I tried Amazon’s best-selling smart switch to power my home, and they’re seriously useful

pros and cons

Pros

• Can push and pull switches, for total bidirectional control
• Nothing to wire into the mains and no electrician needed
• Works with or without a hub.

Cons

• Fitment can be a little fiddly at times
• The VHB tape isn't the best at sticking to curved surfaces
• There's only one spare bit of tape in the kit.

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Home automation is a wonderful thing. I love that I can control so much of my life from my smartphone. But let's be honest, this automation also made me lazy — so lazy that I now resent some of the simplest tasks.

Especially when that task is something as trivial as flipping a switch. Doubly so if some electrician put that switch in an awkward, hard-to-reach spot.

Well, good news: switch flipping is officially a thing of the past for me, thanks to SwitchBot. 

As the name suggests, SwitchBot is a device that presses switches for you. (Yes, we've reached the point in human history where we have robots for button-pushing. What a time to be alive.) 

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And while I'm not usually a fan of sticking random attachments onto things, because, honestly, it feels like a Band-Aid solution, I also have to accept that replacing a switch isn't always feasible. Maybe the switch is specialized, absurdly expensive, or attached to hardware that can't easily be tampered with without voiding warranties (like the switches on the back of my 3D printers).

This is where SwitchBot comes in like a tiny mechanical hero. It's a battery-operated “finger” (yes, really) that you stick to a switch. This finger then lets you control the switch through the SwitchBot app (iOS and Android). 

How it works

SwitchBot offers two modes of operation:

1. Bluetooth Mode: The simplest and cheapest option. All you need is SwitchBot. You can control the device directly via Bluetooth, no extra hardware required.
2. Remote Control Mode: For this mode, you'll need to add a SwitchBot Hub to your setup. The hub connects the SwitchBot to your Wi-Fi network, allowing you to control it from anywhere in the world. (Because pressing a button from the other side of the planet is peak laziness, and that's something I can get behind.)

Another thing I like about SwitchBot is that you don't have to dive into the deep end right away. Start small with just a SwitchBot or two, and if you eventually need to press buttons from outside Bluetooth range (my test suggested about 75 yards with a clear line of sight, or 10 to 15 yards indoors), you can add the hub. 

The nitty-gritty details

SwitchBot is powered by a replaceable CR2 battery, which should last about 2 years if you use it a couple of times a day. The device is built to exert around two pounds of force, which is plenty enough to break a nail and bruise your finger (ask me how I know this…) and more than enough to operate most common household and office switches, unless you're trying to operate something ridiculous. 

There was one light switch that SwitchBot couldn't operate. On inspecting the switch, I found it was old and jammed with dust and dead spiders. 

You attach the SwitchBot using 3M VHB double-sided tape. You even get a spare piece in the box, in case your first attempt goes sideways, or you decide later to move the device. You can always buy more tape and cut it to fit. The kit also includes handy little attachments that allow the SwitchBot to pull a switch, not just push it. 

Oh, and if you position it just right, the SwitchBot can operate two switches at once. That's right — one bot, two buttons.  In short, the SwitchBot is efficiency at its very best. 

A couple of caveats

If you're like me, you'll have to fight the urge to put a SwitchBot on every switch in your home or office. While I'm not opposed to making your life as easy as possible, there are some switches you shouldn't automate.

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Don't attach a SwitchBot to a breaker or isolator switch. These aren't things you should need to control remotely, and someone might use the isolator to cut the power to work on something. Being able to flip that type of switch remotely isn't safe. 

I did end up making some custom 3D-printed frames for a couple of switches because they had curved faces and I wanted a better fit (and I like using my 3D printers!). This approach was more something I wanted to do rather than something I needed to do to make it work.

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If you want a robot to operate buttons and switches on a PC, the SwitchBot might not be your best option (because it's one more ecosystem and yet another app to think about), and you might be better off with a different bot — the FingerBot. 

This device is part of a larger GL.iNet KVM (keyboard, video, and mouse) ecosystem and requires a Comet or Comet Pro remote KVM-over-Internet box to control it. This approach is a better solution to revive crashed PCs.

ZDNET's buying advice

A SwitchBot is currently about $25 (down from $30 thanks to a 15% discount), and hubs start at about $35. The device is a great solution for those switches you can't (or don't want to) replace with a smart alternative for whatever reason (usually because you don't want to open sockets or delve into the wiring). 

SwitchBot is also good for switches built into other things, like a coffee maker or a PC (hold that thought, I'll get back to PCs shortly). I also like that all I need to move the SwitchBot is a new bit of 3M VHB tape, and I'm good to go.