HunterSMART Reviews

I have 4 of them in my house. When they first came out they worked well and kept a stable connection. Ever since about a year or so ago, they can’t hold a connection for more than a few minutes. I’ve reset, replaced, updated everything I could possibly think of. Nothing. Then talk about HunterSMART , it’s a joke. Firmware updates are practically non-existent, and forget HomeKit support. Everything else in my home connects just fine, these things are the only things that are never connected. Sounds like a firmware update is needed but HunterSMART is lackluster at telling you whether or not you have the most current version. Just a bad app, bad support, they take your money and sell you on “smartl features that never work.

I bought a new hunter fan because the one that came in the house was too old to replace the needed parts. It hung and looked good but the lights would only dim just the tiniest bit. I got HunterSMART that Apple HomeKit said I needed and it was apparently an old app that doesn’t function. So I downloaded HunterSMART...v2 must be better. But nope. Just a tiny bit of dim. AppleKit says I need an update to my firm ware but neither app can do it. Called customer service who said a new app will be released soon to allow updates. New update to HunterSMART , still can’t update the fan. Support said I need different bulbs than the ones that come in it (because who would put dimmable bulbs in a package with a dimmable fan?). So I bought LED dim manor bulbs. Just put them in...still no fix. Never buying a Hunter fan again. This is an old company that should be ahead of the game, but they clearly hired the wrong tech team.

Everything used to work great now all of a sudden it no longer will connect to my Wi-Fi net work I’ve tried to reset it many times it’s beyond frustrating every other device in my Homeworks except for these lines of fans nothing has changed should not be this difficult to set up I’m a very advanced computer user I can only imagine how this must be for a novice or somebody who doesn’t understand all of this at this point I don’t know what more to do I’m tired of sitting on hold talk to somebody I don’t wanna wait to go back-and-forth over email. This is a great fan if you don’t mind using the remote control however if you want to use any of the smart functionality is you can forget it once it becomes disconnected if you ever have to reconfigure it to your Netwerk it won’t happen however if you have a fresh network install and everything is brand new out of the box it might actually work OK for you I believe there is some sort of leftover settings that do not get deleted when I try to delete HunterSMART and start over I don’t know what else to do I’m very frustrated I’m going to switch to a different smart fan I think

Like many other reviewers, I am pretty good when it comes to smart home features. I have added things from smart lights, smart thermostats, smart power outlets, smart TVs to even smart fridges in the house. And none of them made me as frustrated as the hunter fan devices which are controlled by this application. To start off with , I couldn’t even add all of the 7 fans that I purchased because the application would ask me to restart all over for some reason each time by time I got to the 5th fan. So I accepted them as it was , and moved on. But the problems didn’t stop there. The connections with Alexa was a hit and a miss. Sometimes they work, other times they don’t. When they didn’t , I could at least use this application to make them work. But now , sometime during the last few days the application got rid of ALL devices without any warning and is asking me to add all of them again!! I reached out to hunter customer care and they said nothing can be done without the included remotes , which I do not know where I put for each of the fans so they have become useless for me. Never been this frustrated with any smart device before.

I’m not going to rant for long. (Let me quickly preface that I have a home full of “smart devices” and excellent, distributed WiFi coverage. This isn’t my first rodeo.)
I’d urge you not to buy a Hunter ceiling fan (or any of their other brands—Google it) and support them when they are advertising products that don’t work. They offer a premium-priced product and promise it works with Alexa, Apple HomeKit, etc. No. No, it does not. SOMETIMES it will work, most times it will not. It needs to connect reliably to be worthwhile. I’d guess most people who go to the trouble of installing a ceiling fan – or worse, hiring someone to do it for them – are not going to take it off the ceiling when it doesn’t work with their smart home devices. No, instead, they’ll rely on the included remote control (circa 1990s) to control their fan and mutter under their breath, “never again, Hunter.” I’ll go out of my way to buy other fan brands after the experience of this atrocious app. Hunter clearly didn’t do their homework when designing (outsourcing to India, likely) HunterSMART. And it shows. Let’s not reward them for it.

If you can get it to connect to Alexa, it works most of the time. HomeKit randomly breaks and fixes with no reason. Currently it’s been “updating” in HomeKit for the last several months. HunterSMART has a cloud mode only solution that it claims fixes that, but they would require HunterSMART to actually work for controlling the fan. It does not. My best advice is hold on to that remote for dear life. If you want to control your fan like every other smart device in your house, don’t hold your breath.

It’s quite a shame. The fan itself actually is quite nice. Works well and looks good. But in 2023 you need to make products that work with home automation. And, if you do, it actually has to work. I don’t think I’ll be buying Hunter products in the future after this experience.

At first the fan worked perfectly and the remote was working perfectly fine. The remote is easy to lose especially in bedrooms. When I first got the fan I was trying to set up HunterSMART and it kept glitching over and over again and I ended up deleting it because I was fed up with it. I had this fan for less than a year and my remote is not working now. The light kept flickering on and off and i was trying to press the button to turn it off but nothing happened. So I redownloaded HunterSMART and I keep running into the same exact issue. It kept glitching and wasn’t working properly and I closed out of HunterSMART multiple times and NOTHING WORKED. I even tried to use HunterSMART assistant but it didn’t work. Please do not waist your money on this fan or HunterSMART .

I bought this fan solely because it works with Alexa and I was wanting to upgrade. I have many smart devices in my home and a reliable internet connection. I will certainly say this is the absolute worst experience I have had with any smart device. HunterSMART is useless. Some folks say it helps with disabling beeps. I can’t even get that far. After setting up and account and the device, I get a message that says my hunter account is not synced to my home. Keep in mind there is not sync prompt and if they mean the Home app the fan does appear there and I am able to control it from that app. HunterSMART will either automatically log you out, or it will delete your device and make you do the set up process again. This absolutely does not work with Alexa. It never has. Few have been lucky, but based on research, seems it only works for a little while before being disconnected. I am so very disappointed and almost feel like this was false advertising.

This is possibly the worst app in existence. This is made even worse when it’s paired with the absolute worst customer service I’ve ever experienced.

HunterSMART is slow, buggy, unresponsive and barely even seems to work half of the time. My Alexa connection disconnects itself every few weeks and I have to completely delete, re-configure, and reconnect my fan all over again every single time. The account login screen can be nauseating when it decides to refuse to work which usually seems to be the case for me. Prepare to spend hours on an app that shouldn’t require more than 10 minutes of your time.

On top of all of that, the customer service is unbelievably slow, unhelpful and provides no useful information. I’d respond to their messages on Twitter within 1 or 2 minutes and I would often would find myself waiting 3 or 4 hours for them to get back to me with another message. After that message finally came, the 3 to 4 hour wait cycle for another one would repeat itself. This made it impossible to get an effective communication done.

I’d avoid HunterSMART and, if possible, I’d definitely go with a whole different brand entirely.

These fans that come with simple connect with Home Kit compatibility is really hit or miss. Bought a fan Home Kit compatible spent over an hour trying to even get the SinpleConnect app to work. Finally had to call and found out I needed to use a different SimpleConnect app instead. Then when setting up and account if you do it online first it doesn’t say that the password must contain an upper case and lower case characters, a number and a special character. Super difficult to reset that. Finally get it setup and then it would integrate with HomeKit. Called back and had to do completely different things essentially to trick it into picking it up. Four months later HunterSMART stops working in Home Kit, then a couple days later the Hunter app quits working and then just the remote worked and then that stopped working. I call and they apparently knew the receivers on the model I got goes out and you have to replace the entire fan. I get that and reinstall it. The SinpleConnect app finally picks it up fine but HomeKit still will not recognize the fan. Terrible product for claiming to work with HomeKith. I would go with a different brand, after googling this issue tons of people have had the same issues for a long time with no fix In sight from Hunter.

I have had HunterSMART and two Casablanca fans for more than two years now and I can’t take it any longer. First off those switches are terrible. WHY would you make an actual power button to cut the power to the fans. It’s the first thing people see. Why not just make a pull tab like other manufacturers? People walk by and want to turn the light on or off and take a guess what they hit. It’s not the light or fan button. It’s the power. When this happens there goes the smart device. It’s no longer smart. Then HunterSMART is just as shaky. I don’t know when was the last time it actually worked without the bugs. This was just waste of time. I have hoped that they have come out with a better product but nope. Caseta has worked flawlessly for me 6 years running. That’s where I’ll be from here on out.

This is a simple app. But it is unreliable. It would be helpful to have voice commands that stayed linked, for good, once set up. I use Alexa. I get messages that Alexa’s skill is unlinked. After I linked it. I get messages about a hub not being present, which is actually true. I’ve got no hub. But my first attempt at setup worked, then stopped, telling me that the hub I don’t have is not present. Argh!

Alexa has been out how long? WiFi? iOS? Seems like this apparently simple implementation should have an easy setup that stays working perpetually. Isn’t that that point? Smart fan? Smart home?

Thanks for continuing work to get this exasperating little app working consistently. Shoot for the moon; and maybe five star average reviews.

Previously HunterSMART was working well with Alexa integration. Lights worked on/off and setting different dim levels. Fans worked on/off and setting different speeds. Suddenly this is no longer the case.

With the most current version of iOS, hunter app, and Alexa app (and hunter skill) fans will no longer turn off via Alexa command. Alexa gives the success tone and the “switch” is off in the Alexa app, however the fan is still on. Looking in the hunter app it also shows as on still. Turning the fan “on” via Alexa after this simply registers the switch as on within HunterSMART but physically does nothing. Setting different speeds works fine so the fans are connected. Turning the dan off in the hunter fan app and then using Alexa to turn the fan back on works fine. This tells me this is a hunter app issue in some recent update where it doesn’t recognize “off” when using Alexa. You have to manually turn it off.

As an additional note when registered as off in the Alexa app (even the the fan is still on) it seems it never actually shifts the speed to 0% keeping it at whatever level it was on when Alexa registers it as on. That may be the problem. None the less they seem to have broken some communication in one of the recent updates.

The functionality of HunterSMART and HomeKit integration of the fans is less than stellar. I have yet to be able to create an account through HunterSMART and probably won’t based on other reviews about having to addback all devices when the account creation is successful. In addition one of my fans repeatedly shows both the light and fan as “on” - both in the Hunter app and in HomeKit when they are clearly “off” so not sure what’s up with that.

***Attention Developers - Bug Fix Needed for “Zoomed” Display on iPhone 6s (maybe other models too)***
When I have Settings > Display & Brightness > Display View set to “Zoomed” certain parts of the device tiles in the Hunter app are off of the screen. This includes the button which allows me to change the fan’s settings (and maybe firmware - can’t see it right now to be able to say for sure because it’s off the screen!). I would bet that the other reviewers who are asking about how to change a fan’s settings have their display set to “Zoomed”. This seems like a basic low level thing that shouldn’t be overlooked by a quality developer.

To be honest, HunterSMART isn’t as bad as I had feared based on the other reviews. But if you use HomeKit, it’s completely unnecessary except for one key feature — disabling the annoying beeps whenever you change any light/fan setting. The way to do this is not exactly intuitive, but thanks to another review I was able to find the feature:

Once you’re signed in, tap the “expand arrow” on the fan tile to show the fan speeds and “i” icon. Tap the “i” and then go to “Features.” Here you’ll find an “Audio Feedback” toggle. Inexplicably, this setting isn’t under “Features” for the light, but this one will disable the beeps for both.

Hopefully this will help somebody else out there (and Hunter will work on their UX)!

June 2020 update:
One of the last updates fixed my HomeKit integration! I can now select the fan speed. It took a while but thanks for doing it!

April 2020 update:
Still doesn’t work. Lets me set up the fan then says it needs to sync and removes the fan in an infinite loop. After it’s added, I can turn the fan on and off but cannot change the speed.

2019:
Keeps saying I’ve provisioned on a different device. Won’t work even when resetting and starting over.

Response to developer: I’ve tried completely removing it from HomeKit and resetting the fan to defaults and starting from scratch. As soon as I add it to your new app, it says it’s provisioned on a different device and won’t let me do anything other than re add it. Also, when I use HunterSMART to add the fan to HomeKit, I still can’t control the speed of the fan in HomeKit. It’s either 0% or 100%.

After updating to the latest iOS app version, I am now able to use my fan without all of that bizarre behavior I was seeing before. Maybe it was a backend change, too. No matter. I'm just glad that things like fan speed is adjusting correctly using HomeKit and the Hunter app is now showing the correct status of the fan and light. I was fairly unimpressed when I first installed the fan. Being in the IT field, I've seen some crackerjack software -- but this was downright embarrassing. Seems like they've taken the time to try and fix these problems, so I've taken the time to try and recognize that in this review. Only four stars because my first impression was "why did I buy this?"

I am normally pretty good with technology, and I have a lot of patience with it. I have so far spent 3 hours systematically checking off sources of error for why I can’t connect the fan to WiFi. I have read all the reviews and suggestions. I have called Hunter 3 times and emailed 3 times over 2 weeks. Hunter says they have one employee who handles all Simple Connect issues but she has an enormous backlog of customers due to the poor design of HunterSMART . I just hope this is a software issue that can be fixed.

Whoever you are using for your app development is failing and should be refunding your money because you are losing a lot of long time customers due to their poor execution. Suggest calling up Silicon Valley, maybe they can fix this.

Also, isn’t there anyone else in the company you can train to help customers? I realize you’re in Wisconsin, but surely there are tech geeks around you can hire.

UPDATE
I spoke with the developer and we got me connected. I turned off the beep, and my fan now works great with Google Assistant. My issue was with the Apple Home app, not necessarily the Simple Connect app. I have revised my rating to 4 stars.

Bought these fans for each room (5 rooms total) 2 years ago and a ceiling fan is just a ceiling fan- wrong! These fans are quiet, easy to install and meld seamlessly into Apple Home Kit. The fan comes with a small remote to control and dim lights. Adjust fan speeds with on/off control as well. I never use remotes as “Siri” and Home Kit control every fan, every room. As easy as “Siri turn fan to 50% “ and it’s done. No problems despite occasional power outage in house, no issues, noises. Still works like new even though they are used every day.
I would never go back to another ceiling fan.
I don’t want or use Alexa so I don’t know about that system but with Apple these fans connect simply and seamlessly! Check it out.

Installed a new Hunter Cavera Wi Fi ceiling fan in my bedroom. It came with a light and fan remote control that works great. Remote is already synced with the fan for a no hassle setup. But what I really love is my light and fan control via Alexa. Have you ever came home late and tired just wanting to go to bed, only to forget to turn on you ceiling fan. No problem. Because of the Simple Connect app just say “Alexa, Hunter fan 50%” and immediately the quiet, cooling breeze starts. I can even wait till I’m in bed before turning off the light. “Alexa, Hunter light off”. No more stumbling in the dark going to bed. This is the best ceiling fan I have ever owned.