Flair Smart Vent 4x10 (White), AC Vent Cover for Floors, Walls and Ceilings.…

Having run these vents for over a year now (since September 2022), I've found their functionality to be reliable. A rating of this product with only one star seems unfair and likely stem from a misunderstanding of its technical capabilities and intended function. The basic functionality of the vents is to shut off a room from being heated or cooled. They respond to trigger temperatures, and this will open or close the valve automatically. The vents lack a built-in temperature sensor and need a Flair Puck (available from Flair) or the temperature sensors of the thermostat (in my case Ecobee). Successful operation requires a Flair Puck (as gateway) and a robust Wi-Fi connection. Overall, I found that the Vents/Puck installation does not require an above average technical understanding (though some technical familiarity is necessary). What is very counter intuitive is the app settings. It is clearly made by engineers and is not very user friendly. The software doesn't feel very mature yet. A couple of items which helped me get the system to do what I want. This is for a home with a smart thermostat: 1) After integration of your smart thermostat go to 'home settings/thermostats' and turn off 'Allow flair to adjust thermostat'. The scheduling and temp control of the flair system is significantly less sophisticated than your smart thermostat and you want to prevent this app from overriding your home settings. 2) Stay in 'home setting' and go to the 'System' section. Set 'Set point controller' to 'Thermostat'. Same reason as point 1 3) Only create rooms in the app where you have Flair Vents. I installed Flair vents in rooms which I want to close off from my forced air heating/cooling system when not occupied (I have a larger house 6000 sq.ft.). You will need to have a temp sensor in each of these rooms, either a Puck or a thermostat sensor. The flair Puck is 2x the price of an Ecobee sensor, so it was an easy choice for me. Zones are created automatically by the flair app when you complete the smart thermostat integration. I have two zones as I have two Ecobees in my home. 4) Get a cup of coffee and patiently start making the schedules per room/room group/zone. It is a tedious affair. I had to make one for the winter and one for the summer as Flair works with a single trigger value for both cooling and heating. Normally your trigger temperature for cooling is set higher than your trigger temperature for heating, so a single trigger value didn’t work for me. Set ‘Mode’ to ‘Auto’, the flair system will detect whether the system is heating or cooling, prompting Flair to adjust the open/close action accordingly. 5) Go to 'Device settings' and turn off 'Push notifications' and 'Geofencing'. These functions are redundant when using a smart thermostat. 6) I would recommend to not install Smart vents in Bathrooms. I learned this after my install. You want Bathrooms to be warm. In the winter, the vent has to be all open to let the heat in, in summer fully closed to keep the cold AC out. This can easily be done by a regular (mechanical) vent, which you open/close before the summer and winter period. The issue with using smart vents is that the APP will open vents to ensure a minimum of vents are open to safeguard your AC system. Unfortunately you can not dictate which of the smart vents it will open (or keep closed). This results in frequent freezing bathrooms. Also, the Smart vents are not able to provide a 100% closed vent. The system works great and does what I intended it to do. The flair engineers created an over complicated app by inserting features which are (and should only be) controlled by your smart thermostat. Turn that off. The scheduling is tedious, but you will need to do it to get the max out of your flair system. Best of luck in your implementation! -----###----- Edit: I have been running my system without the bridge for years without any issues. I'm adding this comment because I believe the Flair marketing of the new bridge device is misleading. It suggests you need the device even if you have a solid home Wi-Fi network, which is incorrect. Be aware that this system is cloud based (not sure why) so Flair severs are required to operate the system. If your Internet down so are your vents (open in case of lost connectivity). Even worse if Flair goes out of business your system is inoperable. An alternative to Flair vents are vents from "Keen home". Have a look, read the reviews and make your pick.

I bought 6 of these vents with one puck (spent $$$), and I have used the vents for about 6 months now, and I feel like I can give an appropriate review now. Overall, not worth the money because it is not reliable and does not work all the time. I think because the vents are cloud based, Flair does not have fast servers for communicating with the vents. My vents are always losing connection and stuck at one state (either closed or open) even when it should be in the other state. To be clear, all my vents and puck are all on the top floor of my house which is just about 700 sq. ft. and I have my internet modem hookup on the top floor with about 500MB of internet service bandwidth and an Orbi RBR50 kit with hard-wired RBS50 satellites that provides solid internet network mesh in all areas of my house. The point is, I have a very great internet service in my house because I work from home full-time. Did I forget to mention that the puck is on the same desk as my Orbi RBR50 router and modem, but still, things don't work as should. I also have an Ecobee thermostat with sensors in very room with is linked to the Flair app and set in automatic mode. I even go as far as buying an app that integrates Flair with SmartThings so that I can also use SmartThings to control the vents, still the experience is still not great because of the poor Flair servers. I really wanted the vents to work as intended but it simply does not work all the time. So many times I would wake up in the middle of the night sweating profusely only to find out that the A/C is set to 74 but the two vents in my room are closed. I'll then pull the vents from the HVAC track since I will need to open the app on the my phone, put the app in setup mode and then wait for the vents to be re-discovered before the vents will work again (who wants to do all that in the middle of the night, half way-asleep?). I could go on and on to count all the ways these vents failed to deliver value for the money but still priced very high (not the mention how multiple closed vents can be bad for the central A/C unit which the vents claims to properly manage by lettings some vents stay open to help with the pressure on the A/C unit). For me, I count the investment as a loss, since I am not really getting the value for my money. This would have been great if the entire system (vent, puck, app and Flair server) worked well, but sadly they do not.

The smart vents are a nice addition to a home in which you are looking to impact the room temp of individual rooms. Understanding that when doors are open or overall air transfer occurs hot/ cool air will exchange with the rest of the house. These are really easy to install. There are a few steps to get it put together (only need a phillips head screwdriver). It comes with batteries and pretty solid instructions on what to do. Note: you will need the puck to control one or more of these devices. Once you unpack and install the batteries, an app on your phone will allow you to connect the vent with the puck controller. With the vents installed it is easy to assign them to specific rooms and sync them with room temp sensors. Yes, there are several pieces of equipment that is required all in for this to be effective. It can all tie in pretty easily with a home thermostat (if you have a smart enough thermostat). All in with the vents installed and synced, it is a nice way to provide room level control. My daughter enjoys a warmer room at night than what we keep the house at. In the summer I simple change the vent set level to a warmer temp, so it closes early as the rest of the house continues to cool. The wife and I enjoy a cooler room in the winter, the vent closes early as the rest of the house continues to heat. It is a nice way to help make everyone a little more comfortable in their space.

My experience with this smart vent didn’t start well. My bridge didn’t detect any of the vents. I contacted support and found out I had to reset the vent. This should be very clear in the manual. After setting up everything, however, vents are working quite well without any issues. UI and design of the app is not the best, but it is easy to use once you understand the priority of the setting. Now I have more even temperature throughout the house. If you are having issues with AC or furnace working too much for the first floor, this vent is very good solution. If you are considering wall vent, you need to measure well. Otherwise, it may not fit requiring some DIY project.

This system works well with ecobee, I had major room temp differences before installing flair vents on each enclosed room. Before, my wfh office would never get below 78 degrees winter or summer because of its relatively small size and computers. Now, the flair ecosystem knows where needs the cooled or heated air the most and will open those vents while closing the ones that have reached the setpoint. This is very good for energy efficiency and will allow you to push the limits of your system farther by conditioning less square feet of your home or business. It’s good for compressor life, efficiency, saving on energy, comfort, and much more. Once you have it you’ll wonder why it’s not a standard feature on all homes with forced air