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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Based on the latest Z-Wave 800 chipset Supports incandescent, CFL, LED, and MLV lighting Very easy to install Cons Requires a neutral wire Companion switch required for 3-way installations Our Verdict Leviton, one of the biggest electrical component manufacturers in the world, makes high-quality products and offers a comprehensive collection of Z-Wave-compatible devices in addition to this Z-Wave 800 dimmer and switch. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Leviton Decora Smart Z-Wave 800 Dimmer (model ZW6HD) Retailer Price $46.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Smart lighting controls that operate over Wi-Fi are great, because they don’t require a hub; they connect directly to your router. The downside is that they must compete with all the other clients on your home network: Your computers, gaming consoles, media streamers, smart speakers, home security cameras, smart plugs, and many, many more. I live in a very small home—less than 800 square feet—but there are still more than 80 devices connected to the Eero 6 router in my Ring Alarm Pro. Given that the Eero 6’s practical limit is 128 clients, there just isn’t a lot of room for light switches and dimmers. Hence, my affinity for Z-Wave, the connected home technology at the heart of Leviton’s Decora Smart Z-Wave product line. I first embraced Z-Wave when I built a smart home from the ground up back in 2007. A Z-Wave hub will take just one slot on your router’s client list while managing up to 232 Z-Wave clients. And unlike Wi-Fi and Zigbee, which both operate in the 2.4GHz radio spectrum, Z-Wave devices use spectrum in the 900MHz frequency range, which is not only a lot less-crowded, but also renders Z-Wave signals less susceptible to being absorbed by a home’s building materials. For the in-wall Leviton Decora Smart Z-Wave dimmer and on/off switch reviewed here, Leviton specifies a range of 50 feet from any other Z-Wave device or your home’s Z-Wave hub. If you’ve settled on Z-Wave as your smart home ecosystem of choice, no one makes better lighting controls than Leviton. Unlike Zigbee, Z-Wave is not part of the Matter ecosystem—and I honestly don’t care. I’m not throwing shade at Matter here; I just haven’t found that standard to be critical to how my smart home operates. I’m an iPhone user, and it would be great to have all my smart home devices incorporated into my Apple Home app, but I’m also an Alexa user and I use voice commands spoken to my Echo smart speakers far more often than I pull out my smartphone and tap on its screen—or summon Siri—to operate my smart home devices. Both the Decora Smart Z-800-series dimmer (left) and switch have locator LEDs beneath their toggles. The dimmer also has a stacked set of LEDs to indicate the current brightness level. All the LEDs go dark when the connected load is powered on.Michael Brown/Foundry Given that the various generations of Z-Wave comprise an installed base of more than 100 million devices, according to Silicon Labs, it’s just a matter of time before someone comes out with a Z-Wave-to-Matter bridge. I’m not only willing to wait for a Z-Wave-to-Matter bridge, but I’m also not convinced I’ll ever really need one. Specifications Both the Decora Smart Z-Wave Dimmer 800 Series (model ZW6HD) and the Decora Smart Z-Wave Switch (model ZW15S) use the latest-generation Z-Wave 800 chipset, which is backward-compatible with every previous version of Z-Wave, and the Z-Wave Plus protocol. As for the Z-Wave hub I use, I chose a Vivint Smart Home panel as the foundation for my first smart home in 2007, and I had it installed in my new home when I moved from California to the Pacific Northwest in the fall of 2023. Leviton Decora Smart Z-Wave 800 switch (model ZW15S) Best Prices Today: $43.99 at Amazon You don’t need a professionally installed smart home system to use Z-Wave devices, of course; there are many, many DIY alternatives, including Ring Alarm Pro, LG’s Homey line, Home Assistant, Samsung SmartThings (Samsung’s earlier hub and Aeotec’s version that is; the newer Samsung SmartThings Station doesn’t have a Z-Wave radio). Perhaps the most important thing you need to know about these Decora Smart products is that they depend on the presence of a neutral wire in the box where they’ll be installed. If you don’t have that and can’t bring a neutral wire to the box, you might want to consider one of Lutron’s Caséta or Diva Smart products. They also depend on a hub—Lutron’s own, which isn’t compatible with a Vivint system—but they don’t depend on neutral wires. Both the dimmer (left) and toggle switch have pigtails for connecting to your home’s electrical wiring: black for line, red for load, white for neutral, green for ground, and a striped red/yellow wire for 3-way installations.Michael Brown/Foundry Both the dimmer and the switch can handle incandescent loads up to 600 watts, LED and CFL (compact fluorescent) loads up to 300 watts, and MLV (magnetic low voltage) loads up to 600VA (volt amps). These are both paddle-style switches that come with white paddles mounted on the device that you can swap out with an ivory paddle that comes in the box. If you want something other than white or ivory, you can buy color-change kits in light almond, gray, brown, or black for about $4 each. The industrial designs of the dimmer and switch are necessarily slightly different. Both have a small green LED centered beneath their paddles that glows when the device is receiving power. These make the switches easy to find in the dark. The Dimmer has a stack of seven green LEDs to the left of the paddle that light up in sequence when the switch is turned on (lighting up from bottom to top), turned off (from top to bottom), or when the dimming level is changed (the LED representing the brightness level glows brighter than the other six). Dimming the connected load is accomplished by pressing and holding the bottom of a narrow toggle on the right-hand side of the paddle; doing the same to the top of the toggle increases the light output. The vertical orientation of the dimmer mechanism is an improvement over the horizontal toggle on earlier-generation Z-Wave dimmers. Installation and setup I installed both switches as single-pole devices, but both can also operate in 3-way scenarios where the connected load can be controlled by a switch—or switches—at other locations in the room. In a 3-way installation, however, you’ll need to purchase one of Leviton’s “companion” switches: the Leviton DD00R Wired Dimmer Companion or the DD0SR Wired Switch Companion (street priced at about $23 and $17 respectively). The Decora Smart Z-Wave dimmer and switch both have pigtails (line, load, neutral, traveler, and ground) that you’ll connect to the electrical wiring in your home using the provided wire nuts. While both devices are considerably bulkier than their dumb counterparts, I had no problem stuffing them side by side back into box after I’d made the required connections. These are Z-Wave lighting controls, so you’ll need a Z-Wave hub to connect them to your home network. I connected them to my Vivint Smart Home system. Michael Brown/Foundry Both switches come with two-piece wall plates that hide the screws that attach them to the switches (you screw one piece to the switch and then snap on the second piece that’s exposed to the room), but I couldn’t use them because I installed both switches in the same box. I made a run to the hardware store to buy a conventional 2-gang wall plate, which cost less than $3. I could have opted for one of Leviton’s “screwless” wall plates, but the store didn’t stock them and one would have cost more than twice as much as the conventional plate, even on Amazon. The next step is to enroll the devices to your Z-Wave smart home hub of choice. Doing so with a Vivint smart home panel requires contacting customer support, which I did via online chat, and asking them to provide access to the installer’s menu on the control panel. Once you’ve provided your verbal password, they’ll unlock the panel and provide the installer password needed for the next step. You won’t need to involve anyone else if you have your own Z-Wave hub. In either scenario, you’ll initiate pairing on the hub, then push a button on the switch to add the device to the hub’s Z-Wave routing table. Rinse, lather, repeat for each new Z-Wave device you wish to add to your system. Performance There’s not a lot to say about the performance of the Leviton Decora Z-Wave switch, other than it works. I connected it to pair of dumb BR30 LED ceiling lights in my hallway, and it dutifully turned them on and off: at the switch itself, with the Vivint app and at the physical Vivint control panel, and with Alexa voice commands (I need to say “Alexa, tell Vivint to turn on—or off—the hallway,” but that’s a Vivint thing). You can do the same with a “Hey Google” command if your smart home revolves around Google Home. Once you’ve enrolled the switches into your smart home hub of choice, you can control them with that device’s app or with voice commands spoken to Amazon Alexa or Google Home voice assistants. These screenshots are of the Vivint Smart Home app.Michael Brown/Foundry The same is true of the dimmer, except that I can specify in the Vivint app, control panel, or as part of my voice command the percentage of brightness at which I want the twin LEDs in the connected ceiling fixture to glow). More importantly, the dimmer control to the right of the primary paddle smoothly dimmed and brightened the connected LED bulbs and the corresponding green LEDs to the left of the paddle accurately displayed the brightness level. Tapping the paddle to turn the bulbs does so instantly but tapping it to turn them off gradually dims them until they’re off—after a little more than 2 seconds. At no point did any of the LED bulbs flicker or behave erratically. This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart lighting controls. Should you buy the Leviton Decora Smart Z-Wave 800-series? If you’ve settled on Z-Wave as your smart home ecosystem of choice, no one makes better lighting controls than Leviton. The Leviton Decora Smart Z-Wave Dimmer 800 Series (model ZW6HD) and the Decora Smart Z-Wave Switch (model ZW15S) feature the latest generation of Z-Wave 800 chips, and they’re robustly built, easy to install, and compatible with a wide range of smart home and home security hubs. While Leviton doesn’t offer Z-Wave 800 in-wall outlets or fan-speed controllers, or plug-in dimmers and smart plugs with the latest generation of Z-Wave silicon, it does offer those device types with previous generations of Z-Wave technology, and those products are fully interoperable with these new ones. Leviton is one of the largest manufacturers of smart lighting controls, and it was one of the earliest adopters of Z-Wave technology. You can buy its Z-Wave 800 smart dimmer and switch with confidence. Read...

If you’re using an Android phone, you’ve probably noticed that Google’s Gemini AI assistant seems to be popping up everywhere, the same way it’s been popping into Google Search, Docs, YouTube, etc. And this is true even if you aren’t using a Google-branded phone. Turns out, that’s no accident because Google is paying Samsung loads of money to make sure Gemini is front and center on its phones. The information comes from a predictable source: testimony in the ongoing and potentially disastrous Google antitrust case. (No, not that one, the other one. Google has lost two separate antitrust cases brought by the US federal government in the last year.) Bloomberg reports that Google is paying Samsung “an enormous sum of money” to put Gemini on its phones and integrate it into the One UI Android skin, according to Google platform and device partnership VP Peter Fitzgerald. The executive testified that the terms of the deal mean Google pays Samsung for every device that’s preloaded with Gemini and heavily featuring it in the system. Samsung also gets a cut of the advertising revenue generated from Gemini searches and other actions. The contract was set in place for at least two years, though the precise parameters (and how much an “enormous sum” amounts to) aren’t known. It makes sense for Samsung. The company has been pushing its latest Galaxy devices as chock-full of AI capabilities (with a skeptical-at-best response from the technology press), and of course it’s pretty rare for a giant company to turn down dump trucks full of money. And this is a familiar move from Google, who’s known to pay Apple billions every year to keep its search on the iPhone and other devices. Less straightforward transactions—like insisting that phone makers load up their devices with Google services like Docs, Maps, and YouTube in order to keep access to the de facto standard Google Play Store app platform—have gotten the company in regulatory trouble before. Users aren’t exactly thrilled with Gemini. As it fills up Google Search with answers of questionable utility and replaces long-term Google integrations like Google Assistant for smart device management, plenty of people are looking for alternatives. Apropos of nothing, did I tell you I really like the Vivaldi browser? It remains to be seen what’ll happen as a result of the antitrust verdicts. The US Department of Justice wants to force Google to divest itself of the Chrome browser, and the same might happen to Google’s advertising business. Either (or both) would be a crushing blow to the tech giant, possibly knocking it out of its leading category. But it’s far from certain whether these results will come about, and Google will exhaust appeals and every other option to keep them from happening. Read...

Google is having a bit of a moment. It’s not quite an Enron- or FTX-style “abandon ship” situation, but between two separate US antitrust rulings on its core search and advertising businesses, it’s a five-alarm fire. One of the possible outcomes is Google selling off the Chrome browser… and it looks like one possible buyer is OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT. OpenAI’s head of product for ChatGPT is named Nick Turley, and he testified at the remedy phase of the Department of Justice’s successful monopoly suit against Google. When asked if OpenAI would be interested in buying the Chrome browser from Google, Turley didn’t mince words. “Yes, we would,” he responded, “as would many other parties.” That’s according to The Information. The fact that plenty of other companies would be interested in relieving Google of the burden of Chrome isn’t surprising. It’s the most popular browser on the planet, and its open-source Chromium codebase powers most other browsers (including Microsoft’s Edge, Opera, plus smaller players like Brave, Vivaldi, and Arc). The only major players left on the market that don’t use Chromium are Firefox and Apple’s Safari. Divested of its deep ties to Google for search, advertising, and mobile integration on Android, Chrome would be less of a crowning jewel of web properties. But it would still be enormously beneficial, a potentially huge profit-maker all on its own. And more pertinently, it would be even more useful in a broader technology toolbox for a tech giant like Microsoft. They’ve been pretty desperate to gain back ground in the browser wars ever since Internet Explorer lost its dominance. But let’s examine this from the perspective of OpenAI. Despite being in its infancy, the popularity of ChatGPT and the broader rise of “AI” tools has propelled OpenAI to the forefront of the tech industry. OpenAI’s GPT underlies Microsoft’s Copilot system, and it’s integrated into more and more products and services every day (for better or worse). Meanwhile, CEO Sam Altman is rubbing shoulders with elites from industry and government. Even so, some critics have questioned OpenAI’s ability to continue on its current trajectory without some kind of giant technological leap. Despite a massive increase in profile and billions in revenue, the company has yet to turn a profit, and does not expect to for years at least. Suddenly, having the keys to the world’s most popular browser would change a lot of variables in that equation. It would, almost certainly, put ChatGPT and other generative AI tools front and center in the way most users experience the web. It would make OpenAI a direct competitor to companies like Apple and its current partner Microsoft. It would put it on the map for the same kind of advertising and user data tracking that got Google in trouble in the first place. And perhaps most importantly, it would give OpenAI a treasure trove of data from billions of users around the world, all the better to train its models. Most of this is educated guessing, albeit fairly obvious conclusions to draw. The DOJ wants Google to be forced to split off Chrome in some capacity, but we’ll have to see if the federal judge actually goes for that as a punitive option. And assuming that happens, Google will exhaust every legal possibility (and probably spend a small country’s GDP on lawyers in the process) to hold onto one of its most important business assets. If all that comes to pass and Chrome is still put up on the auction block, the buyer might be subject to yet more approval in the US and beyond. The situation is, in a word, complicated. And there’s not much we can do in the meantime but wait and see how it plays out. Read...

The past year has been anything but positive for tech giant Intel. The company has suffered nightmarish processor woes, been eliminated from the dedicated graphics card market, and, to add insult to injury, laid off 15,000 employees last year. Unfortunately, those layoffs weren’t the end of it and more appear to be in store for the company. Bloomberg reports that Intel plans to lay off another 21,000 employees, or about 20 percent of its entire workforce. The company is expected to announce the layoffs later this week. Intel’s newly appointed CEO Lip-Bu Tan—who came on in March 2025, replacing Pat Gelsinger after he stepped down in December 2024—aims to streamline management and rebuild a work culture that’s focused on technology and engineering, according to Bloomberg. Tan said all the right things when he made his opening statements as Intel’s new chief executive last month, asking for “brutal honesty” while promising to “turn things around” and capping it all off with a bold claim: “I will make it perfect.” As devastating as it is for a company to slash a fifth of its workforce, we can only wait and see if this move is what Intel needs to re-establish itself and make a much-needed comeback. Read...

When just about every tech sector has been touched by AI – yes, even your run-of-the-mill thermal paste (I’m still not sure how, though) – it’s no surprise that VPN operators have found a way to integrate AI enhancements into their software too. In VPNs, AI is being used for everything from threat detection and response to the creation of personalized security profiles for users. You could say it’s changing the toolsets VPNs have to protect their users’ privacy and combat cyber threats online. But are AI-enhanced VPNs any better than traditional VPNs? Further reading: The best VPN services How AI-enhanced VPNs differ from traditional VPNs The quick answer to the above question is: Yes, they are better – because of the benefits that AI-driven VPNs bestow. The main difference between AI-enhanced VPNs and traditional VPNs is that the former incorporate AI-driven bots to manage the VPN connections and other processes, whereas traditional VPNs rely mostly on old-fashioned algorithms. These AI-driven bots are like smart assistants that continuously analyze network conditions and threats on the fly, thereby tightening the screws on network traffic and security and also analyzing your preferences for the most personalized experience possible. The biggest benefit is speed; AI-enhanced VPNs provide faster connectivity than traditional VPNs since they’re able to overcome the slow connectivity that traffic-monitoring and encryption by VPNs can cause. One way they do that is by dynamically monitoring server loads and then shifting connections to less congested servers. But they can also do things like optimize your connection based on your preferences or your browser search history, making your browsing far quicker and more tailored to your browsing needs. Say you’re gaming or streaming and need the quickest connection possible, your AI-driven VPN may pause all updates or background processes so that you get the smoothest data transfer speeds possible – that’s just one example of how it can work. Enhanced encryption is another big benefit of AI-enhanced VPNs. AI bots in these VPNs can quickly and efficiently pinpoint vulnerabilities in existing cryptographic profiles and adopt newer profiles without needing any human intervention, while traditional VPNs need operator input. That means they can adapt quicker to new threats from hackers and malware, thereby enhancing threat detection for their users. They can more easily suggest user-specific responses to threats too. NordVPN is just one VPN using AI tools.  Pexels: Stefan Coders Which VPNs are using AI? Most well-known VPNs have already integrated some kind of AI technology into their software and servers – but some use it more than others. ExpressVPN, for example, uses an AI-powered system that adjusts its encryption methods based on the type of data being transmitted by users. This is especially useful for remote workers, since it provides them with an extra layer of security against hackers. ExpressVPN also uses AI to suggest the quickest server locations. Another popular VPN, Avast SecureLine VPN, uses AI to enhance its threat-detection capabilities – which enables it to more easily identify and block unauthorized login attempts to user accounts. Then there are VPNs that excel at using AI to prevent phishing scams. One of these, Symlex VPN, claims to be the first VPN to use AI to prevent location-based phishing attempts that rely on a users’ geographical location. NordVPN, too, uses an AI-enabled browser extension it calls Sonar to spot potential phishing scams, which are increasingly becoming harder for users to identify. mentioned in this article NordVPN Best Prices Today: $3.39 at NordVPN (Monthly) Are there any limitations to AI-enhanced VPNs? Like other forms of AI, the AI technologies incorporated into VPNs do have their limitations. One problem VPN operators currently have to deal with is when their AI bots make false positive identifications of threats, making it more difficult for users to access legitimate data or communications. Another concern is the fact that AI algorithms require access to considerable amounts of user data to be trained, which could jeopardize user privacy. Although, you could argue that since VPNs are in the business of safeguarding user privacy, some level of trust is required on the part of the user. These are challenges that need to be further addressed, and I’m sure they will be as companies continue to develop and finesse their use of AI technologies in VPNs into the future. Further reading: 5 VPN features you need to start using today Read...

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Intel is allegedly releasing a “free” overclocking tool called “200S Boost” for Intel Core Ultra 200 Series processors, which could lift performance by about 7 percent without voiding your warranty. Intel has yet to formally announce the technology, but the company’s announcement was spoiled by its partners, including Gigabyte, and by Tom’s Hardware, who obtained leaked firmware to test the new tool. According to Hot Hardware, the 200S Boost technology requires a Core Ultra 9 285K, a Core Ultra 7 265K or 265KF, or a 245K/KF chip; a qualified motherboard with an Intel Z890 chipset; and 8,000 MT/s RAM with an XMP profile. Although Hot Hardware suggests that all Z890 motherboards should be able to take advantage of the 200S Boost feature, not all will include the necessary optimizations to do so. What the new Core 200S Boost feature does is simply overclock the chip’s memory and fabric speeds rather than adjust the clock speeds or power settings, Tom’s Hardware reports. Specifically, the NGU/SA fabric is now clocked at 3.2 GHz (up from 2.6 GHz) and the die-to-die communication fabric is now also clocked at 3.2 GHz (up from 2.1 GHz). The fact that Intel is doing this while still preserving its warranty coverage is somewhat remarkable. Whether or not you’ll be able to get Intel’s Core 200S Boost technology, however, is up to your motherboard manufacturer. When (if) they release a BIOS update for your board to include the new feature, you’ll need to go to any overclocking options provided by the BIOS and enable the new 200S Boost overclocking upgrade. MSI, for example, offered this configuration guide below: Intel’s Arrow Lake-S desktop processors emphasized lower power, but at “parity” performance for games and an overall geomean that was expected to be lower than Intel’s 14th-gen parts. A “free” boost might not be able to make up that lack, but it’s an improvement. Read...