CES 2023: Kasa Smart Switches, Dimmers, and Controllers
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Newly Announced and Released Switches, Dimmers, and a New Ceiling Fan Controller
This category has received the most product recommendations over the last year by far. We are now excited to announce that some of these requests were among the announcements at CES. The devices announced for Kasa by TP-Link at CES 2023 were the:
KS240 – Ceiling Fan Control and Dimmer Switch
KS225 – Wi-Fi Dimmer Switch w/Matter
KS205 – Wi-Fi Light Switch w/Matter
KS220 – Wi-Fi Dimmer Switch w/HomeKit (Available Now)
KS200 – Wi-Fi Light Switch w/HomeKit (Available Now)
We have seen a few posts on the forum already regarding what features are compatible with what devices, so please make sure when browsing and purchasing that you check what services the device is integrated with before making a decision.
Learn More about TP-Link’s Entire CES Product Lineup
*CES is a Global Event, any Products Announced and marked "Coming Soon" are not guaranteed to be released in the United States, and specifications may differ from the final product. As we learn more about the devices and specifications we will provide more information regarding regional availability.
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Those switches being described as "w/Matter"...
Does that imply that existing devices might not receive a firmware update that implements Matter?
Or are those just new model numbers for devices that will ship with Matter-capable firmware, and maybe some industrial design tweaks?
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I don't see any details about the KS240 on the tp-link ces site. Do you have more information. Been waiting for this for quite a while.
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These are the devices that were built with the matter protocol in mind and are designed to use the protocol out of the box. The future for already released devices is still not known to our team and probably won't until we start seeing how the designated matter devices work together. It may be easier for the teams to add this functionality later, when matter networks have already been established.
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It looks like all the Kasa devices were removed from the CES product list on the site overnight for some reason. We may have more information after CES is over. However, product pages for devices that are not yet released are often incomplete and will not contain full specifications for devices. Take a look at the BE900 router page vs. the incomplete BE800. Furthermore, as CES is a global event, many of the specs that are seen are for devices from another region, the technical specs are not confirmed for a region until the device is officially released.
For the most up-to-date news regarding the new releases at CES over the weekend, check out TP-Link's social media channels.
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From a customer perspective, I think there would be a lot of benefit to a Kasa / Tapo mashup - or at least, interoperability within a single app, that keeps the most advanced features of either line.
I've got a bunch of Kasa switches and bulbs that I haven't installed yet. Most of it purchased because it was on sale at the time, and I bought into the marketing materials I'd seem up to that point. In the testing I've done in one space so far -- a relatively simple affair with a few lights and two motion switches, grouped -- it feels like they were a bit oversold, and in any event are not currently up to what feels like a fairly straightforward use case.
That said, given this forum and some relatively active feedback from the company, I'm willing to wait it out for a bit with the hope that more functionality is forthcoming.
In that case, I'm also looking at the TP-Link camera offerings. My current cameras have had functionality stripped away due to "upgrades" since they were purchased, and other promised (or at least strongly implied) features have yet to see the light of day within a couple of years. Despite Kasa being what seems like the more mature brand, though, it looks like Tapo cameras are the ones getting new updates and models (and, they appear to support RTSP).
But if I go the TP-Link route with this, I really don't want to just swap my current camera app with another one, plus manage yet another integration in Google Assistant and Alexa. It would be a lot easier to handle the lighting and cameras in the same app, and using a single voice skill/action.
Then there's the question of, how do I find out which TP-Link lighting products bring the most to my home, or provide the feature set most likely to satisfy my needs? Do I, or should I, really have to invest in two brands from the same company, for the same product types, in order to find this out?
I can't see how the user base for Tapo should really be any different that the base for Kasa, given the nature of the products. And it certainly feels like it would make things easier for us customers, in addition to being easier to market and sell to us customers.
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Page has a photo here - https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/smart-switch/ks240/
Looks really slick!
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Nice Find! We hope that everyone likes the design of some of the new products! Some of the pages for soon-to-be-released products and features have been removed; so you can expect more information on theses products coming up.
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@Riley_S two questions in regards to the KS240;
Will this switch require a neutral wire? Also, can we expect to see this released before the end of Q2? Trying to time a renovation and I would much prefer to use these switches instead of two KS220's per fan.
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It looks like we are only just starting to release no-neutral devices, however, I would assume that due to the amount of energy that is needed to control multiple devices, and maintain the lights on the device; a neutral will most likely be required, but I do not know for sure. Most smart switches I have seen that utilize similar LEDs require a neutral connection. I will try and provide an update for you when we get our hands on the specifications for the device.
As for release dates, we normally are not given insights into when these devices will release; however, we do have multiple devices that are set to launch before the KS240 would. I would expect that we would see the device slightly later in the year. However, all of our releases are subject to advancement or postponement. The KS240 is also listed as being a matter device, so I would expect that we would first see simpler products released first, such as plugs and lights, first.
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