Yoolax Motorized Blinds with Remote, Blackout Smart Blinds for Indoor Windows Motorized Shades, Automatic Roller Shades Work with Alexa for Bedroom Office, Customized (Fabric Smoky Gray)

This is yet another product that I did a lot of research on based on reviews mostly. We use motorized blinds at work a lot, so I had a lot of history concerning features and what's important to choose. Having said that, you are just blindly (pardon the pun) buying these blinds without even touching them or seeing how they operate. In the case of these particular blinds, they have turned out to be extremely well-valued, well-made, durable, and attractive. So far, no disappointments! Sort of...They claim it integrates easily with Alexa, but I have not been able to get this part fully integrated. I think it's mostly I haven't spent that much time trying. With all of my other smart devices in my home that integrate with Alexa, this one has not been easy to figure out. Again, don't let this influence your decision because the blinds themselves are extremely nice!I did not do the installation, but I watched them being installed by my brother-in-law and sister and they had them done in probably an hour and a half. The key, as always, is to get your order Dimensions perfect when you're ordering. I chose a blind that will go over my window instead of trying to fit within the window frame. I just felt like that would be a safer way to make sure this thing fits right. I really enjoyed the ordering process that this particular seller uses. It was very easy to follow! Again, when you're buying things unseen, it feels very daunting to make sure you got all of your measurements perfect. If I can get all of the measurements perfect, you can too! Measure a lot! Get others to help confirm your measurements. It pays off to receive these custom blinds and have them fit exactly as you want to!THE REMOTE: The blinds come with a funky little round remote and I find that it never seems to do what you want on the first attempt when pushing the little symbols on the round dial. Instead of it having actual buttons, the remote uses little symbols like the sun, the Moon, a heart, a pause... Sounds kind of weird, but it's kind of a cool layout and Design.The problem is, let's say that your blind is fully closed and you want to open it. Logic says you would just click on the Sun and it would just open the blind. Well, this part is true except for the fact that I usually have to hit the sun symbol as many as three to four times before it finally engages. Just so you know, this is literally the only negative that would justify any mention.BACK TO ALEXA INTEGRATION: I know I said that the Alexa integration is not smooth and logical, but again, that might just be my lack of effort. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong.THE MOTOR/CHARGING: The other thing about these blinds that I like is that the battery for the motor seems to last a really long time. I think they claim one charge can last up to 6 months. I have not had been long enough to test that, but I believe it. These blinds have a motor at the top Under the balance... If you choose to have a balance, that is. Regardless, it's either right at the top on the left or on the right. Mine is on the very top left so that I could charge the motor from my desk below my window. You can simply charge this blind motor with one cable from the motor itself down to a USB port on a laptop for instance or a powered USB hub. The blind does not come with the cable, but you can easily just buy one. Depending on the distance from the motor to wherever you're going to charge from, you just have to take that into account. My distance is probably 6 ft and I have plenty of USB cables to accommodate. I want to say that the cable is a USB-C (motor) to a regular USB 3.0 (charge source).I hope this helps as I have yet to see anyone going to this much detail about charging the motor.Overall, I could not recommend this blind more!

first I will say that ordering these custom blinds from amazon was something I was a little worried about, and the interface is a little clunky putting in all your measurements, the seller has gone to great lengths to make sure absolute precision and accuracy is made during the order, even emailing back as part of their workflow to make sure you re-confirm before they custom cut everything in their factory and mail to you. I live in NYC, it took about 10 days from order to delivery, which was faster than I expected. the blinds are cut exactly to what you tell them. they look great, and the motors are silent and very precise.I purchased this set of blinds with the zigbee motor and another set of yoolax blinds for another room with the bluetooth hub and motor, after using both, I suggest the bluetooth. as an engineer, I was attracted to the idea of not needing a dedicated hub, and having it go directly to an amazon echo, one less device we need to keep running on the network was my thinking. What I noticed was that the current version of the amazon echo devices seem to be eliminating support for zigbee direct, they appear to be moving to favoring bluetooth or connectivity through a smart hub, so I had to procure an older, yet still available amazon echo 4 to connect to the zigbee motor.In the process of linking the zigbee motor was a little odd. the Amazon Echo 4 sees the zigbee device, and will add it, however until you also download the yoolax app, and connect it to the echo and link the yoolax app to the amazon echo, it will not operate reliably. I also had to make routines in the alexa to make the blinds go up and down with keywords, im not sure if that is user error or not, but its working very reliably now.Ill contrast this with the other set I bought for my other room with bluetooth motor and the bluetooth hub, I plugged in the hub to usb power, opened the yoolax app. it found the hub in 2 seconds without prompting, found the new blinds that I had just installed and turned on, downloaded firmware update automatically, then my alexa app on my android automatically said "we have found your new blinds!" and boom, they were running without me even doing anything! I also have a free google home display that google gave me for being a Fi cellular customer, I dont use it much but it is in the same room as the new bluetooth blinds, so another benefit of the bluetooth hub is that I was able to link them to my google home display in that room, and control those blinds via voice, so the bluetooth is also nice in this regard also since it works with a variety of voice assistants.given the reality that you need the yoolax app no matter which motor you use (zigbee or bluetooth) I think the overall experience with the bluetooth hub and motor was way more accommodating, and since zigbee usese 2.4ghz just like bluetooth, I guess there isnt much of an advantage to zigbee anyway.