BENEXMART DIY Motorized Your Tranditional Roll Shade with Bean or Cord Chain Smart Home Automation Support APP Timer Remote control [Energy Class A+]

The title expresses my thoughts when ordering. The product looks a little dated in the photographs. It looks cheap and cheerful. In real life this is far from the truth.In reality I can find only one major issue with the looks, unless you dislike the colour. The exit for the chains is large allowing the bright yellow gear for the blind chain to be seen. That is it for the negatives. I have had to think for hours and that is it.I am using the device with vertical blinds, just to alter the tilt. My review should be read bearing this in mind. Lifting and lowering heavy blinds may alter the conditions. I doubt it would alter my view much.Fitting took about 45minutes including all the time I needed to unpack and carefully read the instructions. I would describe myself as incompetent with my hands, my brother tells me I am not that good! Yes even this ham fisted amateur managed to install the device without issue and have it tilting his blinds in 45 minutes. Other blind types and actions may take longer.The device is not too loud in use, bear in mind that the motor hardly has time to get to full power in the time take to fully open my blinds. I was expecting a cheap motor to sound much worse. Yes, you can hear it. Those of a sensitive nature may find them distracting. If you do, get a life. Getting quieter is going to cost a LOT more than these devices cost me.The app on android is good enough for most people. You can open, close or position the blind from your phone without issues. Setting a time program is simple. Yes there are issues, it is not perfect. Taking the price it to account it does justify the tag line good enough.I have connected the device to my Home Assistant hub. That did take about 2 or three hours. It is not something that is natively supported but community solutions are available. I just wanted a little extra configuration to meet my needs. I had expected the work to take a couple of days!All in all this device met and exceeded my expectations. I have only had the device for two days for a supposed one month trial. After that time I was looking to order more devices, if they met my needs. I am not waiting. I have ordered motors for all my other vertical blinds today.I am not easily impressed and even more difficult to persuade me to alter my plans. That this device got me to think that they are my solution after just one day is impressive. I now need to think where else I can use these. I am a real fan.

The media could not be loaded.  This is a brilliant device! It’s very well made, great quality, nice solid construction. It has plenty of torque and pulls my blind up and down without struggling at all, so I’m confident it would pull a very large or heavy blind just fine. It’s fairly quiet for a powerful motor but it’s not silent (see my video). It connects to your phone via Bluetooth so you have to be close to the device, within about 10m, or in the next room, anything further and it disconnects. It won’t allow you to control the device when you’re away from and it doesn’t work with smart assistants like Alexa or Google, it as it’s not WiFi or a smart connected device. The instructions are clear, printed in colour with pictures making them easy to follow. It’s quite simple to set-up, and the app has instructions on how to connect the blind cord and pairing the device with the app, pretty straight forward.It will allow you to connect a maximum of 7 blind controllers to the app, and it supports different types of blinds changeable in the app; Venetian, vertical, honeycomb, triple, roller, and zebra blinds. Also the rolling speed is adjustable in the app to make the blinds open faster or slower which would be useful for different blind types.I like the timer feature in the app which allows you to set different days and times for the blind to open and close, so I can have it opening at 6am Monday to Thursday, and 7am Friday, and to stay closed Saturday and Sunday, works well for my varied work schedule, brilliant feature! You can also set the blind to open a quarter, half way or three quarters open on these timers too.The app shows the battery percentage, and the battery holds good charge for a long time, over two weeks. The included solar panel is a good idea as you don’t have to have a wire trailing across the wall to the nearest wall socket, which is usually nowhere near a window. The panel has suckers which attaches to the window and almost goes unnoticed, it keeps the battery topped up and actually works great. Also included is a power adapter if you’d prefer this over the solar panel.The solar panel also has a built-in light sensor so you can set the blind to open automatically when it gets light outside, and to close when it gets dark. The light intensity setting is adjustable so you can fine tune it to the amount of light / darkness before it opens or closes.Overall I’m very happy with this blind controller, it does what it’s supposed to do and works very well.If you found this review helpful, please could you click the “Helpful” button below.

I bought this, without great expectations. But it is a decent piece of kit. I initially fitted it to a roller blind which I found difficult to raise and lower as it had a very short chain. The Benexmart motor struggled, with the chain sometimes slipping, and eventually I over-tightened the chain and it broke. The new chain is much longer, and the motor works perfectly now, with no slipping. The blind is quite big - 2 m wide and 1.3 m drop blackout blind. The motor is easy to install, but worth noting that it is worth placing the backing plate lower that you think you should, because there is a ratchet system for tightening the chain by sliding the motor downwards. Battery seems to last for ages, and it is very handy for charging as you can just remove the unit from the wall to plug it in. I don't use the solar charger. The app is very good, as far as I am concerned. I have other motorised blinds in the house, connected to fused spurs - motorizing this blind with the Benexmart was an afterthought, and while this is not in the same league as the other blinds (for example, no dedicated remote control and only bluetooth connection), it does the job at a fraction of the cost. Delivery was much quicker than promised. I think this is a very good buy.

For the money well built has plenty of power, simple to set up. Battery seems to be lasting a good amount of time. The app is simple to use and the solar panel is a nice touch. I didn’t give it 5 out of 5 as it has a light sensor so it will close the blinds when it’s dark but there is no way I can see in the app to use this function. I will be buying more