Sometimes the debating back and forth in your own head is the worst part, so at least that is settled! And you'll get all the "new" features of the C7 as a bonus.
Anyway, I did test my system out as well. If nothing else, I needed to know how well it would work for my own purposes. My shop is 90-100 feet from the house depending on where I measure, so my estimate was closer than I thought. My only z-wave device on that side of the house is a Zooz dimmer on an interior wall...probably another 8' and a less than ideal angle to penetrate through.
When I tried pairing the Zen17 from the shop it wouldn't pair. So I brought it into the house, paired it, and took it back out to the shop. It did work, but not reliably. Probably about 50% of the time it wouldn't respond or the state change wouldn't make it back to the hub. Then I put another z-wave device (a spare ZEN16) near an exterior wall in my house, at the closest point to the shop (still ~90 ft. away and through two 2x6 exterior walls). Now it works reliably 100% of the time. I'll likely replace my makeshift repeater with a hard-wired device of some sort, but I'm happy with the results.
