Flic Duo evaluate: Good house management with a ‘flic’ of your wrist

Greatest Costs At present: Flic Duo

Flic’s good button is a tiny system with a strong idea, a platform-agnostic gadget that actually offers you a button that may be positioned anyplace for straightforward, tactile management of all varieties of good house units.

The all-new Flic Duo, reviewed right here, builds significantly on what that unique gadget can do, transferring from three capabilities to a whopping 22. It’s a major enlargement of capabilities, though getting every little thing arrange throughout the Flic ecosystem stays an endeavor that good house novices may discover difficult.

Specs

Like the unique Flic Button, the Flic Duo is so small it would simply be misplaced—and even consumed by an rambunctious pet. Measuring 2 x 1.25 inches general–and roughly 1/3 of an inch thick–it’s designed for use within the hand or mounted to the wall—or each. A magnetic again means you possibly can slap it onto a steel backing plate (offered individually, $10) or affix it to any steel floor for a semi-permanent setup whereas additionally permitting you to take away it as wanted.

Because the identify suggests, the Duo has two buttons as an alternative of 1, billed merely as “Large Button” and “Small Button” respectively. As with the usual Flic Button, you possibly can assign duties to every of those buttons with single-push, double-push, or push-and-hold triggers. Distinctive to this new mannequin are hold-and-swipe and hold-and-twist triggers, each of which I’ll get to in a bit.

The Bluetooth-enabled Flic Duo will work with or and not using a Flic Hub (both the fundamental, single-band-Wi-Fi Hub Mini, $30; or the dual-band-Wi-Fi Hub LR, which provides infrared blaster and ethernet ports, and Apple Residence help. It prices $90.) However the Flic Duo is much less succesful for those who select as an alternative to pair it on to your telephone.

Christopher Null/Foundry

A phone-centric method isn’t perfect, because it makes the Flic Duo ineffective in case your telephone isn’t in Bluetooth vary; and a few options, together with the twist perform, don’t work in any respect and not using a hub. Both Flic Hub will do the grunt work of pushing the Flic Duo’s instructions to the web or to native good house units as wanted. I examined the Flic Duo with a Hub Mini.

Nevertheless you select to pair it, the Flic system can management units throughout scads of third-party ecosystems, the most important ones being Matter, Alexa, IFTTT, and SmartThings. It could possibly additionally management Philips Hue, LIFX, Ikea, and Nanoleaf units straight with out an middleman, and it will probably work as a distant for Chromecast and Sonos. Integration with Google House is dealt with through Matter or IFTTT. An entire listing of integrations could be discovered right here.

Set up and setup

Christopher Null/Foundry

Organising the Flic Duo is pretty painless. Presuming you’re utilizing a Hub, the Flic app will routinely uncover the Hub as soon as it’s plugged in, asking for the password printed on its bottom and configuring fundamental Wi-Fi settings. With the Hub related, now you can pair it with the Duo, which is an identical, albeit password-free course of.

It’s a fast and simple course of; the rather more daunting a part of the expertise comes subsequent, when it’s time to arrange your integrations.

Utilizing the Flic Duo

Flic hasn’t modified a lot about the way in which its integration setup system works, and regardless of the promise that “new companions are repeatedly being added,” I didn’t see a lot of a change from the listing obtainable final yr, though I’ll admit it’s unattainable to maintain observe of each single choice of the handfuls obtainable (together with the “fart generator,” which is now referred to as “fart sound”).

Configuring these integrations hasn’t modified, and the method stays advanced at finest. For instance, to arrange an Alexa integration, you should add the Flic talent to Alexa, then return to the Flic app and choose the specified set off you wish to arrange. Subsequent, it’s again to the Alexa app to create a routine (or use an current one), the place you assign the Flic set off you simply chosen to that routine. Alexa does a lot of the heavy lifting, and Flic simply serves as a intermediary.

Christopher Null/Foundry

Issues like controlling lighting straight with LIFX or Philips Hue units is extra simple, because the Flic app can uncover the lights you will have arrange in these apps and management them straight. Nonetheless, you’ll want to have a robust grasp on good house fundamentals for this to be intuitive.

The actual benefit of the Flic Duo comes if you reap the benefits of the brand new triggers obtainable, together with these swipe and twist capabilities I discussed beforehand. With these, you maintain down a button then swipe in considered one of 4 instructions; this may be useful for biking by means of music tracks or toggling an on/off state (swipe up for on, down for off, for instance).

The issue is that Flic’s model of a swipe could be very robust to tug off efficiently. Slightly than simply pushing the button and transferring your thumb in a single course, I discovered you needed to sort of jerk your entire system in that course whereas additionally sliding your thumb throughout it on the similar time.

Christopher Null/Foundry

So, push the button, slide upwards whereas concurrently lifting your wrist, after which let go. Hardly ever may I carry out this efficiently on a single strive, usually leaving me maniacally waving the Duo round to attempt to get a command to undergo.

The twist perform is much more attention-grabbing. Right here you press a button, then rotate your wrist left or proper. “Twist” might be a misnomer for this movement, however I discovered it labored much more successfully than the swipe perform, with none trial and error in any respect. Twist can be utilized to intuitively management quantity or the brightness of lights, and I discovered it nice for dynamically biking by means of shade lighting choices on a lamp, too. Not like the swipe function, twisting labored seamlessly each time I attempted it.

Do you have to purchase the Flic Duo?

The Flic Duo is the much more highly effective large brother to the unique Flic Button, and it’s additionally arguably extra helpful (albeit additionally much less intuitive to program and use) than the Flic Twist. It’s not a tool for good house novices, who I count on will shortly turn out to be misplaced within the advanced machinations required to arrange even fundamental integrations. Extra superior customers, alternatively, will possible discover it extremely helpful—even for those who discover you’ll want to construct a cheat sheet to maintain observe of the handfuls of integrations you find yourself creating.

It’s not good, after all: The swipe perform wants quite a lot of work, stickers to label the Flic buttons nonetheless value further ($10 pack for the Flic Duo), documentation is principally nonexistent, and sure promised options like a “discover my Flic” perform within the app are nonetheless pending for 2026. It’s additionally costly: $59 in comparison with $35 for a single Flic Button.

All that mentioned, for those who’re keen to take a position somewhat time, vitality, and endurance, there’s virtually no good house atmosphere the place the Flic Duo gained’t be helpful.