Review on Leviton LB220 S Standard Circuit Breaker by Michael Hughes

Error loading media. I do not recommend this product. Don't waste your money. Despite shady marketing and apparently a lot of R&D, these smart switches are one of the worst products Leviton has made. All of the smart switches (I've tested the LB120-DS, LB120-GS, LB120-AS, LB120-S, LB220-S, LB230-S, and LB260-GS) make a distinct, obnoxious hiss when on, even when on the switch itself is set to OFF. Hissing noises are made up of at least three components: regular white noise, high-pitched squeaks, and rapid clicks at rates of 20-30 clicks per second. A single interrupter is troublesome enough, but when you've got an entire cargo center filled with 20-40 of these interrupters, it's like living with a brood of snakes. When the LDC42-W load center coverage is on, the hiss is muted but still audible at least 9 to 12 feet away. When the cover is removed, the switches can be heard up to 40 feet away and through at least one open door. There's no excuse for this poor design because the standard switches, which only cost a few dollars, never make any noise. I've invested several thousand dollars in this unit only to experience this hiss after loading the LP422-ML. The control panel was completely installed and connected by my electricians. What a waste of money. No other switch on the market that I know of has that annoying hiss. Also, non-intelligent Leviton switches (LB120, LB115, LSPD2, etc.) make no noise at all. However, the whole point of the Leviton Smart Load Center is to get smart switches, not standard switches. Standard circuit breakers do not make this load center competitive because the load center itself is much more expensive, standard circuit breakers are still twice as expensive as non-commercial circuit breakers, and non-commercial circuit breakers are available from any utility nationwide. . I'm so disgusted with Leviton's technical solutions to this hissing problem that I don't consider standard (non-intelligent) switches as some sort of workaround. It would give me more peace of mind to be able to return everything and get another supplier's product, even if it means paying my electricians to replace the new panel. as quickly as possible. For a product intended for indoor installation only 0 dB (no noise) is allowed. It is absolutely not justified to charge consumers 3-6 times more for switches that pollute the living environment with such noise. According to Leviton's rep, the hiss is most likely coming from the AC/DC transformer components in each switch to power the radio circuitry. me is based on Bluetooth. This design is clearly short-sighted as each switch requires a Bluetooth radio and an AC-to-DC transformer, increasing the cost of each switch. It would be much better, more efficient and cheaper to have a low voltage DC rail with a single high quality transformer in the panel itself (or attached to the panel) that has no noise. Second, there could have been a simple wired data bus connecting the breakers and the LDATA data hub. In theory, using Bluetooth has the benefit of isolation: in the event of a power surge, the power surge doesn't propagate down the data bus to disable the data hub. However, this argument is a complete red herring since LDATA itself needs to be powered by the same panel. A catastrophic power surge, such as a lightning strike, will disable everything in the panel anyway. Using Bluetooth only pollutes the 2.4 GHz space in the immediate vicinity of the panel. I originally chose the Leviton Smart Load Center because I wanted to upgrade my home to more than 24 circuits, but most home energy monitoring products are limited to 14-16 channels (examples: Emporia Vue and IoTaWatt). I also found the sheer amount of TT clamps required for such panel products to be excessive and sloppy. I ruled out AI-based home energy monitors (examples: Neurio and Sense) because I didn't want to babysit the algorithm for months without guaranteeing my devices might accidentally show up. However, at this stage of the Leviton product, any of the above is better than the Leviton Load Center. Another downside is that Leviton has not yet deployed local network or cloud interfaces to monitor and control the system. This was a known limitation before I bought the product, but I thought there was a project on GitHub to clean up Android REST API calls to the MyLeviton cloud service. I could not find such a project when writing this review. The data belongs to the landlord; There is no good reason (other than laziness) why this data cannot be made available locally. It is imperative for Leviton to make this data available on the local network with appropriate access controls if it is to have a useful product. Leviton had a real opportunity to destroy the load center design and they completely ruined it. Forget this product and buy something else.