Zooz vs Leviton 800 series Zwave Light switch

I would like to add a few more zwave light switches around the house. I now see there is Zooz and Leviton 800 series

Which is the preferred ? Any preferences? Any differences of the 2 brands?

Thankyou in advance

If interested in z-wave LR, the Leviton option doesn't have it.

ETA -- thanks to @jtp10181 and @bertabcd1234 , Zooz stuff enjoys great support (nice drivers) on Hubitat. And Zooz is more proactive and responsive than Leviton with stuff like firmware updates. For those reasons, I would lean toward Zooz.

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That is a question only you can answer. :smiley: There isn't going to be universal agreement on this, as with many similar choices.

But others can provide suggestions if you state what factors would influence your decision (presence or absence of specific features/functionality, price, manufacturer, etc.).

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Zooz is much more feature rich as well. Many more settings and also button events for multi taps.

If you have any 3-ways, I think Leviton has a way to direct wire multiple smart switches together, might be an Aux switch, would have to dig in. For Zooz, you just use dumb switches or a virtual slave wired hot. Can make it cheaper, but the switches wont match exactly if you use the dumb switches. Also dimmer on the slave is not as easy as a direct wired aux switch like some other brands do.

So its going to come down to whats important to you.

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Thanks All

Im gonna give Zooz a try

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@jtp10181 summarized it nicely.

I prefer zooz (better price, better feature set, better vendor support), but I will say I don't really prefer how their 3-way setup works with dimmers specifically. Luckily I almost never dim from the actual switch anyway. But that is a consideration for others.

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From a general point of view, I would consider both to be reasonable choices. I guess the better choice is personal, and depends upon your priorities. For me, the Zooz is a little more feature rich, while the Leviton has a better user experience (particularly when it comes to 3-way configurations).

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My whole house has Leviton Switches and Outlets. So I put in the Levition ZW15S, ZW6HD Dimmers, and ZW4SF Fan speed controller. All the levition switches mentioned come with a "travler" (really just a signal wire) for use in a 3 or 4 way configuration. You need the remote side switch for that capibility though and the remote does not participate in the mesh at all. All the ZW Switches match the the look of the standard Decora switches except for the status LED and work the same. LED status can be adjusted or turned off. Those mentioned work as a switch or 3, or 4 way or "pull chain fan" speed controller as the case may be without a hub and several options can be set from the paddle and/or rocker. On the con side, the switch does not act as a button in that if the switch is on or off, hitting on or off again will not send a signal to the hub. You must go from on to off or off to on before it reports to the hub. What I like about the Leviton z-wave, (also zigbee and wifi versions) is that they match and work like the normal switches including 3 and 4 way without the hub. What the hub adds is automation. I have a zooZ zen37 wall remote I have been playing with and use the zooZ ZSE11 multi sensors. zooZ seems to be good stuff too.

This is actually not correct. Each time you press the top or the bottom, the Levition ZW15S and ZW6HD send a hail to the hub. In response to the hail, the hub sends a basic get to the switch, and the switch responds with a basic report. The newer 800 series behave the same way, except without using hail. They send an unsolicited switch report, regardless of whether the switch is already on or not.

That you do not see anything in the device is a choice made by the Hubitat driver, rather than behavior intrinsic to the switch. The device driver is actively choosing to not generate an event if the newly reported state matches the previously reported state.

For what I need. I just need On and Off. No dimmer or 3way

Thanks for the insight. I came up with that idea when I tried to event trigger on on taps. I wanted to increment a delay variable. They never would trigger unless I first turned off then back to on. What you describe is most likely a simple debounce stragity.

In that case, you don't use the traveler wire which comes taped up. Just the line, load, neutral, and ground.
Just in case. Leviton has a no neutral wire version. Other than being aware of it, I don't know much else about it.

Any chance Leviton will come out with a firmware upgrade to Long Range on its 800's?

Either of my drivers for those devices should send the event, but since it is not a "state change" the hub will filter those from the event log and they wont trigger rules. I also filter duplicates from info logs just to avoid clutter, but it will show in debug logging with a [No Change] tag at the end. Would be a pretty easy mod if one wanted to have every event actually post to the hub, its just a flag that needs to be send when sending the event.

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Yes. I believe it appropriate to generate an event with isStateChange false as you are doing, but the built-in drivers suppress even that. It was one of my early frustrations with Hubitat... I was doing automatic shutoff for closet and service lights, and wanted to be able to reset the timer by pressing the top of the paddle switch. Staff at the time told me that it couldn't be done because the hardware didn't send anything if the switch was already on. A sniffer quickly showed otherwise.

They have been rather silent about that.

Can you name the specific drivers?

An event without a state change will still not help with this, at least not without a wonky subscription I don't think any builtin apps use (not sure I've ever seen the filter parameter in use so it might not even work...). How were you planning on doing this?

I just went thru the same decision-making. Mine light controls are almost all dimmers. I have very few switches.

For multi-way dimmers, I will probably use Leviton because I like the way they work, e.g., on/off/level control from companion switches and LED level indicators. As mentioned, they aren't as feature rich as the Zooz devices. For example, a Leviton double tap on a ZW6HD (or companion dimmer) always results in turning the light on to full brightness. It can't be changed to anything else, and it doesn't support triple taps, etc.

For non-multi-way, I'm leaning towards the Zooz ZEN30 double switch/dimmer. Similar price point to the other Zooz switches/dimmers, but also has the LED level indicators and it has an additional relay button that can be used as a virtual switch that can do many things based on HE rules.

Are you staff?

I don't view filterEvents as wonky, and it works as advertised. I depend upon it as a failsafe detector for sensors that fail to report.

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