Was I Wrong About The Sonoff NSPanel Pro?!

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A little over 6 months ago, Sonoff released a pro version of their NSPanel... called the NSPanel Pro. Unlike it's predecessor which received pretty much good or great reviews across the board, the NSPanel Pro came out to some pretty unfavourable reviews, including from me who was pretty critical of it at the time. I don't normally revisit devices but this one had such a backlog of promised features that I just had too so we can actually find out if I got it wrong or not.

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[EverythingSmartHome]

Have you been using an NSPanel Pro in your Smart Home? What do you think about it now compared to before? Genuinely interested to hear if your opinion has changed since it first released!

Btw if you want to checkout the UGreen DigiNest (which are really cool for tidying up your desk!) then check them out:

[tilaksidduram]

I have two NSPanel Pro, uninstalled all Ewelink apps and other unwanted system apps from the Pro. Side loaded Google playstore on both the Pros and installed HA, Tasker and other Auto Apps plugins that i use to trigger other automations. I also flashed the zigbee chip with a router FW and extended my zigbee network. These now works perfect as 4 inches tablet on the wall. Its now completely running as a local device.

[xupivxo]

To anyone interested in one of these, Shelly showed off its own version of the original NSPanel at CES about a month ago.
It had a whole bunch of improvements AND it should get home assistant support in short order.

[Sandriell]

As one of the ones who were asking for a re-review, thanks for taking another look!

[RaoulTeeuwen]

Love the editing & humor. Great video content-wise as well, thank you!

[jmyler]

I got the NSPanel when it came out and I still think it's a better solution as long as you're willing to flash it. I love the physical buttons and I don't need a full HA on my wall so it's nice to have only the relevant controls in the particular room in which it's deployed. Android tablets are too cheap for me to understand where this fits.

[jayjake]

I'm deciding literally three days from now about if i want it in my new flat. And here you are with another video about it

[Sparky_D]

Having just bought some of the standard NS Panels and flashed with ESPhome your video title had me worried I'd bought the wrong ones, glad to see my option is still good. Cheers for the video

[EsotericArctos]

At the time you reviewed it 6 months ago, it really wasn't ready for production at all. Even now it may still not be perfect, but has been dramatically improved. No reviewers were wrong at the time of release a few months ago, it is just SonOff got such a big backlash from reviewers they really had to improve the firmware so now it is not so much half baked as three quarter baked now.

[jasper]

I have had two non-pro NSPanels for a few months now. I finally updated the custom screen driver (nspanel-lovelace-ui) this week. It had some backwards incompatible configuration changes (which is the reason I didn't update sooner), but the new layout gave me the ability to configure something I like a lot more. I also added a (competely local) beep and a (partially HA controlled) icon to give feedback for long pressing and double clicking. Oh, and I configured a new automation that I can trigger from the panel.

So not quite the product you were asking about, but I am liking it a lot more now than even a week ago.

[nunoalexandre]

I have no words! You're simply the best! Thank you this great video!

[pb_magnet]

I bought the older NSPanel instead, and I have been very happy with it. I’m keeping my eye on the “Pro” for when it becomes useful in Home Assistant to the same or better level than the one I have now. “Sycn” isn’t enough: it needs to be fully “intergated”. 😊

[MarkWebbJohnson]

I have a few of these around my home. Their support for adb over wifi is fantastic and setting these things up with fully kiosk mode browser easy.

I use mine as a little tablet on the wall, in a standard light switch socket. Much simpler and cleaner than the alternatives of somehow sticking a table in a box on the a wall.

[Phettsack]

Long story short: Its a small tablet with GPIOs.
I still prefer the normal NSPanel or maybe one of the Lanbons.

[zenstrukt]

I appreciate the MCM shirt very much! ❤️

[Eluinn]

If you're not using it for the hub (which you can definitely find better options for), I can't think of any benefit for this over a small tablet with your own dashboard loaded.

[RNMSC]

I like the idea of this in new construction, but if the house is already built, I'm a little less impressed. It looks like the user has to wire their own AC line to the wall point they are going to mount this at, (or hire an electrician to do that.) unless it is going in replacing a wall switch, in wich case I would think that the default act for touching the panel should be to toggle the state of whatever light switch(s) would have been toggled.

I tend to think that 32 end devices attached to the panel is a rather tight limit. Considering that the old X10 system allowed up to 16 devices per 'house' this may be a nice step up, especially as that included 8 devices that were not lights/ appliances, However I do tend to think that any such limit is demonstrating an obliviusness to what the future may require. I can easily envision a bedroom today using over 25 'smart' devices that need to be controlled or monitored. I wouldn't want to deploy this and only find out next year that another dozen devices that my SO considers mandatory, need to be added. Granted that might be a code update away, or perhaps it's a hardware replacement away. I'd rather a solution like this being deployed today actually have that in mind out of the box, rather than as a, well, we didn't think that the future would include anything newer than this... Might just be me.

the complaints asside, I do see a lot of potential in this. I would much rather that any solution like this have a lot more than controlling a room in mind. I'd like to distribute Home Assistant accross multiple hosts that back each other up, take over automations for devices 'near' them in some way, and if they know that a device is normally covered by a device in a maintenance mode (rebooting, powered down, being replaced or upgraded) that the automations it nomrally would handle get handled by one of the other devices in some sort of a distributed way. it might also help if one 'host' is getting bogged down with speech to text processing, or something.

[kevinkidderphotographer]

I was a pre-order client, and must say that your "harsh" initial review is still nice er than mine would have been!

Even with updates, here in the US, it is little better than a digital clock.

Current temp often requires a restart to update, and weather forecast is only in Celsius, which is tough for us Americans to process.

I have yet to get it all to integrate with Alexa for any video camera integration, let alone use it as a beneficial tool in Home Assistant.

Pure waste of money

[PuppetMasterDK]

If you ever test the new shelly plus smoke, then beware that it is very basic, there is no way to start the alarm from other smoke alarms, no ways to test it remote, no ways to mute while cooking remote. It goes completely offline from your network until it detects smoke....

I'm in the process of returning mine

[DamienWise]

Useful follow-up review, thankyou! Many other devices from Sonoff seem good and the company should be applauded for delivering some promised updates, but I don't find the Sonoff NSPanel Pro compelling. For the price and features relating to Home Assistant, it looks easier to use an old/secondhand Android tablet. Just install a wall-mounting kit. Am I missing something?