Once you have enough smart home devices installed, some problems begin to pop up. While you might be able to control everything with a smartphone, wearable device, or smart speakers, family members and visitors might not know what to do. The Brilliant Plug-In Panel wants to make it easy to control smart home devices. But while installation is easy, using the device in the real world is problematic.
Due to financial hardships,Brilliant stopped selling its products and terminated its support staff. As the Plug-In Panel could stop working at any time, we can no longer recommend you purchase this device. The rest of this review has been left unedited.
Brilliant Plug-In Panel
The Brilliant Plug-In Control Panel brings smart home control in a dedicated hardware device. It sports a 5-inch LCD touchscreen and two touch-sensitive controllers specifically for light switches. It doesn’t need to be installed in an existing light switch with a neutral wire. The panel fits flush mount to the wall and uses an existing power outlet. You can place the cord down the wall or inside it. Along with acting as a standalone Amazon Alexa product, you can add a wide variety of other smart home devices from manufacturers.
What Is the Brilliant Plug-In Panel?
Before smart home devices, controlling your light switch was simple: you’d flick a switch on the wall. But Brilliant wants to replace its old-school cousin and provide a full-featured control panel for all of your devices.
Brilliant offers a wide variety of options that can take the place of everything from a single light switch to four light switches. But there are some drawbacks to those models. Along with needing a neutral wire (something not found in all homes), you need to be comfortable with electric work to install the panels.
I’m not shy about tackling DIY projects, especially installing smart home products like thermostats and smart locks. But electrical work is something I always leave to my local electrician. So I’ve never previously been interested in Brilliant’s technology.
The company realized those issues and has released the Plug-In Panel. As you might have noticed by the name, there’s no need to replace any light switch. You can place the panel anywhere in the home on a wall. All you need is an electrical outlet within 13 feet.
Taking away the need for an existing light switch makes the technology more accessible and allows you much more leeway on where you can use it in the home.
A big part of the Plug-In Panel is the 5-inch diagonal touchscreen on the left side. That’s the main part of the control panel where you will interact with smart devices and more. On the right side are two slider switches that can be customized to control things like a smart switch or the volume of your Sonos speakers.
There is also a camera and microphone on top of the panel. The camera allows you to monitor the room where the panel is installed using the companion app. Much like many Amazon Echo Show models, there is a built-in privacy switch to disable the camera.
It also sports a motion, temperature, and ambient light sensor. To better fit in with any home, it’s available in six color options.
Installation is Much Simpler
Without the need for hardwiring from a light switch, installing the Plug-In Panel is very easy. You’ll first mount the backplate and then attach the control panel itself. The power cord can either be run on the wall or inside the wall.
Since I didn’t want the hassle of putting the cord inside the wall and trying to fish it out, I just ran the cord down the wall. You’ll need a drill and screwdriver, but the entire process took just 10 minutes. With the flush-mount design, the panel looks great no matter where you install it.
I ended up placing the Plug-In Panel in the living room of my one-story home, where it’s easily accessible to everyone. It didn’t look particularly great though, as the cord did stand out on the wall.
Brilliant should include more than one length of cable—possibly a 6-foot option—to give users more flexibility on installation location. I was left with around 6 feet of cabling that I tried to tuck away as cleanly as possible.
If you’re interested in the panel, first ensure you have a spot that makes sense as far as being accessible and maybe even somewhat hiding the cord. If I had a do-over, I would probably have put in the effort to feed the power cable through the wall in order to hide the slack.
Getting Setup With Your Smart Home Devices
Be prepared to spend a significant amount of time getting the Brilliant Plug-In Panel set up with your smart home devices.
While the Brilliant companion app foriOSorAndroidis easy to use, you’ll need to add each of your smart devices individually to the control panel. I have around 40 devices in my home from a wide variety of different manufacturers. As well as locating the device within the app, I also had to jump to the manufacturer’s site to share permissions.
That took some time and sleuthing as I’ve been testing smart home devices for so long that I didn’t remember some manufacturers. There were other oddities during the setup process—I had to use the panel to add my Hue lights instead of the app. My LIFX lights and Sonos speakers were automatically discovered and took just a second to add to the panel itself, but that was rare.
Then there’s another issue. More than likely, if you have many smart home devices, some won’t be supported by the panel. Before purchasing, you’ll want to readBrilliant’s compatibility list. Less than half of my smart devices were supported.
And even if some manufacturers are shown as supported, that doesn’t mean all their products are. For example, Brilliant allowed me to add my Ecobee Smart Thermostat but didn’t support the Smart Doorbell Camera from the same company.
Brilliant offers Arlo support, but just a limited number of products that don’t include my exterior cameras. If your Arlo camera is supported, you need a SmartThings account to connect to Brilliant. There’s a wholeBrilliant pagethat details the multi-step process.
You will also need to create different rooms and place products into those. The process is similar to creating an Apple HomeKit or Amazon Alexa home, so it’s frustrating to have to do it again.
While using the panel, there were many times I tried to interact with one of my smart home devices only to remember it wasn’t supported. So I had to grab my phone or use a Siri voice command to one of my existing HomePods.
That’s not exactly a user-friendly process, especially if the panel is designed for visitors or more technology-averse family members.
Voice assistant support is also limited. If you’re an Amazon Alexa user, the best news is that the Plug-In Panel can act as a full-fledged Echo-like device. That makes the device even more helpful to control smart home devices with your voice and harness other features from Amazon’s assistant.
Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant users are out of luck, however. The control panel can interact with the other two major smart home protocols with very limited support. you may use those voice assistants only with light switches that are already set up on the control panel.
Using the Control Panel Is Mostly Cumbersome
Once you added in all of your smart home devices, you can customize the home screen. There are four main configurable panels with a small control strip on the bottom. You can choose a wide variety of options for each of the panels. Some of those include a specific room, device, or scene you’ve created with Brilliant compatible devices.
For the two touch-sensitive sliders, I set them to control the light groups in my living room and kitchen.
While the sliders were responsive, I was disappointed in the delay after using them. Many times, it could be at least four to five seconds before the lights would act. I first thought it might have been the lights themselves, but I tried controlling them with a HomePod, and it was an instant reaction. That’s disappointing as lighting control is one of the most sensible and intuitive uses of the Plug-In Panel.
Interacting with other smart home devices on the panel was a bit better, but not by much. My family members, who aren’t huge fans of our smart home, even complained about the delay when using the panel to control the thermostat and more.
Even with the panel’s issues, there were some nice features. One of the best is its Sonos integration.
I have several Sonos speakers in different rooms throughout my house. And with the Plug-In Panel, I can select music from my Sonos favorites and start playback. I could choose single or multiple speakers to play the music, control the volume, and even change music. You’ll just need to ensure the station or album is already added in your Sonos favorites in the Sonos app. You won’t be able to browse or search a streaming service.
I also enjoyed uploading my own photos to use as a screensaver when the control panel isn’t being used. Along with a photo, the standby screen shows the current temperature, time, date, and even what your thermostat is set to. The high-resolution screen looks great and is very responsive.
You can also choose to turn the display off unless it is touched or motion is detected.
Brilliant Plug-In Panel: A Great Idea Hampered by Closed Smart Home Systems
On paper, the Brilliant Plug-In Panel looks like a perfect addition to any smart home with its streamlined installation and control of multiple devices. There are no other true competing devices on the market.
After trying out the device, adding another middleman control system to my smart home didn’t make much sense. It’s still too costly and not worth it for most smart homes, especially since you need to install multiple panels to use some features of the features. The only scenario where I could see the panels making sense is in large homes with an equally big budget.
In future, if the Matter standard can take off, a device like this could be essential with quick setup and control of any device for anyone inside a home. But for now, my family will have to stick with multiple HomePods and Apple devices to control our smart home.
