Control4 Home Automation: A review by Finite Solutions

If you’re interested in a smart home system or seriously considering upgrading your home to a fully automated smart home, you may have heard of Control4 home automation systems.

Control4, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, has been working on smart home automation since 2003. They’ve become a market leader in the industry and manufacture one of the most popular smart home automation systems out there right now. In this article, Finite Solutions reviews Control4’s home automation package and capabilities.

If your idea of smart home automation is simply programming Alexa or Google Assistant to turn on a few lamps, then this review might not be for you. Control4 is a bespoke product and service that is installed by professional installers such as Finite Solutions and their products won’t be found on the high street.

CONTROL4’S HOME AUTOMATION CAPABILITIES

Control4’s smart home capabilities, like other smart home automation systems, allow homeowners to control a huge array of elements and electronic devices in their home with a user-friendly:

Lighting

Set up lighting control sequences for different rooms using triggers such as time of day or motion detection.

Doors and window

Ensure your doors are locked every night and get alerts when a window is opened.

Smart Home Heating

Greater climate control with programmable thermostats in every room of the house. Program your Control4 system to automatically lower the temperature when you leave the house and turn it back up again when you’re on your way home, for a comfortable house that’s never too cold or too hot.

Multi-room Audio

Audio that links to your chosen sound system and allows you to switch between different audio apps and players. Streaming audio around the house has never been easier.

Video Surveillance

Remote Control Security

Via the home network, link the system to home security features throughout the house including doorbells, smart locks and security cameras. Keep an eye on your home with live streaming from cameras around your property, both inside and out. Receive alerts if there’s movement when you’re not expecting it.

Whilst these capabilities are common across most smart home automation systems, it’s the way in which Control4 does this that sets it above its competitors, in many aspects.

DO IT YOUR WAY WITH CONTROL 4

An essential part of any home automation system is the smart home hub. The great thing about Control4 is that they understand that not everyone interacts with technology in the same way. Some people want to operate their Control4 home automation system with a dedicated touchscreen panel whilst others want voice control with their preferred virtual assistant. Control4’s openness, great compatibility and brilliant user experience allow for this to happen.

Sometimes the way you interact with technology depends on what you’re doing and what you’re used to. A universal remote control is a great way to control the elements of your smart home, particularly entertainment such as TV and music as well as lighting.

Dedicated touch panels allow for a more intuitive approach to controlling the home. You can get 7-inch or 10-inch touchscreen panels that can be wall-mounted or placed in key locations around the home. Whether that’s on your living room coffee table or in the kitchen, you can keep the tablets somewhere convenient for you.

Control4 home automation also offers an Android and iOS app for your smartphone so that you can interact with your smart home when you’re out of the home or just out of reach from your other controllers. This is a valuable benefit as it allows users to prepare lights or heating in advance or check security when away from the home.

Control4 users can also benefit from bespoke wall keypads that can be connected to the lighting system, throughout the house. The keypads offer multiple lighting scenes are the push of a button. This off-screen simplicity is a great alternative to locating lighting scenes within the app.

With multiple ways of operating the home, we believe Control4 is one of the most accommodating systems in this respect. They seem to have every method covered for interacting with the home automation system.

USABILITY

Regardless of how you’re controlling your home, the Control4 operating system is quite intuitive, bringing together all of your device controls under one app. We find the interface to be one of the easiest to use and navigation will be very familiar for regular smartphone users.

The software allows you to prioritise your most important rooms, apps and devices as well as easy access to your settings so you can make changes. The mobile app is also refined for smaller screens and fluid gestures, making it easy to swipe between rooms quickly and adjust your settings or activate sequences.

Remotes, touchscreens and the mobile app are all interconnected and will also link up to your TV screens so that you can do things such as check the doors are locked and the movie lights are activated before selecting TV streaming services. The whole Control4 experience is very fluid and elements such as entertainment, security, and lighting overlap seamlessly.

SCALABLE

As accredited smart home installers (including Control4 Gold Status) we’ve worked with Control4 home automation on many projects. Along with its compatibility with 16,000 third-party devices, we also find its scalability to be a highly important benefit. Control4 is one of the smart home systems that works well regardless of whether it is installed in a small home or large estate.

CONTROL4 SUPPORT

Control4 is backed by an excellent support team of experts, should you have any issues with your smart home automation system. Control4, or more often dealers such as Finite Solutions, can access the system remotely so that upgrades, maintenance or troubleshooting can be carried out more conveniently.

Dedicated Drivers Installed

One of the downfalls of other smart home systems is that they don’t always integrate with all devices. With Control4, however, we can install bespoke drivers for almost any product, meaning that you won’t have to replace your current TV or sound system just to get started with a new smart home system.

This also gives us a lot of flexibility when it comes to upgrading your system in the future as we can simply add or replace drivers without having to replace the hardware, saving you money.

Finite Solutions are Control4 Gold dealers and have been doing installation for Control4 home automation systems for over 10 years. We’ve seen first-hand how the system has developed and grown during this time, adding new features and devices to make it one of the most comprehensive systems on the market. If you’re thinking about investing in a Control4 home automation system for your property then please get in touch.