Kleverness Smart Lighting review: This hub-based lighting system is unfinished and expensive

Kleverness proudly bills its products as “the best, easiest and smartest solution for your home’s lighting.” I can categorically tell you that none of those claims are accurate, and that today Kleverness is not worth serious consideration if you want to outfit your home with smart lights.

Much like the Philips Hue system, Kleverness revolves around a hub that controls everything connected to it. To communicate with components (in-wall switches and dimmers, as well as plug-in outlets), however, Kleverness does not use any standard wireless protocol (such as Wi-Fi, Zigbee, or Z-Wave); it operates instead over a 915MHz unlicensed RF band, ostensibly to give it long range. It’s worth noting here that Zigbee and Z-Wave also use unlicensed spectrum in this range: 908.41MHz for Z-Wave, and either 2.4GHz or 915MHz for Zigbee (both standards operate on slightly different frequencies outside the U.S.). The Klever Hub must be permanently connected to your router via an ethernet cable, so plan accordingly.

The hockey puck-sized Klever Hub requires just the ethernet hookup and a power connection, and then you’re ready to connect via the Kleverness app to get things going. Or so I thought. After registering your name, email address, and a password with the app, you must wait for a confirmation code to be delivered via email before you can proceed. I registered and waited… and waited… and it wasn’t until nearly an hour later that my confirmation code finally arrived, after which time I had already created a new account with a different email address. This time the code landed in a spam folder, another aggravation.

Kleverness

The next step in setup is to scan a QR code on the underside of the Hub to register it to the app. I scanned, and the connection failed. I tried twice again, same result. After unplugging the Hub and plugging it back in, I tried a fourth time. The app crashed. The fifth try turned out to be the charm.

After a lengthy firmware update, I was finally ready to get started adding Kleverness components. Marketed as a smart lighting solution, Kleverness does not sell light bulbs. Instead, it sells an in-wall switch, an in-wall dimmer, and a plug-in outlet. The system’s goal is not to give you tunable lighting options but rather a way to control the lights you already have. Note that all this gear requires the Klever Hub to work.

Christopher Null / IDG

It may come as no surprise to hear that the Kleverness app crashed over and over again when I was setting up these devices (more QR codes to be scanned), requiring multiple force-quits of the app and power cycling the Hub before I finally got anything to work. All told, I spent 2.5 hours working with the Kleverness system to get just one plug-in outlet working.

The big selling point…