At a glance
Expert rating
Benefits
- Offers great flexibility that other switches cannot offer
- Broad ecosystem support, starting with Matter (and GE Lighting’s Cync line)
Disadvantages
- Its most interesting features only work with Cync bulbs and fixtures
- Bulky dimensions allow for difficult fit into an electrical box
- Quite expensive
Our Verdict
The button-laden collection of this otherwise slim smart dimmer can control lighting scenes and colors without relying on the app on your smartphone, but these advanced features only work with other GE Lighting Cync products.
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Give me a smart wall switch, but make it complicated, said no one.
No matter, because the GE Cync Keypad Dimmer Smart Switch is just as complicated as its name. That said, if you’re investing heavily in GE Lighting’s Cync ecosystem, this multi-knob dimmer is worth a look.
Features
The switch supports a maximum load of 450 watts of incandescent bulbs or 150 watts of LEDs, with a maximum draw of 3.75 amps. The switch is quite versatile and can support single-pole, 3-way, and 4-way installations. You will need a neutral wire in the box where you are installing it.
The dimmer is limited to connecting to 2.4GHz Wi-Fi networks, but it doesn’t require a hub and it’s Matter certified, with explicit support for the Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, and Samsung SmartThings smart home ecosystems. The switch also supports GE Lighting’s Savant premium smart home system and app, although they are designed for professional installations.
Installation and configuration
The GE Cync keypad dimmer can be used in single pole or 3/4 way situations.
Christopher Null/Foundry
The GE Cync Keypad Dimmer Smart Switch is an all-pigtail design, with five wires sticking out the back. You’ll only need to connect four in a single-pole configuration; The fifth wire is a traveler wire for multidirectional connections. A large format installation guide provides wiring diagrams for a number of scenarios. If you are configuring anything other than a single-pole connection, you will need to study it carefully. Many different sized wire nuts are included in the box; I still had to use larger ones that I had supplied myself to make all the connections, because the nuts supplied were too small.
You can simply press one of these buttons to set the appropriate mood without taking your phone out of your pocket or relying on a voice assistant.
With five wire nuts (you’ll need one to cover the bare traveler wire if you’re not using it), things get very tight in the electrical box. It took a while to get the switch seated and reasonably against the wall, and even after several tries, I still wasn’t 100% happy with its placement. Plan to spend a fair amount of time and a lot of elbow grease to correctly position the switch. Once installed, a frame attaches to the switch with two small screws. A cover plate with a small GE logo then snaps on top.
Although this switch supports Matter, you will need to use the Cync app to configure the bulk of this switch’s functionality. Onboarding is a simple process, but I found it rather slow and tedious, often requiring a refresh to complete a step, such as locating available Wi-Fi networks. Finally, after nearly five minutes of back and forth, I got through the initial setup process, including a firmware update. I also had no problem connecting it to a Matter network.
Using the GE Cync Keypad Dimmer Smart Switch
Let’s start with the hardware. The large button in the center of the device is a simple power toggle. A pair of up and down buttons underneath control brightness on demand, cycling through 10 levels each time you press. A row of white LEDs at the top of the switch provides a visual indicator of where you are within the brightness range. You can also hold these two buttons to gradually dim or brighten the lights; but as with most dimmers, this method is slow.
With all those wires and wire nuts, it can be difficult to put the GE Cync keypad dimmer back into the electrical box.
Christopher Null/Foundry
The Cync Keypad Dimmer has two additional buttons, which you can’t miss if you looked at any of the photos in this review. These are smaller buttons stacked above the main power button. These two buttons are user configurable, but only how their configuration depends on the other equipment you have installed in your home.
The most basic options of these two buttons will work for anything connected to the switch: using the Cync app, you can configure them to turn on (only) or off (only) the connected load or toggle the on/off state. But the real value comes from configuring these buttons to control either the color of the light or cycle through scenes set up in the Cync app.
In other words, you can simply press one of these buttons to set the appropriate mood without needing to take your phone out of your pocket or engage a voice assistant. It’s a handy feature if you frequently change themes in a room, but using it presents a big problem: the color and scene controls only work with GE Cync smart lights—they don’t even need to be wired to that switch for those buttons to work.
The GE Cync app lets you program the dimmer’s multitude of buttons to change colors and lighting scenes, but this feature works best with GE Lighting’s Cync lighting products.
Christopher Null/Foundry
Unfortunately, GE Lighting didn’t send me any Cync bulbs, so I had little opportunity to test these features. The more generic functions of these buttons (and the switch as a whole) worked well, although half the time the Cync app seems to be intentionally convoluted and confusing, making setup less than intuitive.
TrueImage is another curious feature of the Cync app worth mentioning. It’s not well documented, so I didn’t know exactly what to expect before trying it. Its configuration prompts you to take a photo of your connected light when it is turned off, and a separate photo when it is turned on at full brightness. TrueImage then merges these two images to create a kind of dynamic icon in the Cync application.
Touching this icon will make it darker and lighter depending on the dimmer’s brightness setting, giving you a more nuanced idea of how the room’s lighting will look. It’s a somewhat superfluous feature, but it’s at least a neat trick, and it works much better than I expected.
Should you buy the GE Cync Keypad Dimmer Smart Switch?
Regardless of how it works, the main reason to buy this dimmer over something from the competition, whether it’s a cheaper device like the Tapo or an even more expensive alternative, is if you Also have Cync bulbs from GE Lighting in the room where you intend to install it. Even then, you’ll need to be prepared to live with a busy industrial design that’s more suited to an office building than a typical home.
All that aside, for households that frequently jump between lighting scenes and colors, this type of solution can be practical. The street price of $38 may be high, but it’s much cheaper than a Lutron Diva smart dimmer (which do require a hub). And if you don’t install a light switch in every room, it might not be so bad.
This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart lighting controls.
