Smartwings Zigbee Shades
I realized it's been two and a half years since I bought my first Smartwings shade, and I now have 19 of them in my house. So I wanted to share a bit about my experience, including the good and the bad.
First some history: I previously had a Z-Wave network at my old house, and I went with Zebrablinds shades. They were decent, and when I sold my house and started all over at my new house in 2021, I even bought one set of Zebrablinds Z-Wave shades for an immediate need in a bedroom. Fast forward a couple years though and Zebrablinds had gone out of business. I also decided to consolidate on Zigbee instead of Z-Wave: somewhat of a tangent there, but although I think Z-Wave is actually the better technology, the industry has really consolidated on 2.4ghz (and sorry but Thread is not polished enough yet) so I feel like that ship has sailed.
Anyway, at my new house, I started getting frustrated with the previous owners' shade situation. It's a large house, and we have four of these three-pane sliders:
The previous ones were cellular shades with pull strings. I'm not exaggerating when I say it would literally take me about 5-6 minutes just to close all the shades for the sliders, not to mention the rest of the windows in the house. It basically just led to never closing the shades because we were too lazy to do it, even though it does provide a little bit of insulation and coziness in the winter.
So I went looking and found these Smartwings roller shades:
I was a little worried about them holding up, but the fabric feels indestructible. In fact, the style of the head rail on these changed at one point between two orders of mine. When I contacted Smartwings to complain that they didn't match, they sent me a free replacement. With nothing to do with the old one, I trashed it. I tried to rip the fabric apart and literally could not tear them they are so strong. They've also held up pretty well to dirt, just requiring a little wipe down if they get dirty. And we're pretty happy with how they look, including the fabric headrail.
I bought a dozen of these for the sliders and other windows around the house and have been pretty happy with them in main living areas. One problem I encountered though is I bought a few for a guest bedroom. Unfortunately, while they look nice, they really don't block enough light due to the gaps around the edges:
And while they do sell side rails and light blockers, I really don't like the look of them.
So for the next bedroom, I went with their cellular shades instead:
While there's still a bit of a gap, it's much smaller and blocks the vast majority of light, so I'm pretty happy with them.
Next came our primary bedroom, though. It has one of the three-panel slider doors in it, that goes out to a balcony. Cellular shades don't work there because the span is too large, and separating into multiple would leave gaps in the middle, where you can't even install side rails. So I decided to go with a set of curtains that spans the entire wall:
I was pretty nervous about this one, as these are really expensive with such a large span, but we're super happy with how they turned out. They dramatically change the look and feel of the bedroom, with a much warmer, cozier feel. And they do a pretty good job of blocking most of the light coming in.
As for the Zigbee radios themselves, they're pretty good and have been working well in Home Assistant. The default configuration is backwards, where the open command closes and the close command opens. But you can flip it with a sequence command on the remote (you really have to read the manual!). I have most of them set up with automations that open at 8AM and close at sunset, fully automating the previous several minutes of string pulling.
I have had one issue with the Zigbee devices that I'm still not sure if it's my network or these shades, but I do think it's the shades. Once in a while, one of the shades will get into a weird state where it'll report its status of open/closed if I use the remote, but it won't respond to Zigbee commands. It eventually fixes itself, but I haven't been able to figure out what causes it or reliably find a way to repair it when it does happen. None of my other Zigbee devices show a similar behavior, so I do think it might be the shades. Unfortunately, they also don't seem to have any firmware updates so I don't know if they even support OTA firmware updates, which is a little concerning.
At every shade (or shade group), I have a 5 channel remote mounted on the wall for local control:
This works well enough, but I do wish they had a simpler, smaller, two button remote since this is a little large. Maybe they'll come out with one later (I've given them this feedback).
One more negative thing I want to add is I do find their website pretty confusing to navigate. It's not always obvious what the difference is between some of their models, and their stock pictures are not very helpful.
Lastly, let's talk about battery life. I've been pretty impressed. I don't use the solar panel, as I don't like the way they look from the outside. So with daily use, they last about 6 months. Here's the battery percent of one of the shades:
You can see I charged it on February 11th, 2026 and I charged it a little early at 30% on July 2nd, 2026. It would probably last 6-7 months total if I left it get to zero.
Overall, I'll say I'm pretty happy with these and will continue to buy more as I retrofit the entire house over time.