Leviton DZ15S vs GE Enlighten 47336?

Devices & Integrations
1

We have quite a few Leviton switches and dimmers in our house, and we want to do another wave of automation. I see that GE has come out with some new Enlighten switches that have a smaller footprint in the box, which is definitely a plus, but I don’t know if that is 20% then their previous version, or 20% smaller than the industry. I also have experience with the quirks of Leviton (occasional offline issues), but overall they have been working fine.

I was hoping to get some input as to whether the GE Enlighten 47336s are an improvement or just more of the same? They are almost the exact same price, so cost is not a determining factor.

Anyone have a thought on Leviton DZ15S vs GE Enlighten 47336?

2

At this point, if I were buying new zwave switches for my own home, I would require at a minimum S2 security support, and I would have a strong preference for series 700 switches (also called “z wave plus V2”). The technical improvements are significant over prior generations.

Aeotec has a good page giving all the details on the improvements, even though they themselves don’t make all in one switches

IIRC, neither of the switches you listed meet that criteria. :thinking:

So instead I would be looking at zooz which has series 700 switches which are very popular in the community.

Zooz is the house brand for The Smartest House.

3

WOW I am glad I asked!! The Zooz switches are even cheaper!

So ZEN71 for single pole switch and ZEN72 for single pole dimmer?

We have an older home, so our 3 ways don’t have neutral wires, which is quite a bummer. Apparently, the code changed a year after we built…UGH.

Thank you so much for the help!!!

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4

I know some of the Zooz dimmers do not need a neutral wire, but most simple on/off switches do. You’ll need to check each model description, or write to the smartest house support folks, they are usually very helpful. :sunglasses:

BTW, if you need 10 or more switches you can also ask them about a quantity discount, they sometimes have that available. No promises, but it’s worth asking.

5

Not sure if this helps or not but I just installed 2 Zooz Zen72 dimmers in a 3 way set up with only 1 neutral.
My primary switch has a neutral and the secondary box doesn’t. With detailed instructions from the Smartest House I rewired the secondary box and paired the switches through association to so I have complete on/off dimming from the both boxes. They also sell a momentary switch for the secondary box if you don’t want to use association. FYI their support team is AMAZING!

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Inovelli dimmers will work without neutrals.

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My electrician says our single poles have a neutral wire, just not our three-ways? I am definitely not a wiring person. I have replaced two receptacles and one switch, but I’d really rather pay a professional.

I ordered the Zooz switches and hopefully they will be awesome. I did see some Amazon comments about needing them to be close to the hub, and since these will be the switches will be quite far from the hub that has me a bit concerned, but fingers crossed. I also saw comments about a delay when hitting the switch and not being able to use the switch on the wall of the internet is down. I hope those reviews are not accurate…have you experienced those problems?

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To me, that doesn’t make any sense. When you are operating the switch at the switch, you are typically switching over the wired connection and whether or not the hub is connected to the Internet is of no consequence.

There is a way to associate switches not physically together via Zwave but I’m not even sure that would have an issue if the hub didn’t have a connection.

9

Zwave Association will work even if the hub is unplugged. It’s one of the reasons it’s such a good way to do a three-way switch. It’s just direct communication between the auxiliary and the master. :sunglasses:

There are two ways to set up the switches.

One) allow the switch to physically control the circuit just like a regular switch would. All you’ve done is allow the ability to turn it on wirelessly.

In that set up, the switch will work just fine manually even if you remove the hub altogether, The same way a dumb switch would.

If you have it set up in a three-way with either a physical traveler wire or using zwave association, that will also continue to work even if the hub is not working or the Internet is out.

HOWEVER— if you set up a “virtual three-way“ just using a smartthings automation, which some people do, then that will only work if the automation is working, which might require the Internet or at least require the hub.

  1. a more recent innovation is to set up the switch so that it does not work the way a dumb switch does, that is turning off the switch does not cut the power to the fixture. These are almost always used when you have a wall switch and a smart bulb and you want the bulb to retain power even if the switch has been turned off.

It is possible to do this with Zwave direct association, but only if you have a Z wave smart bulb, which almost nobody does. Instead, people have zigbee or Wi-Fi or Bluetooth smart bulbs.

In that case, this “dummy mode“ or “smart bulb mode“ has a switch which is wired to bypass the circuit for the fixture. When you turn the switch on it sends a signal to the hub which sends a signal to the smart bulb. When you turn the switch off same idea.

This works great for smart bulbs, but it does mean that you might need the Internet and you definitely need the hub or the dummy switch just becomes a dummy and doesn’t do anything.

So… it all depends on how you said it up. If you set the switch up to work with dumb bulbs, then you’re almost always going to be in the first configuration, and it’s going to work just like a dumb switch if the Home Automation system is not working or the Internet is out.

But it is possible to set up the switches in the second configuration, and then you just have to understand what the vulnerabilities are. :thinking:

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They don’t need to be close to the hub, I’m not sure what those people were talking about. The whole concept of zwave is a “mesh“ system where most mains power devices can pass along messages for other devices which are further away.

Read post 11 in the following thread, then go up to the top of the thread and read the whole thing, and you’ll understand how all this works. Click on the topic title of the following post and it will take you directly to post 11. :sunglasses:

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11

I’ve got a number of multi-gang boxes, some of which have multiple circuits. Changing 3 or 4 dumb switches or dimmers in a single box to smart versions was just short of impossible until the new, smaller devices came along.

For what it’s worth, I’ve stopped adding Z-wave devices, instead going with Zigbee. GE/Jasco has both Z-wave and Zigbee devices in the smaller form factor.

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Based on this advice, I ordered 5 Zooz switches and got them installed today. The electrician had to add a “neutral tail” in each box, so I am super glad I didn’t attempt this on my own.

I set up 5 new Zooz switches and the S2 security failed for all of them. Some times they asked for the QR code, some times they did not, but they all say that S2 failed. I was scanning the QR code from the box because I actually didn’t see one on the switch.

Kinda disappointing that I picked Zooz because they support S2 and yet none of them actually ended up secured. And there is a slight delay from clicking the switch and the light turning on that the Leviton switches don’t have.

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I’m sure that’s very frustrating. :disappointed_relieved: Check with their support, you should definitely be able to add them with S2. Many people in the community have.

https://www.support.getzooz.com/home/

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And I didn’t mean that to sound at all aggressive or pointed at JDRoberts!! I do appreciate the recommendation! And the electrician said these were so much easier to install. The instructions were definitely geared to homeowners not professionals

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15

I just added a Zooz 7x series switch last weekend to ST with S2 and it worked fine. QR code was on the switch face. Did a “scan nearby”, scanned qr code, worked first try.

I already had the DTH installed, perhaps that’s your issue?

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I’m going to thread jack a bit (Slightly, it was mentioned by @automation_noobie_41 )

It’s been awhile since I’ve messed with Smarthings in a way that has required the forums. Possibly 4 years. Not that I haven’t used it, I just have the system the way I like it, and things just work. (I know, I just cursed myself). Hi @JDRoberts , you helped me greatly the first time around.

Doing a small renovation on my house. Perfect time to update the switches in the renovation area.

Currently have the old model GE/Jasco switches in the rest of the house. (No dreaded blinking blue light) but one thing that has always bothered me is there is a noticeable lag from when you click the switch to when the light turns on.

So does anyone else have the Zooz 7x series, and have a lag? @csstup ?

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17

Lag of up to two seconds on a zwave switch is considered normal. But it will be noticeable to humans after about half a second.

It varies a lot depending on local architecture and the strength of your Network, so it’s rarely a matter of the device model.

If Smartthings had better mapping tools, we could do some diagnostics, but it doesn’t, so not much we can do on that.

If latency drives you crazy, I would move away from mesh altogether and go to Lutron. JMO. :sunglasses:

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Just a sec… are you saying there’s a latency from when you manually push the switch on the wall? And they are wired to control that circuit?

OK, that’s not mesh. The only time I see that on a Z wave switch is if it’s a switch that can also do double tap and it’s waiting to see if you are going to tap a second time. Otherwise, it should work just as quickly as any dumb switch on the same circuit. You would only see lag when you were dealing with network messages. :thinking:

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I just installed a Zen76 (700 series on/off switch) for our exterior lights and don’t notice a latency or lag from toggle press->lights on. Note that lag can come from a bunch of different places:

  • If you’re testing for latency at the physical toggles, if the device supports scene tapping, it may need to buffer inputs before deciding what action to take (it has to wait for a double tap delay before deciding you meant single tap). Inovelli switches have that set to about 700ms, which I do notice. They offer a parameter to disable that delay on the physical toggles when you’re not using multi tapping.
  • LED lights can sometimes have a slight lag as their power supply capacitors charge and the light turns on enough not to flicker. This varies from manufacturer and even within the same line. My wife is bothered by the delay on GE’s Reveal LED BR30 bulbs when using dumb standard switches. My guess is that lag is actually similar to the rate an incandescent bulb would ramp up, but because the LED tends to jump from OFF to a 15-20% on level, you notice it more. Try installing incandescents and see if you notice the same lag.
  • And of course as @JDRoberts was mentioning, lag for Zwave can be all over the map based on mesh and devices and such. Isolate the direct interaction and maybe swap bulbs and see what you can narrow down as where visual lag is being introduced.
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Our Leviton switches are immediate. The new Zooz ZEN71’s we just installed have a delay. I will say that they difference is that the Leviton switch is a rocker that clicks when pushed like a traditional switch and the Zooz is a more of a push button that is clearly a replacement. I guess I can’t explain the difference, but there is a small delay that I agree is likely because the switch is waiting to see if you are going to push it multiple times. I’m sure well get used to them, but it was a surprise.

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