Despite its decent functionality opening and closing window blinds with the on-device buttons, its smart home integration is completely broken. This can be best illustrated by its app's review score of only 1 star on Google Play and just 2 stars on Apple App Store. If you do want to take the chance to buy this product, make sure to read the reviews first and see if they have made improvements since this post.

On my s23 ultra, I am not able to find the smart bridge to control the blind. It could error for different reasons, like prolonged unresponsive search, unresponsive buttons, or seemingly random connection errors. This happens even after receiving a firmware update directly from customer support. Not only is the smart home integration unusable, direct bluetooth control is also slow and unreliable.

The issue is also for sure wide-spread. There are reddit posts of users complaining its app since the product laungh. Another thing to point out is that the positive reviews on the battery-powered version on this site consist of mostly sponsored reviews at the moment. Due to the lack of alternative products on the market, it is easy to want to give this product a try. But your experience could likely be returning the product with frustration after hours of work and leaving holes on your wall.

Smart shades for you home sounds like a great idea but this product is more of a headache that it's worth. I went ahead and spent more than $600 on two of these plus the Bridge that is supposed to make everything "smart" and functional. Ryse isn't very eager to advertise that the Bridge needs to be physically plugged into your router - no wireless internet connections here - and still.be I'm range of your blinds to connect via Bluetooth. I live in a 700sqft loft and my router was too far away for the bridge to connect to the blinds and was completely useless. So okay, moving on, I thought I'd just deal with having to use the things manually with my phone over Bluetooth. Do not do this. This way of operating is a huge pain. They constantly disconnect and when they finally do pair, the operation of opening or closing is so incredible slow and jerky it's beyond ridiculous. I tried it for less than a day and decided it would be less of a hassle to take everything down, patch the holes in the wall from where these things were and repaint my house instead of put up with this garbage.
Don't waste your time, patience, or money on this trash.

The installation was really easy which I'm happy about and it works just as advertised.

However, there are a few things I wish I had known before I made my purchase and installed it that I should be aware that I wouldn't be able to manually move my blinds anymore. This is a problem because I cut my chains in a place where the Ryse itself is a little inaccessible so I will need to reinstall it higher up and fill in the holes that I left behind.

Additionally, the Ryse gets a little bit in the way of the curtain going down so I will also need to be aware of that when I move it.

Finally, I wasn't aware that I needed a bridge to make it smart home activated so I need to wait for that to setup routines and control it with my smart home which is why I got it in the first place. The bluetooth connection isn't that great as it keeps disconnecting and you can't set up routines but that makes sense so I'm not too concerned about it.

One small nit I would also consider is I wish it came with a few extra bead connectors because I will need to cut my chain in two places which means I'll need to leave behind two connectors when I move out of this place.

Overall though, I think this does exactly what I wanted it to do and I'm going to be so happy going to sleep to a dark room and waking up to a bright one.

I was considering the pricey option of replacing all my shades with a brand new set of smart ones - until I discovered RYSE SmartShade. I found a better solution that is both more economical and environmentally-friendly. Rather than tossing out my current beaded-chain shades, which are fine and in good functioning condition, I used RYSE to retrofit them. Setup required minimal effort, it added the practical functionality I sought, and all at a fraction of the cost. I look forward to expanding and completing my RYSE SmartShade ecosystem by getting the Smart Bridge and few more of these with the battery packs. As someone green and budget-conscious, I’m very happy with my RYSE SmartShade purchase and highly recommend them.