR30 + LED Edison Bulbs) to these dimmers. They integrate perfectly with Ring and/or Alexa. They manually dim simply and remember previous dim settings with ON/OFF simplicity. Ring/Alexa allowed me to set routines with dimming +/- 1% with time schedules and rate of dim schedules. Simply brilliant. The Z-Wave integration with the Ring base station gives excellent connection reliability and much less power usage vs WiFi. Worth the extra money over WiFi dimmers. You will of course likely need new wall switch plates. Just be sure your wiring has a neutral connection (modern electrical code since at least the 1990s). Look for a bundle of white wires connected together to a single wire nut in your switch box. Be prepared to make a 6 white 14 AWG pigtail to connect to this bundle when installing for each switch.

Once I figured out my wiring situation (red, white, black) I was able to get it working and connected to my SmartThings hub super easy. Didn’t realize it was a rocker switch but I can understand why it is. Love being able to make sure (schedule) my garage lights to turn off automatically at 1am. That’s the main reason I bought it.

Got this to control some kitchen lighting with our wink hub. Setup was incredibly easy. Installation was bought because the unit is really deep and sits almost all the way back in a standard electrical box. Packing the wiring and the switch in a box was nearly impossible, but its worth the effort. The switch paired perfectly with our Wink hub and works every time. You can control lighting with the switch itself or with the app on your phone. Seems to be well made and well designed. Cant attest to how it functions with other hubs, but with the Wink, we are happy.

The directions dont cover how to rewire common three way switch wiring. The switch needs to be installed in the box with the load (this is stated clearly in the directions). The tricky bit is to tie the black (second) traveler to the hot wire on the remote in the box with the hot wire so that there is an always hot in the box with the switch. Im sure this is no sweat for electricians but for this consumer there was some head scratching. Also note that these switches have a quiet but noticeable click when switching both manually and by z-wave. Other than that inclusion in the z-wave network was a easy.

Ive installed over 40 dimmers, 13 of them become unresponsive to manual or zwave control and can only be reset via the circuit breaker or airgap. This in unacceptable behavior. No real solutions from levitons support team either. Stay clear of leviton smart switches go for lutron casetta, zooz or inovelli instead. I really wanted to love these switches but leviton screwed up.