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Lucis Nubryte review: NuBryte's combo of features doesn't add up to much

Despite its security camera, lighting features, and touch controls, NuBryte needs a few more updates before it deserves a place on your wall.

Andrew Gebhart Former senior producer
8 min read

From its spot on your wall, the NuBryte Touchpoint turns your light switch into a colorful canvas that promises to be your "all-in-one" smart home solution. Primarily a smart light switch and a security device with a camera, NuBryte can also help you keep your life organized with a calendar, weather info, alarms and timers. It has an iOS and Android app for remote functionality. Plus, if you have multiple units, you can use them as intercoms.

5.7

Lucis Nubryte

The Good

The NuBryte Touchpoint combines smart lighting controls with a camera that'll watch your place when you're gone and a responsive touchscreen.

The Bad

NuBryte's touchscreen, camera, and microphone are all underutilized. You can't control any devices other than the lights wired to the switch. You also can't issue voice commands, customize scenes or even see your place from afar with a live feed.

The Bottom Line

The NuBryte Touchpoint has a somewhat unique combination of features, but none of the pieces of the combination are good enough on their own to make NuBryte worth your consideration.

Right now, though, the $250 NuBryte Touchpoint (or $260 for a two panel switch) doesn't work with much -- just Amazon's assistant, Alexa, and Google Calendar -- so the problem with placing NuBryte at the center of your smart home is that it can't really control any smart home devices. The similar $100 Wink Relay works with light bulbs, thermostats, cameras, smoke detectors, switches and more from a variety of manufacturers. NuBryte controls the lights its wired to -- that's it.

NuBryte is mostly competent at everything it does, but it doesn't match up with the best devices in any individual smart category. It's not as good of a smart switch as the $60 Lutron switches ($160 for a two switch starter kit), or as good of a security device as the $200 Nest Cam, or as good of a central smart home device as either the Wink Relay or the Amazon Echo. The startup behind NuBryte -- Lucis Technologies based in Silicon Valley -- is hard at work updating their flagship product, but I don't recommend the expensive NuBryte Touchpoint until it masters at least one of its many tricks.

Lights, camera, Nubryte: This smart switch puts the action on the wall

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Through the wall -- installation and setup

Before you can take advantage of the multitasking NuBryte Touchpoint, you'll need to find a good spot on the wall to install it. NuBryte can replace a single or double switch panel, and though the process is simple enough, you'll want to be comfortable with basic wiring before you tackle the project. NuBryte posted a handy video walking you through the process here, and the accompanying instruction manual is also helpful.

A couple of things to note before you start: NuBryte needs a neutral wire (check the installation guide if you need help determining what that is). NuBryte works with most bulbs, but not ceiling fans at the moment. Double-check the fine print to make sure NuBryte will work in the spot you want before you make the splurge.

You can buy NuBryte from the company's site, and from BestBuy.com. We tested the $260 double-gang version, which replaces a two-switch panel. The single-gang Touchpoint costs $250. Other than controlling an extra light, the bigger version of the Touchpoint is the same as the smaller one.

NuBryte is not available overseas at the moment, as it's only designed for 120V American switches, but the company plans to develop a 220V model later this year for international markets. The US prices convert to roughly £210/AU$340 and £200/AU$325 for the two-switch and one-switch models, respectively.

Using the panel

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When you approach NuBryte, it flips to this screen, letting you control the lights.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

After you finish wiring the switch, you'll snap the control panel onto the base plate, and NuBryte lights up to walk you through a quick setup and tutorial. The panel itself is attractive and simple, with white borders framing the touchscreen.

The screen lights up when you get close thanks to an infrared presence sensor. NuBryte defaults to lighting controls, so you can quickly turn your bulbs on or off without navigating through any menus. I appreciated that, but because it takes a second to wake up, you'd still be able to flip your lights off faster with an old fashioned switch.

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You can physically close the shutter on the camera by moving this switch to the right.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

NuBryte also lets you control brightness -- as long as your bulbs are dimmable -- and you can customize how these brightness controls work in the system's settings.

Hit the persistent home button on the lower right corner of the screen to access the rest of NuBryte's features:

  • Weather -- Press the blue panel with the clouds from the home screen and NuBryte will show you the internal temperature and humidity. Scroll over for outside weather and forecasts.
  • Timer -- The green panel with the clock shows you the time and date. You can swipe for an alarm or a timer.
  • Energy -- The lighter green panel with the dial shows you your daily energy usage, and your average usage per day. You can tap on different days to see past usage. Note that it only shows you the usage for that panel and lights wired to NuBryte, not your whole house.
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Here's the home screen. You can get back to the lights via an orange panel on the home screen, or with the persistent lighting button on the upper right corner of the panel. The two persistent buttons on the left of the panel are for security and the intercom.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

Using the app

The app also walks you through a quick setup after you sign up for a NuBryte account. Once you're through the tutorial, it defaults to a page for lighting controls, as on the panel, but the names you assigned the lights on the panel strangely don't carry over. I called my NuBryte "Basement," then the two lights "Cabinet Light" and "Bar Light."

The Basement name carried over, but the two lights in the app were just called Basement A and Basement B. The app offers no way to change those names or put them into different groups. You can control all of your lights at once or each individually, but nothing in between. Even controlling them individually takes an extra tap than I'd like. Open the app, and you have to tap a light, then tap again to control it. The app doesn't offer a shortcut to turn any lights on and off with a single push. You can dim lights to your desired brightness with a pinch, once they're selected.

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Lighting controls, the home page, and presets.

Screenshots by Andrew Gebhart/CNET

You can also hit the button in the lower left-hand corner to activate various preset modes such as "Wake Up" or "Bedtime" that gradually dim or raise the lights at a preselected hour. Similar to Apple HomeKit's scenes, these preset options are a nice extra feature, but they don't allow any real customization. You can select your own times to activate them, but not how long it takes the lights to dim or how bright they are for the different presets. You also can't create your own preset mode.

The rest of the menus in the app mostly match the touchscreen controls, with security moved to the homepage instead of having its own button. On the app, the timer panel is replaced with a calendar.

As of an update due out today (but not live yet as of the time of writing), you'll actually be able to connect your Google Calendar to NuBryte, but you can't actually merge calendars or interact with your Google Calendar in any meaningful way via NuBryte. Supposedly, Google Calendar will just send a notification to your Touchpoint's screen when an event is about to start.

I'd have liked a more robust integration with Google Calendar. The ability to bring your family's calendars together in one place would have been uniquely beneficial, and should be part of an update further in the future.

I'd have appreciated a more robust app in general, actually. Other smart switches, such as the Caseta switches from Lutron, offer geofencing, custom scheduling, and work with Amazon's Alexa, Apple's HomeKit, Nest, and online rule-maker IFTTT.

NuBryte works with Alexa now. If you have an Amazon Echo, you can activate the NuBryte skill, then control your connected lights with a voice command to Amazon's always listening speaker. NuBryte has also announced integrations with IFTTT and Nest. These upcoming upgrades could go a long way to helping NuBryte catch up to Lutron, but competitively, it's not close as a smart light switch yet.

Security

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Activate security, and you'll have about a minute to make your exit before it arms.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

Similarly, as a security device, NuBryte is competent, but lacking in depth. You can't use the camera to view a live feed of your home when you're away. The only way to see any footage of the room is if someone sets off the alarm.

Hit the shield button on the panel, and you're prompted to create a PIN. You also determine how long of a grace period you need to make your exit. Once the grace period is over, NuBryte is mostly accurate at sensing motion, though I was able to make my way through the room a couple of times without activating the alarm by moving quickly along the far edges. Once triggered, NuBryte offers another grace period to shut off the alarm with the PIN.

After the grace period ends, a 100 dB siren sounds and the lights flash. The alarm isn't as piercing as a smoke detector, but you'll be able to hear it throughout your house. NuBryte can't call the police, but it will send you a push notification and record the event so you can see what's going on. Again, though, you won't be able to pull up a live feed. You'll need to wait until NuBryte finishes recording, then download the video to watch it.

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You can also activate security via the app, and watch recorded video if the alarm was triggered.

Screenshots by Andrew Gebhart/CNET

NuBryte stores up to 200 MB of footage for free -- which is plenty for several clips -- and it rolls out old clips once room runs out. Its wide angle lens clearly captures 120 degrees in front of it, and you can activate and disarm security remotely.

Other smart cams sense faces, ignore pets, and let you customize alerts and notifications based on your location and the time of day. NuBryte lets you turn the security on or off, and that's it. NuBryte doesn't keep up as a security device.

All in the family?

With multiple NuBrytes, you can use the camera and microphone as an intercom. You can't use your phone to chat with NuBryte, though, so to take advantage of the intercom, you'll need to spend at least $500 on two Touchpoints. You can control the lights connected to any Touchpoint from one panel, and check the temp and humidity near all panels at once -- so having multiple Touchpoints offers a couple of other advantages.

As a family centered device, though, it's a surprising pain to add multiple users to the app. Finding the feature under settings is easy enough. Just tap "Manage Members," then "Family Members." From there you can add users by inviting them over email. For some reason, though, the email field has a character cap. I wanted to use my personal phone to test multiuser capabilities, but I couldn't invite myself using my work email because it wouldn't fit.

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Especially for a family-focused device, it's a large pain to add family members to your account.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

I shrugged off that setback and set up an account using my personal email, and again the system stepped on my toes. You can only invite users who don't yet have a NuBryte account. Both the character limit and the new account limit are strange oversights that you might never notice, but if you do, they could prove significant hindrances for your family. I was unable to add a second account for myself, and had to enlist a coworker to help me test the system.

Once you do manage to make it through the odd limitations and add a family member, they'll have full control over the system via their phone. You can't customize who has access to what, or delete family members once they're added. Multi-user integration is tough for a lot of smart home devices, but it's practically broken on NuBryte.

Verdict

Right now, the competent hardware within the $250/$260 NuBryte Touchpoint is let down by shallow software. The mic doesn't respond to voice controls -- it's just there for the intercom, which you can't use unless you shell out $500 for two units. The cam won't show you a live feed. The touchscreen is responsive, but only controls lights.

NuBryte aims to be the center of your smart home by bringing lots of functionality to a device everyone at home can access -- as opposed to your individual smart phone. NuBryte works with Amazon's assistant Alexa, and has announced upcoming integrations with Nest and online rule-maker IFTTT which will help tie it into a larger smart home setup. NuBryte needs a few more of those integrations to become a reality before it'll actually be a viable centerpiece of your smart home. I'll keep my fingers crossed for the future, but I don't recommend buying the NuBryte Touchpoint now.

5.7

Lucis Nubryte

Score Breakdown

Features 5Usability 5Design 7Performance 6