A Cumbersome Setup With Big Rewards

SwitchBot’s Adjustable Roller Shades aren’t the pinnacle of smart home convenience and installation can be a bit tricky depending on the window size. However, once installed, it’s a delightful and easy-to-use luxury you’ll want to add to every available window in your home.

SwitchBot Adjustable Roller Shade

SwitchBot’s Roller Shade is an automated solution to standard blinds and shades that can get tangled and provide minimal light coverage. The varied sizes and ease of use make this a suitable covering for most windows in your home, even if the initial installation can be cumbersome.

Pros & Cons

• Smooth and quiet operation
• Blocks a lot of light when installed properly
• SwitchBot app keeps it wire-free
• Aesthetically pleasing and not too bulky

• Having to cut the curtain to size is irksome
• More color options would be nice
• Wired controller is long and hinders the clean appearance
• Doesn?t include a charge adaptor, USB-C cable, or solar charger

See Our Process

How We Test and Review Products at How-To Geek

We go hands-on with every product to ensure it’s worth your time and money.

Price and Availability

SwitchBot’s Roller Shade is available in the official SwitchBot store in four sizes: small, medium, large, and extra-large. They retail for $199.99, $219.99, $259.99, and $309.99, respectively. For an additional $29.99, you can also get the SwitchBot Solar Panel charger.

A Simple-ish Way to Make Windows Smart

Though I’m a proponent of many smart home applications, I questioned the necessity for smart shades. After all, how difficult is it to open and close a manual shade? Then, immediately before receiving SwitchBot’s automated shade, I was reminded of twisting cords and the pains of uneven sides.

Automated roller shades solve both problems quite easily, and with SwitchBot’s dedicated app, it can be conveniently activated without leaving your seat. Overall, the roller shade offers a clean look with an impressively smooth operation — so long as you can make it past the somewhat obnoxious installation process.

“No Customization” Isn’t Quite Accurate

Before getting too deep into the functionality of SwitchBot’s adjustable roller shade, let’s start at the highest point of aggravation. Though marketing for the shade proudly touts “no customization,” it’s a bit of a misdirection. So much so that I’m not 100% sure what it means.

The shades are available in four sizes, ranging from small (22.8 to 31.5 inches) to XL (55.1 to 72.8 inches). That sounds like you just measure your window’s width, choose the size that fits in that range, and you’re good to go for a quick and clean installation. That’s not entirely the case, though. If you order a small, for example, unless your window perfectly fits a 31.5-inch shade, some customization is required.

Unfortunately, the process is cumbersome, even if SwitchBot provides the necessary tools. You have to shrink the unit down — which is just a matter of measuring the space and tinkering with a few clamping screws — but the biggest headache is getting the shade itself to the proper size.

A Cumbersome and User-Unfriendly Process

Physically cutting the shade isn’t really the biggest problem, though safely removing it from the automated roller is clumsy. SwitchBot includes a tool that easily screws into the end and rotates around until it cuts through the shade down to the mount it’s attached to. You then have to unfurl the entire shade to cut away one last bit, then resize the mount to match the main roller housing. At its longest, the shade is 86.6 inches. I struggled to find a space long enough to unravel it entirely, and SwitchBot failed to include something to lay down to protect the shade from dirt or animal hair.

I was skeptical whether the whole process would be worth it, but I muscled through, moving furniture and laying down a protective sheet. While the process was inconvenient, true to some of my previous experiences with SwitchBot, the janky install wasn’t indicative of the finished product.

A Smooth Operator

Actually hanging the rolling shade was as simple as any other curtain. After measuring the width, drilling some pilot holes, installing a weighted bar at the bottom, and adding a few screws, it was in place. The actual installation and calibration took minutes after it was cut down to size. Even easier than that, though, is operating the shade.

The adjustable roller comes with a remote control you can install near the window, but it does ruin the clean aesthetic. While its two-button operation works fine, I decided to stick with the SwitchBot app (available on Android and iPhone). Just as quickly as it was hung, the roller was connected and ready for use.

Operating the shade couldn’t be easier. You can open it, close it, or adjust it to a height of your choosing. You can customize buttons to your desired height, so if you like just a little sunlight, you can set a prompt to open only a quarter of the way. With up to eight available customized actions, I can’t imagine not being able to create every preset you’d want access to.

Quiet With an Option for Slow Quieter

When operating normally, the motor is relatively quiet. There is a hum, but it’s far less noisy than the Curtain Rod 2. You can even slow down how fast it opens to reduce the noise further, but I don’t think the standard sound of the motor is intrusive enough to need it. The QuietDrift Control minimizes the noise, though it’s still audible and it does slow down the roller’s operation significantly. An example of the two modes (starting with QuietDrift) can be seen in the video below.

I can’t speak for an installation outside of the window frame, but the inside mount aligns so nicely with the wall. Unlike my blackout curtains, it takes up absolutely no room and opens up the space by a surprising amount.

While the roller unit is on the thicker side, the shade itself is thin, so I don’t suspect the outside mount would feel much different. It would give a bit more coverage and better replace blackout curtains. However, even mounted on the inside, the shade filters a lot of light.

Keeping the Roller Charged

SwitchBot supplied me with a solar charger, which plugs right into the roller. However, you can also charge the device via a USB-C port in the controller or through the USB-C port in the roller itself. Unfortunately, the setup doesn’t come with a USB-C cable or the required 5V1A charging adapter.

You’re better off springing for the solar panel charger, especially since it adds a feature I’ll touch on shortly. If you don’t, though, you’ll still get month’s worth of use out of the battery, depending on how often you use the shade.

SwitchBot’s App Adds Plenty of Features

For a device that moves in two directions, I didn’t expect a lot of customization. SwitchBot added what it could, giving users plenty of control over when, how, and why the shade moves. Along with manually adjusting the shade, the app also has an option to schedule times to open and close and set a timer for the next time you want it to move automatically.

If you have SwitchBot’s Solar Panel charger, you can utilize the app’s Light Sensor feature. If you want the panel to open when it’s bright out, you can automate the roller to react to the light level recorded by the solar panel. While my window doesn’t get a ton of sunlight, it registered enough to run a test where the shade opened every time the light level hit level 6 and closed again at level 4. You can gauge the average light level based on the data collected by the panel.

Should You Buy SwitchBot’s Roller Shade?

Before installing SwitchBot’s Adjustable Roller Shade, I would have said it sounded like an unnecessary smart home addition. Just a day after installation, though, I came around to appreciate the ease of use. I hadn’t thought about the pain points of standard curtains, blinds, and shades, like how the cords tend to knot or twist (especially if you have curious pets). The automated shades remove all wiring altogether (if you don’t use the included button and separate solar panel), giving your window a new, clean, aesthetically pleasing appearance.

Available in white and grey, SwitchBot also notes that you can use any roller shade fabric, as long as it’s sized properly. If the initial setup were a little easier and took into consideration that not everyone has the space to unravel 7 feet of shade, I’d have been all-around pleased with virtually every aspect of the automated shade.

Whereas the automated curtain opener was more of a luxury item that would benefit select windows in a home, the SwitchBot’s roller shade can be more widely implemented to help reduce energy costs.

SwitchBot Adjustable Roller Shade

SwitchBot’s Roller Shade is an automated solution to standard blinds and shades that can get tangled and provide minimal light coverage. The varied sizes and ease of use make this a suitable covering for most windows in your home, even if the initial installation can be cumbersome.