If you have Lutron Caseta in your home then you probably appreciate how amazing home automation can be. Until now, Lutron was limited to inside the house but now you can bring home automation powers outside of the house with the Lutron Outdoor Smart Plug. The Lutron Outdoor Smart Plug is completely weather-proof and fully automatable. Read on for our Lutron Caseta Outdoor Smart Plug review.
The outdoor smart plug is controllable with Google, Alexa, and Siri, and it can be operated by remote, smartphone, and with an assortment of rules and scenes. It’s the perfect solution for smarter and more energy-efficient outdoor lights, holiday decorations, and it even pumps and motors up to 1/2 a horsepower.
Design-wise, the Outdoor Smart Plug doesn’t look like much. It’s a mountable power brick with a few inches of durable sealed power cable on each side. The power brick has a glowing LED button. The device is a feat of engineering, but it’s hard to fully appreciate it since it’s all behind the scenes (and inside the brick). It’s built out of polycarbonate with a solid core construction. It’s IP65 weather resistant and safe to leave plugged into an outdoor outlet. It’s built to survive years of outdoor elements including temperatures of -4 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, severe heavy rainfall, and sandstorms. The advice regarding water is to leave it a few inches raised from the ground so it’s not submerged for extended periods of time.
The plug is effortless to use. It works out of the box and can be controlled with the button on the front. You can easily pair a Caseta Pico Remote, which is a nifty little device. The pico remotes can be used as handheld remote or can be mounted to the wall to look and work exactly like a normal light switch. The big kicker for this device is that you’ll need Lutron’s Caseta Smart Bridge to unlock any of the smart features. If you have one, then pairing is also very simple: you just press and hold the outdoor plug’s button and follow some prompts in the app.
With the Lutron Caseta Smart Bridge, you can control whatever is plugged into the outdoor switch in a number of different ways. Caseta works with Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home — so all bases are covered. Prompt your favorite voice assistant to turn the switch on or off. Unfortunately, it’s not dimmable. With the Lutron Caseta app you can add the switch to timed routines, like following a sundown and sunrise schedule, or you can have it follow other routines like geo-fencing and shutting off while you leave the house. Lutron also makes a motion sensor that could be worked in. Finally, with Google, Amazon, and Apple compatibility the options are really endless for integrating your outdoor devices into home automation and control.
Lutron Caseta Outdoor Smart Plug review verdict
We’ve been loving the Caseta Outdoor Smart Switch — it’s a simple way to safely bring home automation outside. For us, it’s nice just having better lighting in our backyard. We’ve mounted a Pico remote light switch inside next to our backdoor and have it set on a timer to shut off at midnight in case we forget. We’re tempted to get another to set up a schedule with our hot water circulation pump. If you have Lutron Caseta or are familiar with consumer home automation then this will be a piece of cake. Without the Lutron Caseta Bridge, you can still pair the Pico remote and you’ll have an inexpensive solution to an indoor switch that controls outdoor lights/devices.
The Lutron Outdoor Smart Switch prices in at $79.95. While that isn’t exactly a bargain, it’s a pretty good price for the peace of mind you get from it, along with its durability, and the home automation capabilities, and compatibility. We’d love to see this switch bundled with a Pico remote or even the smart bridge in the future. Thankfully a Pico Remote costs only about $15.