ACT Zwave devices - reliability stats

jml

Member
Summary: Stay away from ACT Zwave devices

I was an early adopter of zwave. Over the past 3 years I've accumulated 78 ACT devices. ACT was the first to market, so I standardized on ACT. I keep a spreadsheet of device reliability, including RMA'd devices. Here are the stats:

1 out of every 5 ACT units has failed over the last 3 years. 9 out of the 16 units that have failed stopped responding to the zwave network after a few days following a hard reset. 4 have started flickering the load, and the others stopped working all together. The most interesting stat,which I am basing my summary, is that of the 12 units I have sent in for repair, 10 immediately failed with the same symptoms in different locations in the house.

Ug.
 
Summary: Stay away from ACT Zwave devices

I was an early adopter of zwave. Over the past 3 years I've accumulated 78 ACT devices. ACT was the first to market, so I standardized on ACT. I keep a spreadsheet of device reliability, including RMA'd devices. Here are the stats:

1 out of every 5 ACT units has failed over the last 3 years. 9 out of the 16 units that have failed stopped responding to the zwave network after a few days following a hard reset. 4 have started flickering the load, and the others stopped working all together. The most interesting stat,which I am basing my summary, is that of the 12 units I have sent in for repair, 10 immediately failed with the same symptoms in different locations in the house.

Ug.

Sorry to hear about your bad results with the ACT devices.

In search of a reliable manufacturer, I have ended up with LEVITON Vizia-RF devices.

After being burned by 'low quality' manufacturers (I have used SH INSTEON) I figured out that sometimes the cheapest device may not be the best (cheapest - huh?).

;)

Ken
 
Summary: Stay away from ACT Zwave devices

I was an early adopter of zwave. Over the past 3 years I've accumulated 78 ACT devices. ACT was the first to market, so I standardized on ACT. I keep a spreadsheet of device reliability, including RMA'd devices. Here are the stats:

1 out of every 5 ACT units has failed over the last 3 years. 9 out of the 16 units that have failed stopped responding to the zwave network after a few days following a hard reset. 4 have started flickering the load, and the others stopped working all together. The most interesting stat,which I am basing my summary, is that of the 12 units I have sent in for repair, 10 immediately failed with the same symptoms in different locations in the house.

Ug.

Sorry to hear about your bad results with the ACT devices.

In search of a reliable manufacturer, I have ended up with LEVITON Vizia-RF devices.

After being burned by 'low quality' manufacturers (I have used SH INSTEON) I figured out that sometimes the cheapest device may not be the best (cheapest - huh?).

;)

Ken

Yup, I'm moving slowly to Vizia. I'm really impressed with the quality so far. It's going to take a while to phase out the ACT units...
 
Yup, I'm moving slowly to Vizia.

Leviton's obviously a solid name in the industry, so I wouldn't expect nearly that same failure rate with them.

How do you link the look/functionality of the Vizia devices?

I'm definitely not a fan of the toggle operation.
 
Yup, I'm moving slowly to Vizia.

Leviton's obviously a solid name in the industry, so I wouldn't expect nearly that same failure rate with them.

How do you link the look/functionality of the Vizia devices?

I'm definitely not a fan of the toggle operation.

I use my parents for judging usability. My dad was in town last night and said he likes them better than the old 2-way toggle. The separate dim control is nice.
 
Hey you had better luck than I did with ACT! I have a replacement still in the box for about a year now. I can't muster the energy to install it just to watch it fail.
 
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