Flic Smart Home Button Starter Kit 2024 REVIEW ...Middle East

A Simple Smart Home Solution with Some Connectivity Challenges

I’ve been a fan of smart home devices for many, many years now. I was an early adopter of Philips Hue bulbs and over the years, I’ve added multiple smart devices to our home such as light bulbs, lighting installations, thermostats, cameras, sensors, speakers, media players, air purifiers, and door locks. I’ve tried to use apps alone to manage the devices and various automations, but as much as I like using smart assistants, sometimes the ecosystems don’t play well together and having a simple tactile click button makes life that much easier. This is why I enjoy Flic Smart Buttons.

About the Flic Starter Kit

The Flic Starter Kit is your gateway to effortless smart home control. Designed with simplicity and flexibility in mind, this kit includes multiple Flic Buttons and a Flic Hub, offering seamless integration with your favorite devices and services.

With just a click, double click, or hold, you can trigger various commands, automate routines, or control gadgets around your home or office. The included Flic Hub ensures you’re always connected, enabling features like voice-free automation, multi-user support, and remote access—even when your smartphone isn’t nearby.

Whether you’re dimming the lights, playing music, setting a focus mode, or creating custom actions, the Flic Starter Kit simplifies everyday tasks, bringing convenience and smart living to your fingertips.

Main Features

Pricing & Availability

In order to set up Flic Buttons you have to include one of Flic’s hubs. In addition to the standard Flic Buttons, users can also install the Flic Twist, which is a more advanced control option. The pricing of each of these items and some addiitonal Flic accessories are included below.

These items are also sold as kits.

User Experience

Even though it’s sold as a kit, each of the products are in their own box. Each box is primarily white with gray lettering. None of the items came with a manual but Flic has a set-up guide available online.

The initial setup was fairly easy. The Hub Mini connected to the app and then the buttons connected to the Hub. From there, I was able to connect my smart devices to the button for actions. There are a lot of integrations to choose from. For testing purposes, I selected the Nanoleaf so that I could control one of our panel installations.

The actions for the Nanoleaf were fairly basic. You can choose to select a mode and change the color. I decided to set the single push action to set the panels to ‘on’ and the double press to turn off the panel. You can also have it change colors but only switch between random colors or scenes that are already downloaded to it. I added a scene to the panels in the Nanoleaf app after I added it to the Flic Button and it didn’t show up as a choice in the Flic app.

The Hub Mini, Twist, and Button that I set up were working fine for the first few hours after the initial setup. I noticed that over the next few days that the Hub Mini would lose connection to the app. Many other users reported this same issue. I would get the following error:

Connection Lost: The connection to the hub was lost. Please make sure you are in range and connect again.

This would happen even when my phone was sitting directly next to the hub on my desk. It seemed as though this would happen unless the app was actively open on my phone. When the hub is connected, the connected devices work well, but this connection issue has been frequent and has made the entire system feel unreliable.

There seems to be very little information on troubleshooting problems like this online. Even though Flic provides a decent setup guide, issues like this are not addressed. In trying to diagnose the issue, I removed the Hub Mini altogether and attempted a factory reset. This is another shortcoming of the device and its support documentation.

The manual states that the user should press/hold the reset button on the bottom of the Hub Mini for 10-15 seconds. I did this but the solid red LED did not have any change. I tried this process several times with no apparent change to the hub. I tried power-cycling the hub, too. I unplugged it from power and let it sit for 30-60 minutes and then plugged it back in. I even tried unplugging it and pressing the reset button while plugging it back in.

With that attempt, I did see a green flashing LED for a moment, but it immediately changed to solid red. The manual does not provide a key for the LED colors or their status. But what I have discovered is that the solid red LED means that it’s ready for setup. It’s disconnected, but ready to connect. In a last-ditch effort, I force quit the app and when I re-opened it, I found that the Hub Mini was appearing for setup where it previously was not.

During this process, I added one of the buttons directly to my phone instead of using the hub. I didn’t have any issues with it. The same Nanoleaf Light Panel installation worked just fine. The button would disconnect in a similar manner that the hub did, but if you click it once, it will reconnect. I am assuming this function is intentional to save battery power.

Even though it seems that I might have pieced together the connection reliability mysteries of Flic, I still have questions about how well the system works. On the surface, it seems like a very simple ecosystem to use and I love the intention behind it, but I do have concerns about it functionally.

Conclusion

The Flic Starter Kit offers a convenient and innovative way to manage smart home devices with tactile controls, which can simplify everyday routines and reduce reliance on voice commands or apps. The ease of setup and versatility of the buttons are clear strengths, and the system integrates well with a wide range of smart home ecosystems. However, frequent connection issues with the Hub Mini and limited support documentation detract from the overall experience.

If you’re looking for an intuitive and straightforward solution for smart home control—and are willing to troubleshoot potential reliability issues—Flic may be a good fit. For those seeking a more reliable out-of-the-box experience, these shortcomings are worth considering before committing to the system.

For more information, visit flic.io

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