Soma Smart Shades Review + Sound Test - Affordable Smart Blind Motor For Your Existing Blinds!

In this video I look at the Soma Smart Shades motors that fit to your existing blinds. Smart blinds are one the great aspects of embracing smart home technology. They offer some meaningful advantages to day to day life. The problem is there aren't very many options on the market with most providers offering the blinds themselves as part of the product. Ikea smart blinds is one of those kinds of products. Luckily there is a really good product on the market called Smart Shades by Soma that lets you use your existing window blinds but makes them smart!

In the video I look at the noise the motors make at their different speeds, show how much power the motors have as well as look at how they work with you smart home setup.

There's also an interesting theoretical security issue that I cover to do with third parties pairing your smart blinds from outside your house.

In the video I mention that Siri/HomeKit can't use the blinds using the slow 'morning mode'. A recent firmware update has enabled this with a bit of a work around. If a blind position is stored with a HomeKit scene it will let you make that position use morning mode whenever that scene is triggered. So you could create a scene called 'morning blind' and it would open it using morning mode. This would actually make it possible to do all the automation of the blinds in HomeKit and not use the native app.

It works with Apple Siri, Google Assistant & Amazon Alexa when you use the Soma Connect hub (I forgot to mention this in the video).

This is an owner's review with no affiliation or free products involved. I bought these myself nearly 2 years ago so I've had good run with them and am happy to share my experience with them.

Let me know if you have any questions about these neat little motors and I'll reply in the comments below.

Feel free to jump around the video with the timestamps:

0:00 - Intro & background
1:28 - About security & HomeKit compatibility
2:20 - Loudness vs. speed
3:12 - Automation and sunrise/sunset
4:28 - Sound and speed test
5:54 - How to install Soma Smart Shades
6:03 - Battery and charging
7:09 - How it looks
7:27 - Using the blind manually
8:03 - Where a smart blind is useful
8:25 - How powerful are the smart blind motors?
8:45 - Software updates
9:21 - Outro and summary

More cool home tech videos:

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Dyson Pure Cool Me Fan Review:

Smart home-office:

How to control Dyson fans with Siri:

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[idankk]

$120 wow, that's insane. This really needs to sell for around $50.

[Chuk]

Very practical info. Objective and easy to understand. Thank you!

[carolinesaunders]

I love the idea of slowly waking to daylight. Thank you I didn't realise how simple this could be. Do you have a dedicated tablet for your smart home controls?

[mattcarter]

Great review Ben. I wonder if a smart button like the Eve or Flic2 would get around problem of not having any physical buttons?

[rolandjacobi]

again should sell for arround $50 or if customer satisfied an expanding discount for additional units

[departamentodecorresponden]

Hello! is it necessary to use the SONNA HUB to activate them by voice with google home? is it possible to use or is it compatible with the Broadlink RM 4 pro hub? thanks!

[PotentChrnic]

7:28 wish they had up/down buttons on the units themselves.

[hellocjw]

do you need the soma connect to connect with homekit?

[MRJUMBO]

How do they compare to the ones from ikea?

[theflyerprd]

What is the App for iOS could not find it.
Thanks

[PVflying]

I see so many smart blind systems which will raise and lower blinds, but have never found one which will turn Venetian blinds closed or open while the blinds stay down. I’m not sure why no one is making this product as surely most owners of Venetians want them to stay down and just turn the adjuster so they slats are closed or see thru?!

[hafsarashid]

Is this the soma smart shades 2? the 2020 version?

[jammies]

Smart device makers really need to actually have a manual way to adjust them easily. Remote-only devices aren’t going to be my cup of tea until I have a chip in my brain to control them

[skyhappy]

I see you have a apple watch. Is it really that useful? For checking the time, isn't your phone enough?