There’s definitely a sweet spot between convenience and reliability, and it’s not always where the marketing says it is.
You nailed it—marketing tends to oversell the “smart” part and gloss over how finicky these systems can be. I’ve had similar headaches with automated blinds. After a firmware update, they just stopped responding for no obvious reason. Meanwhile, the mechanical shades in my study have been working flawlessly for years. It’s kind of ironic—sometimes the more expensive, high-tech solution adds more points of failure.
That said, I do appreciate what smart systems can offer when they’re stable. There’s something genuinely satisfying about tuning lighting scenes or scheduling climate controls from your phone. But I always keep manual overrides in place where possible. Redundancy isn’t glamorous, but it’s saved me from a few embarrassing moments when guests were over and nothing worked as intended.
It feels like we’re still in that awkward phase where convenience and reliability haven’t quite aligned yet. Maybe one day... but for now, I’m with you: sometimes a good old-fashioned switch is just less hassle.
