Leviton zwave switch reliability?

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1

What are peoples experience with reliability of Leviton switchs? So tired of Jasco dying shortly after warranty’s expired! Thanks

2

I’ve personally had good experience with Leviton installation and usage, but limited long term data which it seems is what you are looking for.

I would expect them to be a safe buy, but they do have the same 2 year warranty period. Some vendors may offer extended warranty.

3

I have purchased and used the Leviton family of Z-wave Plus (and older generation Z-wave) light switches and dimmers pretty much exclusively over the past 6 years. I’ve installed and used them between two different homes, covering I’d say somewhere between 15-20 light circuits each. Older home had a Concord 4 panel and current home uses an IQ Panel 2 Plus.

I’ve yet to experience even a single one of them failing completely, though I have seen a couple of rare quirks over the years:

  1. Light switch (or dimmer; can’t remember) basically factory resets itself and loses Z-wave associations (needs to be removed from controller, learned back in, etc). I’ve experienced this with the same light switch twice over the years.

  2. Dimmer switch just totally locks up with load still on (won’t respond to Z-wave commands, and load can’t be switched off locally (basically have to open/close the breaker to get reset it, but it still retains its full configuration after the fact). I’ve experienced this with the same dimmer switch twice over the years (different one than one from above).

I’ve also used the Coordinating and Matching switches extensively for 3-way circuits, as well. I especially like the Matching switches, with local LED indication that mirrors load on/off or dimmer level, exactly the same way the Z-wave switch/dimmer does - these work very nicely.

I never even considered any of the alternative switches, some of which I feel tend to resemble more CE devices than light switches (some with too-bright indication LEDs / oddball colors - yes, I’m picky!).

I’d recommend the Leviton switches in a heartbeat. The oddball anomalies I noted above are minor and very rare - two occurrences each between a population of 35-40 switches over the course of 5+ years (and with zero resulting in permanent hardware failures requiring replacement) is not bad!

Hope this helps…

4

Thanks for sharing your experience Tarek, that’s exactly what I was hoping to learn. I’m just tired of having periodic hardware failures with the GE/Jasco switches, I’ve used them in several homes over the years and have probably experienced 1/3 of them failing within a year or so after the warranty period expires. Mostly the older generation of z-wave, but it’s rearing it’s head with newer plus generation now.

5

Was comparing prices of Leviton vs Jasco/GE zwave switches, Leviton is around $10 more, but comes with 5 year warranty vs the 2 year Jasco/GE, this is a no-brainer.