Graywind Motorized Zebra Blinds Compatible with Alexa Google WiFi Hardwired Smart Horizontal Window Blind Remote Control Light Filtering Electric Window Shades, Customized Size (Luxury Silver White)

There are too many good things about this company and the product to leave less than a 5-star review. I'll start with the cons because there are fewer of those than the pros:Cons:- Zigbee range for the timer remote is pretty low. Maybe 5 meters or so. We had to place the remote in the center of the first floor for it to control all the blinds. However, we also bought additional non-timer remotes for the different sections and those work great. Overall I'd say it's a nice feature, but could use a bit more range. Alexa (Echo Show 2nd gen) can only connect to blinds that are in the radius of about 5 meters as well. We'll see if it gets better with Zigbee hubs. Overall the capability is there, and that alone is nice to have.- It would have been nice to have the room labels on the outside of the box. We ended up carrying 1st floor blinds upstairs, and left the 2nd floor blinds downstairs. Minor thing though, we got it sorted.- One of the blinds was too long, so we reset the low point. The ability to reset the low point is nice, and this wasn't a big deal since the blind works perfectly fine. This could have been me fat-fingering the measurements, I wouldn't rule that out.Pros:- Super easy to install! It was way easier to install these, even the largest ones that are almost 70", than it was to remove the old blinds. It's also easy to remove them if you accidentally install the wrong window. Overall there's very little aligning or messing around with the hardware. Super easy.- Good instructions. You can actually understand the instructions, there are pictures for everything. Even the remotes were ultimately easy to use and we were able to re-pair them how we wanted and group blinds, as well as adjust the speed.- Extra hardware, which is always nice to have in case you break a bracket or two.- Quality looks very good. Overall the shades add a nice modern touch to the house, and they look expensive. More importantly they work great for both the "privacy open" and "full blackout" modes, and it's easy to program the remotes to the different positions.- Nice and long USB-C cords for charging are much appreciated!- Integration with Alexa is actually as straight forward as pressing/holding a button and asking Alexa to discover devices, and it does work out of the box just like the instructions say.- Width was spot on, every blind fit like a glove with no gaps for an inside mount.- They are relatively quiet. Not much louder than some motorized hotel blinds which probably cost much more. Frankly you can't hear it if you're in the next room over, even if there's no door separating you.- Very light weight. This is kind of a big deal if you're installing them over big windows by yourself. Also nice that you can easily lift them up to open the window.I'm giving Alexa integration 4 stars because you can't control them from the Alexa app and the range isn't great, but this can be expected in a larger house where you will need some Zigbee hubs / repeaters. Overall though we're very pleased with the quality, speed of manufacture / delivery, and functionality! It really refreshes the whole house and I love being able to set up scenes and routines, including automated ones for sunset/sunrise using Alexa. Buying from Graywind and installing yourself is easy, and you'll save probably more than $10k over going with a local contractor / shop who will install something very similar anyway, but charge you a huge markup. Trust me, these are far easier to install than removing whatever old window treatments you might currently own.EDIT: It's been a few months now, and the blinds are still working great! We recommend this Zigbee hub model: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09V78N28M with the TreatLife app. This makes it easy to extend the range beyond what Zigbee-enabled Alexa devices have built in. Once in a blue moon we have to re-pair them, but the TreatLife app makes it very easy. We set up Routines in Alexa for "privacy", "open", and "closed" modes and can control all the blinds in the house with voice now. Worked with 2x Zigbee hubs for a 2-story 2k+ sqft house.

I started out with one test shade before committing (like many others, I was scared about the risk and return difficulty if it hadn’t worked out). I loved the quality and Graywind’s integrity so much, I ended up buying 15 more Zigbee (ZF) light filtering and blackout shades in white, and the 16-channel remote. Both types of these zebra shades look great and work wonderfully. Highly recommend!! Long version:FABRIC / MATERIALGet the swatches!! It’ll help you very much. Before finding Graywind, I had ordered fabric swatches from the major brands at our home improvement stores and from a couple online vendors. Those “fabrics” all felt like rigid paper, they were fraying at the edges, and didn’t seem like they would last with everyday up/downs and direct sunlight over the years. Graywind’s fabric samples, however, were impressive. The materials are flexible, don’t crease easily, and didn’t show signs of easy fraying. The solid bands feel smooth and thin (but durable) for the light filtering, and smooth and thick for the blackout. The sheer parts feel a bit more rigid than your typical soft sheer curtains, so they may crease if someone/thing keeps folding it repeatedly. After 6 months, I haven't had any issues with the fabric fraying on the shades that completely open/close or partially open.ALIGNMENT OF BANDSFor the most part, Graywind did a great job at band alignment between windows (this was a concern I had about buying zebra-style shades). The only caveat was that they would align the bands for only same-length shades. So if you have different sized windows side-by-side in the same room, be aware there may be a misaligned outlier (maybe try asking if they could make them all match).Alignment in the sense that you can superimpose the darkening bands over each other, was also pretty spot-on—with the exception of 2 (out of 16) being about 10 degrees crooked. One thing that was kind of a bummer is that the blocking bands on light filtering shades are much smaller than the blocking bands on the blackouts (e.g. 3” vs 4.5”). So if the difference will bother you, keep that in mind.LIGHTINGFor some rooms, I got the blackout shades in the rooms to block out light or to avoid our shadows from being seen if someone were standing outside at night. For the rest, I got the light filtering shades because I didn’t want to lose brightness but wanted privacy from the creepy neighbor (fyi if you see your shadow on these shades at night, people outside will also be able to see it if that’s a concern for you). I used a light meter to test the lighting changes with direct sunlight in both shade types while standing 6ft from the front of the shade. With the light filtering shades the lux readings were 199 closed (60% bright), 247 bands aligned (75% bright), 331 fully open (100% bright). With the blackout shades (different room/sun entry) the lux readings were 43 closed (0.3% bright), 5037 bands aligned (39% bright), and 12949 fully open (100% bright).BATTERY / MOTOR / SOUNDI’ve had my shades for about 6 months and so far only 1 needed a battery charge at the 4 month mark. The others that fully open/close every day will also be due for a charge soon, so it’s definitely within the 3-6 months window they mention. In their manual, they list the life of the motor to last about 14,000 runs (1 run = fully up and down once), putting it around 38yrs (pretty good if true). As for the sound of the motor, I tested with the sound meter 2ft and 6ft away. The readings were 44dB and 40dB respectively, which is kind of like the hum of a portable heater/fan. It’s not too bad, but as a light sleeper, they do wake me up if I sleep up to their programed opening times.INSTALLATION & 16-CH RemoteThe installation is pretty straight-forward, and love the mounting brackets that come with this kit! It’s a push and lock mechanism and they hide very well. The valence/shade could be easily taken down, and shifted left or right to center it. My shades are outside mount on the window casing so there is about a 1" gap from the side. However, the increased width of the shades still maintains privacy.The remote control is a sexy sleek push-button type, which I am VERY happy with. (I saw in another review that someone had a touch-remote. Touch remotes, in my experience, are terrible for operating motors because they are either too sensitive or not sensitive enough—making it impossible to fine-tune your settings.) So YAY Graywind for sticking with push-button remotes!SMARTTHINGS (AEOTEC HUB)I can also confirm that the ZF motors can be controlled via SmartThings. Thank you so much to the reviewer on Feb 27 2021—If it wasn’t for their confirmation, I probably wouldn’t have gone with these shades because I was looking specifically for shades/motors that were compatible with my Hub. I’d also recommend the Yoolax custom Device Handler (Google it if this is new to you), as the basic device handler has the up/down setting reversed and doesn’t report the battery levels (for me at least). With the app, you can schedule the times they open or close, and the percentage of openness (between 0-100%).PACKAGINGThe shades were always packaged very well with flex foam and plastic to protect from the elements and delivery-person abuse. The delivery folks in my area are rough with packages, so I was very grateful for the extra care Graywind puts in each shipment.COMPANY / CUSTOMER SERVICEGraywind is one of those rare companies with integrity, and has shown to care about their customer’s satisfaction and loyalty. Their response times to inquiries has always been under 24hrs. At one point, I had an issue with 3 of my motors not functioning properly, and they were quick to help me resolve the issue, and then check up on me about it. They sometimes send short videos to help show what you need to do, or will walk you through the troubleshoot. Overall, Graywind has great customer service, makes great zebra shades and I would highly recommend!

These blinds are excellent:-the material is of extremely high quality-installation was straightforward and took <10 minutes-the engineering is smart, providing a very clean and integrated look-motor is quiet-the remote works out of the box, and the Alexa integration is great. The one hiccup was that the new bottom limit I set was ignored by Alexa. I read online about doing a reset to potentially fix it but found it easier to just set up an Alexa routine so that when I say "Alexa, close the blinds" it automatically instructs Alexa to "close the blind to 6%" which is perfect-the customer service really is superb, and that matters when ordering blinds with a lot of customizationI got the blackout lux silvery white after debating between that the light-filtering f-white. I'm glad I did, as I do prefer blackout for sleeping. The pictures in other reviews of the blackout white don't do it justice, as the contrasting light coming through the slats gets exaggerated from camera washout. It's a silky but rugged material with a sophisticated pattern/texture.The only drawback was the 3-week wait time, which is probably pretty standard anywhere. I recommend getting the sample book, which is cheap and arrives in just a day or two. It was helpful for deciding on the material. Overall, these are excellent blinds and an excellent value.