Graywind Motorized Roller Shades - 100% Blackout Smart Blinds Compatible with Alexa & Google, Waterproof Vinyl Cordless Remote Control with Valance, Custom Size (A-Beige) - Perfect for Bedrooms, Living Rooms & Home Offices

Foreword:As I work from home, I find myself engaging in multiple video conferences and meetings. I am normally not a vain person, but in my very competitive job, I try to maintain appearences, and a part of that is lighting. I wanted something more effective than my cheap vertical blinds which do a poor job of blocking out light when I need my room to be dark, and something I can open remotely so that way I do not have to leave my desk when a new meeting starts. And thus began my multiple month-long search for smart curtains.I learned that companies like hunter-douglas and somfy refused to sell directly to me online, insisting I speak to a distributor/dealer first. That was the fastest turn-off I've ever experienced towards a company.Lutron's Serena brand quoted $737 for the cheapest shades and fabric that matched my dimensions.Ikea's Futyr looked really nice, but they were out of stock, and didn't make a model wide enough to cover my window with a single piece of fabric.This left Yoolax (which offered it for $400), and as I shopped for a yoolax curtain, I noticed they were out of stock of their zigbee controlled motors, but I did stumble across Graywind, which wasn't out of stock, and offered a model with a solar panel and a zigbee controller at a similar price. (I wanted zigbee for security, cost, and ease-of-use reasons. Going with a rf hub is more expensive, and involves setting up some 3rd party device which is a potential security vulnerability to my wifi network if the manufacturer stops releasing security updates for it.) Considering the fact that my electric bill is already higher than it needs to be, I was very excited to get the solar panel equipped model and not add to it.Purchasing:Going through the amazon customizer was fairly simple and straightforwards, although there was a few spelling/grammer mistakes, it was more than clear enough to order the shades customized to my window. I was contacted by an agent on behalf of graywind, and had them change my fabric choice from jacquard white, to jacquard gray.Latency/lead:As advertised, Graywind took roughly 4 business days to manufacture my curtain, and Fedex had it on my doorstep in an additional week. Far from Amazon's 2-day delivery that they offer with prime, but what can I expect for something custom-made across the world?Installation:Unfortunately, the instructions and techniques are designed for 2 people, in that someone needs to hold the shade against the wall while another person uses a pencil to mark along the wall where the mounting hardware needs to be installed. Considering I was doing this by myself, I instead got my tape measure and with a lot of marking and measuring, calculated where my brackets needed to be on the wall without pressing the shade to the wall. However, Graywind's instructions were designed to be used on every surface, in any arrangemant, possibly without the features I took advantage of to make sure my brackets were aligned properly. With that constraint in mind, I cannot fault Graywind's documentation.The documentation implied there was 2 brackets included. I received 3, because I ordered an excessively long unit. Since the brackets clip into a rail-like arrangement on the top of the unit, you could theoretically use 4, 5, 6, etc brackets, and I would have preferred that so I could use adhesives to mount it rather than drilling holes in my apartment's wall. Graywind seemed more than eager to send me additional brackets, when I wrote to them providing feedback, so if you would like to use an adhesive like command strips, make sure to ask for some extra brackets.Finally, I had to install the battery in the remote, which was difficult due to the lack of batteries included in the package. A quick trip to my local supermarket later, and the remote was working.Programming:There were 3 things that needed to be done for programming. 1, Remote pairing. 2, Limit setup. 3, Alexa pairing.Remote pairing went flawlessly. Followed the manual, and it worked on the first try.The unit performed exactly as it should, the only issue is that the manual implied something else. To be specific, it implied that the upper and lower limits are not set and need to be set prior to use. This caused me to spend a half hour trying to get the limits set, and becoming mildly upset when the unit didn't move to the limits I "set".Thankfully, one of Graywind's agents made a post on the Q&A section of these shade's product page, stating that the units come with their limits pre-programmed at the factory. Eventually, it clicked in my head, and I read the manual's guidance for deleting limits, to which it stated that the upper limit cannot be deleted and the unit must be factory reset in order for the change to take place. Whatever, so I factory reset, got my limits set properly, and moved onto the final stage.Alexa pairing was near-flawless. Since I was using zigbee, I'd have to put the device into pairing mode for my Echo system to control it. After mis-reading the instructions, the device not responding, and then properly reading the instructions, I got the unit into pairing mode. Turns out that it either isn't compatible with the zigbee hub in a first-generation echo plus, or the pairing mode only lasts a few seconds, as I put it into pairing and *then* attempted discovery with my echo, which was unsuccessful. No worries, since I had an echo studio in another room, I ran discovery on that, *before* quickly putting the unit into pairing mode. That procedure worked on the first try.Usage/operation:The device isn't particularly fast, taking 25 seconds to move 50 inches. Mind, since this is a roller shade, the speed will slightly increase during the latter portion of the retraction (meaning that 100 inches won't take 50 seconds, but more like 48s, and 25 inches would take 15s instead of 12.5s) due to the material wrapping around the armature increasing its diameter. Still, 25 seconds is more than acceptable to me and for my purposes.During the first 10 or 20 cycles, the unit made a strange rattling noise, which was severely off-putting. Thankfully, whatever was rattling settled in, and the unit now only hums quietly from the motor.The material itself looks nice, and is a fairly good blackout material, easily darkening my room when I want to reduce the incoming light. From what I can tell, the solar panel works and keeps the unit running, although for the first few hours, I had the unit running on a portable battery bank to ensure that the motor wouldn't damage the battery while I fiddled with it. I will update this review if I encounter issues with the panel, but I love not having something else eat up my electric bill, or valuable socket space.Alexa can control the device with the following commands:"Alexa, open/raise (my/the) [device name]", ex "Alexa, open my curtains", "Alexa, raise drapes one", etc."Alexa, close/lower (my/the) [device name]", ex "Alexa, close bedroom curtains", "Alexa, lower the shades", etc."Alexa, open/close/raise/lower (my/the) [device name] to 1-100%", ex "Alexa, open my curtains to 15%", "Alexa, lower shades one to 50%", etc.Percentages are measured in percent open (ex: 15% moves the shade up a little, but 90% will have the shade open almost all the way), and are agnostic to whichever lower/raise command you use, always moving in either direction to the percent specified. The motor is very accurate, and the percentage commands are extremely powerful, especially if your window is facing away from the sun (since then, all the light entering is diffused, reflected light from the outside enviornment) as you can specify percentages to fine-tune the amount of light in a room to your liking.The remote is a bit more clunky and imprecise, and the zigbee remote uses something similar to a touchscreen, rather than buttons with undermounted switches. Consequently, I found myself accidentally pressing buttons on the remote a lot. My solution was to leave the remote set to a different channel (eg: shade is on channel 1, so when im not using the remote, i set it to channel 2), so that way I don't accidentally issue commands. To be honest however, if you have an echo device, or even the alexa app on your phone, that is much easier to use than the remote and I only use it during meetings, when I want to adjust the light without my viewer noticing my vanity.I cannot really comment much on the style or design, as I am very much a function-over-form person, or to be more precise: form should be derived from function. This roller shade functions well, and for that, I am satisfied with it. My only regret is accidentally buying the model with the valance, since it does absolutely nothing for me, but at least its color-matched to the fabric.Overall, I'm very happy with these shades, as they're exactly what I wanted for my room with no substantial issues. If I had more windows that needed new shades, I would definetly buy this model sans valance again. As 400 usd is a tad pricy on my income (although cheap in the smart shades market), I thankfully do not need any more.I didn't see any comments about this working with home assistant so I figured I'd take a risk since it seems to be one of the more affordable motorized shades.Initially I thought it didn't work, but it was just because I didn't read the instructions well enough. To get it into zigbee pairing mode, I had to hold the button for 6 seconds (like the instructions say) but I was letting go once it started to jog but I needed to continue holding it and wait for it to job a second time. Once that happened, it was almost instantly recognized by zigbee2mqtt. I did have to toggle it to reverse direction commands in zigbee2mqtt, but that was a simple checkbox.So if you want (relatively) inexpensive shades for home-assistant, these work well.I have purchased multiple shangrila shade and rollers. The product quality is excellent and the service extremely good. Every time I had a question, Zoe responded very quickly. Great product and great service!My power shade took a while to get, because they are custom made to the customer's order. It exactly fit the dimensions I sent them. The mounting brackets were missing from my package, but I contacted Graywind support and they verified what I needed and mailed the brackets to me right away.Installation was easy, though it's mostly following drawings because they try to avoid use of language as much as possible. The remote is great and the shade operates smoothly and reliably. I'm very happy.First thing in the morning I tell the shade to open and the sun pours in. I haven't charged it yet at all. It must have come fully charged. I've had it for a few months. I struggled a tiny bit to pair it with alexa. I didn't realize it was already paired so I was confused somehow when attempting that but it was more my lack of experience than the shades problem. It looks nice and does a great job blocking out sunlight when I have it closed as well. My bedroom window is raised so it's hard to reach and I was never getting around to opening the curtain and I knew it was kind of unhealthy to have a dark room all the time so this is great. Bonus feature, when I get out of the shower I can tell it to close so it's not awkward going to close it in a towel.These are fantastic! Works great and was not hard installThe physical installation was simple. I had trouble with setting up the remote. I had problems with reading the documentation due to the multiple languages and how my brain just won't let go of the fact that I can't read other languages. So, I made several mistakes and had to email support. They got back to me quickly and provided the correct and helpful answers. Everything setup quickly and easily after the help. I would expect that most people won't have the same problem I had with the documentation.Perfect