Leviton Decora Smart Z-Wave 800 review: It’s OK to say no to Wi-Fi

Best Prices Today: Leviton Decora Smart Z-Wave 800 Dimmer (model ZW6HD)

Smart lighting controls that operate over Wi-Fi are great, because they don’t require a hub; they connect directly to your router. The downside is that they must compete with all the other clients on your home network: Your computers, gaming consoles, media streamers, smart speakers, home security cameras, smart plugs, and many, many more.

I live in a very small home—less than 800 square feet—but there are still more than 80 devices connected to the Eero 6 router in my Ring Alarm Pro. Given that the Eero 6’s practical limit is 128 clients, there just isn’t a lot of room for light switches and dimmers. Hence, my affinity for Z-Wave, the connected home technology at the heart of Leviton’s Decora Smart Z-Wave product line.

I first embraced Z-Wave when I built a smart home from the ground up back in 2007. A Z-Wave hub will take just one slot on your router’s client list while managing up to 232 Z-Wave clients. And unlike Wi-Fi and Zigbee, which both operate in the 2.4GHz radio spectrum, Z-Wave devices use spectrum in the 900MHz frequency range, which is not only a lot less-crowded, but also renders Z-Wave signals less susceptible to being absorbed by a home’s building materials. For the in-wall Leviton Decora Smart Z-Wave dimmer and on/off switch reviewed here, Leviton specifies a range of 50 feet from any other Z-Wave device or your home’s Z-Wave hub.

If you’ve settled on Z-Wave as your smart home ecosystem of choice, no one makes better lighting controls than Leviton.

Unlike Zigbee, Z-Wave is not part of the Matter ecosystem—and I honestly don’t care. I’m not throwing shade at Matter here; I just haven’t found that standard to be critical to how my smart home operates. I’m an iPhone user, and it would be great to have all my smart home devices incorporated into my Apple Home app, but I’m also an Alexa user and I use voice commands spoken to my Echo smart speakers far more often than I pull out my smartphone and tap on its screen—or summon Siri—to operate my smart home devices.

Given that the various generations of Z-Wave comprise an installed base of more than 100 million devices, according to Silicon Labs, it’s just a matter of time before someone comes out with a Z-Wave-to-Matter bridge. I’m not only willing to wait for a Z-Wave-to-Matter bridge, but I’m also not convinced I’ll ever really need one.

Specifications

Both the Decora Smart Z-Wave Dimmer 800 Series (model ZW6HD) and the Decora Smart Z-Wave Switch (model ZW15S) use the latest-generation Z-Wave 800 chipset, which is backward-compatible with every previous version of Z-Wave, and the Z-Wave Plus protocol. As for the Z-Wave hub I use, I chose a Vivint Smart Home panel as the foundation for my first smart home in 2007, and I had it installed in my new home when I moved from California to the Pacific Northwest in the fall of 2023.

You don’t need a professionally installed smart home system to use Z-Wave devices, of course; there are many, many DIY alternatives, including Ring Alarm Pro, LG’s Homey line, Home Assistant, Samsung SmartThings (Samsung’s earlier hub and Aeotec’s version that is; the newer Samsung SmartThings Station doesn’t have a Z-Wave radio).

Perhaps the most important thing you need to know about these Decora Smart products is that they depend on the presence of a neutral wire in the box where they’ll be installed. If you don’t have that and can’t bring a neutral wire to the box, you might want to consider one of Lutron’s Caséta or Diva Smart products. They also depend on a hub—Lutron’s own, which isn’t compatible with a Vivint system—but they don’t depend on neutral wires.

Both the dimmer and the switch can handle incandescent loads up to 600 watts, LED and CFL (compact fluorescent) loads up to 300 watts, and MLV (magnetic low voltage) loads up to 600VA (volt amps). These are both paddle-style switches that come with white paddles mounted on the device that you can swap out with an ivory paddle that comes in the box. If you want something other than white or ivory, you can buy color-change kits in light almond, gray, brown, or black for about $4 each.

The industrial designs of the dimmer and switch are necessarily slightly different. Both have a small green LED centered beneath their paddles that glows when the device is receiving power. These make the switches easy to find in the dark. The Dimmer has a stack of seven green LEDs to the left of the paddle that light up in sequence when the switch is turned on (lighting up from bottom to top), turned off (from top to bottom), or when the dimming level is changed (the LED representing the brightness level glows brighter than the other six). Dimming the connected load is accomplished by pressing and holding the bottom of a narrow toggle on the right-hand side of the paddle; doing the same to the top of the toggle increases the light output. The vertical orientation of the dimmer mechanism is an improvement over the horizontal toggle on earlier-generation Z-Wave dimmers.

Installation and setup

I installed both switches as single-pole devices, but both can also operate in 3-way scenarios where the connected load can be controlled by a switch—or switches—at other locations in the room. In a 3-way installation, however, you’ll need to purchase one of Leviton’s “companion” switches: the Leviton DD00R Wired Dimmer Companion or the DD0SR Wired Switch Companion (street priced at about $23 and $17 respectively).

The Decora Smart Z-Wave dimmer and switch both have pigtails (line, load, neutral, traveler, and ground) that you’ll connect to the electrical wiring in your home using the provided wire nuts. While both devices are considerably bulkier than their dumb counterparts, I had no problem stuffing them side by side back into box after I’d made the required connections.

Both switches come with two-piece wall plates that hide the screws that attach them to the switches (you screw one piece to the switch and then snap on the second piece that’s exposed to the room), but I couldn’t use them because I installed both switches in the same box. I made a run to the hardware store to buy a conventional 2-gang wall plate, which cost less than $3. I could have opted for one of Leviton’s “screwless” wall plates, but the store didn’t stock them and one would have cost more than twice as much as the conventional plate, even on Amazon.

The next step is to enroll the devices to your Z-Wave smart home hub of choice. Doing so with a Vivint smart home panel requires contacting customer support, which I did via online chat, and asking them to provide access to the installer’s menu on the control panel. Once you’ve provided your verbal password, they’ll unlock the panel and provide the installer password needed for the next step. You won’t need to involve anyone else if you have your own Z-Wave hub. In either scenario, you’ll initiate pairing on the hub, then push a button on the switch to add the device to the hub’s Z-Wave routing table. Rinse, lather, repeat for each new Z-Wave device you wish to add to your system.

Performance

There’s not a lot to say about the performance of the Leviton Decora Z-Wave switch, other than it works. I connected it to pair of dumb BR30 LED ceiling lights in my hallway, and it dutifully turned them on and off: at the switch itself, with the Vivint app and at the physical Vivint control panel, and with Alexa voice commands (I need to say “Alexa, tell Vivint to turn on—or off—the hallway,” but that’s a Vivint thing). You can do the same with a “Hey Google” command if your smart home revolves around Google Home.

The same is true of the dimmer, except that I can specify in the Vivint app, control panel, or as part of my voice command the percentage of brightness at which I want the twin LEDs in the connected ceiling fixture to glow). More importantly, the dimmer control to the right of the primary paddle smoothly dimmed and brightened the connected LED bulbs and the corresponding green LEDs to the left of the paddle accurately displayed the brightness level. Tapping the paddle to turn the bulbs does so instantly but tapping it to turn them off gradually dims them until they’re off—after a little more than 2 seconds. At no point did any of the LED bulbs flicker or behave erratically.

This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart lighting controls.

Should you buy the Leviton Decora Smart Z-Wave 800-series?

If you’ve settled on Z-Wave as your smart home ecosystem of choice, no one makes better lighting controls than Leviton. The Leviton Decora Smart Z-Wave Dimmer 800 Series (model ZW6HD) and the Decora Smart Z-Wave Switch (model ZW15S) feature the latest generation of Z-Wave 800 chips, and they’re robustly built, easy to install, and compatible with a wide range of smart home and home security hubs.

While Leviton doesn’t offer Z-Wave 800 in-wall outlets or fan-speed controllers, or plug-in dimmers and smart plugs with the latest generation of Z-Wave silicon, it does offer those device types with previous generations of Z-Wave technology, and those products are fully interoperable with these new ones.

Leviton is one of the largest manufacturers of smart lighting controls, and it was one of the earliest adopters of Z-Wave technology. You can buy its Z-Wave 800 smart dimmer and switch with confidence.

Best Prices Today: Leviton Decora Smart Z-Wave 800 Dimmer (model ZW6HD)