NuBryte Touchpoint Review – Does the NuBryte Offer Enough?

Last Updated on October 12th, 2018 by Natalia Bickell

The NuBryte Touchpoint All-in-One Smart Home Console will make your home more attractive, more efficient and will bring you peace of mind. Think of it as your home’s new assistant. Not only feel safe and comfortable but more organized. Use the home intercom system to call your kids when it’s time to eat. The family calendar is wonderful for making sure neither you nor your kids ever miss an appointment.

You might be thinking: That’s great, but what is the NuBryte Touchpoint?

The NuBryte is a wall-mounted security and automation hub that has the ability to adjust your lighting room by room, make your home more secure and help organize your life by keeping track of important events.

In what follows, I’m going to review the key features of the NuBryte Touchpoint, then highlight its pros and cons. After that we’ll take a look at alternatives to the product that are in a similar price range. Finally, I’ll give you my analysis of the product and tell you whether I’d buy it and why. Let’s get started!

Key Features of the NuBryte Touchpoint

• Five Lighting Modes: The NuBryte has five smart lighting modes: On The Move, Morning Light, Welcome Home, Bedtime Dimmer, Night Light and Vacation Mode. For example, On The Move automatically adjusts the lights as you and your family move between rooms while Vacation mode makes your house look lived in. If you don’t care for the lighting modes just disable them.
• Discourage Intruders: Use the Vacation Mode setting to make it look as though your family is still at home even though you’re all half-way around the world. The NuBryte Touchpoint will mimic your family’s routine making your home appear lived in. Now that’s smart! A nice feature.
• Tracks Energy Use: The NuBryte displays your home’s energy consumption which makes it possible to see which appliances use the most.
• In Home Intrusion Warning: Not only does the NuBryte make it look as though your family is still at home even though you’re enjoying the surf halfway across the world, it also is a security system, monitoring your home to make sure everything is protected. If the NuBryte detects an intruder it will flash the house lights on and off and emit a sound, disorienting potential intruders. NuBryte will also send you an alert on your phone and, if you ask it to, footage from the room the invader entered.
  See a Room at a Glance: Because the NuBryte Touchpoint is a wide angle security camera you can use it to see an entire room at a glance. There is nowhere an intruder can hide.
• Advanced Motion Detection: The NuBryte has advanced motion detection up to 35 feet. If anything moves in that area you’ll receive video alerts on your iOS or Android device when the alarm is triggered.
• No Monthly Fees: Subscription-free home security, home intercom, remote lighting control. Free secure cloud storage at no extra charge. With NuBryte get a complete, instant, smart home solution at an affordable price and with no monthly contracts or subscription fees.
• Wireless Intercom: When two or more Touchpoint consoles are connected via WiFi you create an instant home intercom system with simple-to-use, streamlined, touch screen consoles.
• Weather Updates: Get weather updates and forecasts to help you plan your day.
• Calendar: Input your events into the calendar and the NuBryte will give you notifications and event alerts.
• Works With Most Bulbs: There’s no need to buy smart bulbs! The NuBryte Touchpoint is compatible with dimmable LED, CFL and incandescent light bulbs. This represents a significant cost saving over other systems.

Pros: What I Liked

• Advanced Lighting Modes: The five motion based lighting modes, while being useful, were fun as well. Sometimes I have these, “Hey, I’m living in the future” moments. Mine came when I activated “On The Move” and my apartment lights turned on and off as I entered and exited rooms. Very cool! If this sort of thing bothers you, though, it’s easy to turn off. No muss, no fuss. As I’ve said before, the icing on the cake is that the NuBryte works with standard dimmable bulbs which are considerably less expensive than smart ones.
• Easy Setup: I got the device up and running after five minutes. Installation is dead easy, even for someone who is all thumbs when it comes to home repairs. Similarly, I found the app well designed and intuitive. I had it downloaded and working in a couple of minutes.
• Home Security: The NuBryte’s built-in wide angle camera and advanced motion detection will pick up anything up to 35 feet. If an intruder is detected the device will instantly send you a video alert through your app. As it does this it will attempt to distract and disorient intruders with a 2-stage alarm consisting of sound and flashing overhead lights. (There is no monthly fee for this service.)
• Calendar Notifications: When a calendar event is triggered, the device emits a sound until you turn it off. This is wonderful for folks like me. If an alarm just goes off once and then shuts down I often forget about it. (I can’t tell you how many day old cups of coffee I’ve found in my microwave!) The repeating alarm was a nice feature.
• Monitors Energy Consumption: Not only can you detect which appliances are power hungry, but you can discover which ones suck power even after you’ve pressed their “off” button. I was amazed! I knew my PVR continued to guzzle energy, but I was stunned by the amount. It uses almost as much as when it’s on.
• Looks Great: The NuBryte is a conversation piece. The device looks like what I expect of the future. Very Jetsons (and by saying that I know I’m dating myself!)

Cons: What I Would Like To See Improved

• No Live View: You can only see a live video stream if the alarm is triggered. The instant you disarm the alarm the video turns off and you can no longer access the video feed. I was disappointed because I’ve always wanted to spy on my cats when I’m not home. Obviously, this is a nitpick.
• No Gmail Integration: I would have loved it if I could have synced the NuBryte’s calendar with my Gmail calendar. As it was, I had to enter all my calendar events through the app.
• Dual Switch: The NuBryte is not compatible with ceiling fans or multi-way switches. If you don’t have any single-pole light switches without a ceiling fan in your house then that’s going to be a problem.
• Expense: In order to have one of these devices in every room of my apartment I would have to spend close to $600 (as of this writing). Further, one really does have to have at least two devices to take advantage of many of the NuBryte’s best features, such as communicating room-to-room. That said, I have heard that the folks behind NuBryte are coming out with relatively inexpensive smart light switches that extend the NuBryte’s abilities allowing homeowners to much less expensively extend the NuBryte network throughout their home. Be sure to check this listing for the latest deals on the NuBryte.
• False Alarms: I didn’t have trouble with this when I tested the device, but I have heard that larger pets can trigger the alarm.
• Calendar Notifications: When a calendar event is triggered, the device emits a high beeping until you turn it off. I’ve mentioned this before in the “pro” section, but I did want to add that this beeping is rather high pitched. In the best of all possible worlds, I would be able to select my own tone to use as an alarm. That said, I strongly suspect this is a detail that will be taken care of soon.

NuBryte Smart Intercom vs Wink Relay Smart Home Wall Controller vs Nucleus Smart Intercom?

Wink Relay Smart Home Wall Controller: The Wink Relay is an extension of the Wink Hub and app (free). The Relay works with a variety of third-party products. For example, it works with security cameras like the Dropcam Pro as well as lighting solutions like Lutron Dimmers. LIke the NuBryte, the Wink Relay replaces existing one- or two-switch lighting panels, but with the Wink you don’t need one per room.

Nucleus Smart Intercom: Nucleus (2 pack: check here) is one of the first third-party devices to harness the power of Amazon’s AI: Alexa. Like the NuBryte, the Nucleus connects with other devices you put in those rooms you want to monitor. In fact, Nucleus takes this one step further allowing you to connect even to Nucleus devices in, say, your parents home. This allows your kids to chat with their grandparents at the press of a button. (Note: Alexa is only available to US residents.)

NuBryte Touchpoint Alternatives to Consider

Sentri All-In-One Home Monitoring

The Sentri is a 10 by 10 inch wide tablet-like touchscreen device that sports a 120-degree camera mounted at the top. Further, the Sentri isn’t dependent on its accompanying app and will work just fine even if you never download it. I found the Sentri’s screen easy to access and found the layout intuitive. Like the NuBryte, the Sentri is WiFi enabled and you can view various home stats through the device itself or through the accompanying app (e.g, humidity, air quality, the weather, and so on).

What I liked about the Sentri was that it not only provided basic security and environment details but did so in an entirely new way.

Piper Classic All-in-One Security System with Video Monitoring Camera

You might know Piper as the first WiFi enabled home security and home automation device to combine a wide angle HD camera, panoramic video, Z-Wave home automation and environmental sensors into a single product.

Use your iOS or Android device to Interact with Piper. There are no monthly fees, and no troublesome installation—it works right out of the box. Piper is fully configurable. For example, you can set up rules for what you want Piper to do if you’re away from home and it senses motion. You might request it to sound a siren, record a video, send you a text message, to name only a few choices.

My favorite feature is that Piper can work as an intercom. The NuBryte and Nucleus both need to be triggered before you can view a live feed. With Piper, watch live video and talk directly to occupants in the room. Piper is ideal for communicating with kids after school, checking in on pets while at work, and keeping an eye on house sitters while away.

Final Take—Is the NuBryte Touchpoint a Good Value?

I can’t deny that the NuBryte Touchpoint is fun. Touching the screen and being able to see the weather forecast, being notified of upcoming events, choosing among various smart lighting modes. It’s very sleek and beautiful and futuristic.

And that’s more or less what NuBryte promises, the convenience of future tech. NuBryte was designed to make your life better. Easier.

If I had to bet I would say that NuBryte is poised to grow and become a large player in this niche. For instance, they have planned integrations with Zigbee and Z-Wave.

Is the NuBryte Touchpoint a good value? Do you need it? It depends.

Bottom Line: If you want an elegant solution to help secure your home and don’t mind paying a couple of hundred dollars, then the NuBryte is worth a serious look (check here for the best pricing).