Lowe’s did release a new line of their Iris models at the beginning of 2018. The new models have the same primary model number, but the suffix has changed from a plain “L” to “L2”
According to the user guide in the box, the new models are certified for ZHA 1.2, but even so, there have been multiple reports in the forums for the last few months of people who have had some problems getting the -L2 suffix ones to pair. However, once they did pair they appeared to work fine.
I believe the first discussion here of the new models was in the following thread in January:
The differences are most visible for the key fob, where the icons are different:
But there are some cosmetic differences in the cases for several of the others, which so far definitely include the button, the smart plug, the motion sensor, and the contact sensor. I’m not sure about the keypad.
The new line has been officially acknowledged by Lowes support in multiple channels, including on their Twitter feed:
So this is definitely a new line, But Lowes themselves are being coy about what the differences are. Typically when a home automation company keeps the same primary model number, it means the FCC license hasn’t changed. Which should mean it’s a firmware difference for a feature they aren’t ready to release yet. Maybe something to do with their new pro monitoring. But we’ll see.
As far as telling them apart, that’s what model numbers are for. 