REVIEW – You probably don’t think of a garage door opener as being something super techy or cool right? I didn’t either until LiftMaster changed my mind when they offered to let me test their WLED garage door opener with built-in Corner to Corner Lighting system. Let’s check it out.

What is it?

The LiftMaster WLED DC Battery Backup LED Wi-Fi Residential Garage Door Opener is just you have already guessed it is. It’s the motor box that lifts and lowers your garage door. But this one from LiftMaster has some great tech features built-in like high powered LED lights, motion detection, WiFi control, and more.

What’s in the box?

I don’t have a complete listing of what was in the box because the LiftMaster WLED garage door opener is packaged for professional installation and not for a DIY homeowner installation. Chamberlain, LiftMaster’s parent company, sells similar products online and through major retailers (e.g. Home Depot, Lowes, etc.) for those homeowners who wish to install it themselves (no dealer necessary). Chamberlain’s version of this particular WLED can be found here.

• LiftMaster WLED garage door opener
• Installation hardware
• 2 3-button car remotes with clips
• Wall door controller
• User guide

I have a 3 car garage that has one overhead door that has to be lifted manually and two others that have Craftsman openers.

I’ve not had any troubles with the Craftsman openers except that the one on Jeanne’s side of the garage has a really crummy 1-bulb light built into it.

Jeanne’s always complaining that the light isn’t bright enough to see to get her belongings out of the car when she gets home at night. The garage doesn’t have any windows, so it’s pitch black except for the garage opener light when she gets home after dark.

Besides the dim light, neither openers work if the power is out. Unhooking the openers so that they can be lifted manually isn’t difficult, but getting them hooked back up later is always a pain in the you-know-what. I don’t know why, but I always have a heck of a time reattaching chain thingy. Yes, that’s what I call it. Don’t judge me!

Design and features

When LiftMaster contacted me to ask if they could install their WLED WiFi enabled garage door opener so I could test it and write about it, I immediately thought of Jeanne and her complaints about the lighting in the garage and said heck yeah to their offer.

They shipped me the box with all the hardware and then set up an appointment to have a local garage door company come to do the installation for me.

The LiftMaster WLED garage door opener features:

• Built-in Wi-Fi and myQ technology: provides the ability to open and close the garage door from anywhere and send alerts if it’s left open. 
• Battery Backup: Keeps the opener working in a power outage so you don’t have to raise and lower the door manually.
• Quiet Operation: An ultra-quiet DC motor and soft start/stop vibration reduction.

Installation

On a cold afternoon a couple weeks ago, two guys from Sterling Garage Door in Columbus, Indiana arrived and got to work on the install. I didn’t stick around to watch them install it because it was about 40 degrees outside (and in the garage since it’s not heated).

Less than an hour later, they were gone and I was left with a brand new shiny new garage door opener with a nice set of tech features that I never knew I needed until that day.

The LiftMaster garage door opener is larger than the one that was previously installed in the same space as it has lights on both ends instead of just the one.

A nod of satisfaction came when I went to the newly installed controller mounted where the old one had been. I guess I should have taken a picture of the old one before it was removed but it was basically one button like an old-school doorbell. As you can see, the new one has a bright backlit screen with the time of day in large easy to read numbers. The display cycles between showing the time and temperature which I really like. It also shows the built-in battery capacity of the opener in event of a power outage.

Above the display is the opener button and below the display, there are four buttons which are used to interact with the menus to customize settings for the clock, time to close, language, lock, WiFi setup, and more.

Below the buttons are two more features that I like. First of all, there’s a motion sensor which will automatically turn on the garage door opener’s lights when it’s tripped. I LOVE this feature because I leave the house before the sun is up and always have to feel around for the opener button to open my garage door when I walk into the garage to leave for work. Now that the LiftMaster WLED is installed, I just open the door to the garage and the motion sensor flips on the opener’s lights.

There’s also a button below the motion sensor that toggles the opener’s lights.

If you scroll back up towards the beginning of this review, you can see how the previous garage door opener’s light lit up the garage. Weak right? Now, look at this image. It’s like night and day Sorry, I couldn’t resist. But seriously, the LED lights on the LiftMaster are really bright. 3100 lumens to be precise. Jeanne no longer complains about how dark the garage is when she gets home at night.

We both love how the lights come on automatically as soon as we open the walk-thru door to walk into the garage. The motion sensors are a great feature especially when your hands are full.

Safety Sensors

We haven’t had safety sensors configured correctly with the old doors. Whoever installed them, just taped them together and ran the wires out of the way. The guys that installed the LiftMaster had to do the install to code, which means we now have a light beam sensor on each side of the door at the bottom. These sensors are designed to protect people, vehicles, pets, etc. but stopping the door from closing on obstructions and reversing (opening) the door. When this happens, the lights on the opener will flash 10 times to signal the problem.

Time will tell if the sensors become more trouble than they are worth though as we get a lot of leaves that like to pile up in from of the garage and sometimes if it’s windy, they will blow into the garage. I’m curious if we’ll have any issues with the door not wanting to close. I’ll report back if that is the case.

24 hour battery backup

The LiftMaster WLED has a built-in battery that will provide power to the opener for up to 24 hours if the main power goes out. I live in a rural area where the power goes out at least once a month if not a lot more. Heck, I was working on this review a couple days ago and the power was out 3 different times in one day for 1-2 hours each time. I’m lucky because I have a whole home generator, BUT my garage is on its own circuit box. That means if the power goes out, I have to use the emergency release handle and operate the door manually. UGH. I know, first world problems… But with the LiftMaster, I don’t have to worry about that. If the power goes off, I can still operate the door normally. Note that the door will run slower, and the lights will not turn on. But that’s a small price to pay.

Note that I’ll need to replace the battery from time to time, which according to some googling, will cost me around $20-$30 from stores like Walmart.

Using the myQ app

In addition to the features I have already mentioned, you can also control the LiftMaster WLED garage door with your phone. As long as the LiftMaster opener is within range of your home’s WiFi (2.4Ghz, 802.11b/g/n), you can do things like open and close the door remotely, know the status of the door, up or down no matter where you are in the world. You can also set a recurring schedule to close a garage door and use the app as a door opener if you happen to lose remote openers that come with the LiftMaster.

Setting up the myQ app with the LiftMaster was as easy as setting up other smart devices. I just installed the myQ app, then used the wall remote to get into the WiFi setup screens and from there I followed the onscreen prompts in the app which told me what to do on the remote.

The app can be set up to provide real-time notifications to alert you when the door goes up or down. This is an added home security measure provides extra peace of mind when you’re waiting for someone to come home late at night when you’re already in bed, or when you get an alert when you’re not at home that the door has gone up.

You can also set schedules when to shut the door. I’m not exactly sure why you might want this feature, but it’s there if you need it. Note that you can only schedule a time to close the door. You can set a schedule to open the door and you can see a history of when the door was opened and closed.

I mentioned that you can’t set a schedule to close the door, but you can set the TTC (timer to close) feature which will automatically shut the door after 1-99 minutes. This might be a good thing to set for people who can’t seem to remember to press the remote button after they leave the house

What I like

• Bright LED lights that light up the whole garage
• Quiet, smooth operation
• Motion detector on the wall remote automatically turns on the lights when you walk in the door
• Ability to know the status of the garage door (up or down) using the myQ app
• Lifetime warranty on motor

What needs to be improved

• Nothing

Final thoughts

The LiftMaster WLED garage door opener was a product that I didn’t know I needed or wanted until I got one. From the ultra quiet operation, extra light that it provides in my garage, and the fact that I can control the door remotely with my phone and get notified when the door opens provides extra home security benefits, the LiftMaster gets two thumbs up from me. Now I want to replace my other opener so I have a matching set.

Price: $450 – $500 (including installation)
Where to buy: LiftMaster certified dealers, or the DIY Chamberlain version is available on Amazon.
Source: The sample for this review was provided by LiftMaster.

Filed in categories: Reviews

Tagged: Car Gear, Garage

LiftMaster WLED Garage Door Opener review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 19, 2018 at 10:00 am.

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REVIEW – Did the box grab your attention? Hope so. Garage door openers are challenging to shoot for headline photos. Do you need a new garage door opener? You might given how much they’ve improved in the last few years.

What is it?

Chamberlain’s Ultimate Security Bundle is a garage door opener with app connectivity, safety sensors, a backup battery, an internal deadbolt, two car remotes, and an external keypad.

Hardware specs

What’s in the box?

• Items covered in the next section

Design and features

Design of a garage door opener is all about functionality. It has to work. Chamberlain has clearly done that here, and when installed it looks pretty good too.

The key features here are…

• Wifi connectivity with App control and status updates
• Belt drive which makes it quite a bit quieter
• Back up battery so you can operate the door without power
• Remotes! – Wall mounted remote, two car remotes, external keypad, App control and Homelink compatibility
• Safety sensors to avoid accidents
• Deadbolt for extra security

Setup

The bulk of the review here is actually the install. It took me about 4 hours, with some self-imposed trouble. Here goes…

Installation starts by assembling the track that that will run along the ceiling by connecting the different sections.

Use a screwdriver to anchor the trolley (during assembly) that will eventually lift and lower your garage door.

Insert the mount for the opener into the end of the track.

Bolt the motor onto the mount with the two black bolts shown in the below photo.

Starting to come together.

Bend up this little tab to act as a physical stop for the trolley.

Attach one end of the belt to the trolley with a sideways insert with a 90º twist.

Feed the belt through the slot, then install the pulley.

Wrap the belt around the gear on the top of the motor.

Connect the other end of the belt to the threaded rod with the bicycle style chainlink.

Slide the threaded rod through the trolley and anchor by threading the spring nut on hand tight, then follow the instructions for snapping the ring nut against the trolley.

Install the gear cover with the provided screws.

At this point, it’s ready to install, so that means removing the current garage door opener. Incidentally, mine was also a Chamberlain although I’m unclear as to how old. It was starting to get quirky and would reverse direction about a foot before closing 3 out of 5 times. You can see from the photo below that my ceiling is unfinished dark wood. My garage door has a huge coil spring across the top of the door to assist in lifting and lowering which fortunately did not need to be messed with.

Here’s the old motor unit to be replaced. It had a front facing light which didn’t help visibility towards the back of the garage.

A lot of the hardware was similar or the same, but I reinstalled almost all of it. This anchor for the track I moved closer to centerline of the door to correct some of the issues I was having with the old one suddenly reversing. Mount the track to the anchor with the pin and lock ring. This step makes lifting the heavy motor end of the system much easier.

These mount joists are the previous ones, but I did move them up a bit to make sure everything was level. They mount to the side rails on the motor with anchor bolts.

Install the light bulb onto each side.

You now need the door in the up position after installing the lift bracket which has this bent shape to help make the turn. My garage is low enough that I later cut up a tennis ball to mount on that bend as I did manage to crack my head on it once during install.

The straight arm mounts to the trolley with a similar cotter pin at which point you both the two sides together.

Next you need to run the power lines for the door control. I used the lines that were already there. The mounted panel is shown here.

It’s mounted with a screw that you find by lifting the door actuator button.

On the back side are the two contact screws you need to connect the wires to.

The safety sensors are there to make sure the door doesn’t close on objects or people (or for you to kick a foot at as you realize that one thing you forgot to grab as you left). These can be mounted directly onto the garage door rails or onto the wall next to them. For this part of the install, I reran all the wires and decided to get crafty with my staple gun. I clearly went to fast and pierced the cable a few times and had to pull one of them completely down and replace with the old wire to finally get it working. What’s the saying? “Measure twice, cut once?”

Pair up the leads from the two sensors and twist them into the corresponding pairs before inserting into the proper terminal on the opener.

Here you can see those wires in the right two positions next to the ones previously run for the door opener. You can also see the controls you’ll use to set the final open and closed positions of the door.

On the other side of the opener, install the large backup battery and connect those terminals. You’ll run a quick test to verify that the opener can now run on auxiliary battery power.

Back on the door opener you’ll connect to wifi and complete the connectivity setup.

Once that’s done you can use the same menu to set up the pairing for the keypad remote shown here. The two car remotes are already paired and ready to go.

The system also comes with a deadbolt which I haven’t seen on a garage door before. It wires up similarly and mounts to one of the rails to basically deadbolt your door from lifting. Only a quick 3/4″ hole to drill. There was a pretty big disclaimer in the instructions that you must have an entry door to use this feature. My garage does not, so I didn’t feel comfortable testing this out. I actually have an externally mounted quick release key from Chamberlain installed from getting locked out before when we lost the only visor remote shortly after moving in. It’s basically a removable key core that yanks a cable connected to the manual release on the trolley. Pretty handy unless you lose that key.

Okay. The App is as simple as downloading and creating a login. I’ll show some screenshots in the next section. Let’s move on to how it works.

Performance

In short. Huge improvement over the old Chamberlain model I replaced. That one was definitely installed a bit crooked, but I wouldn’t have figured that out without installing a new one. My old model was a chain drive. This belt drive model is significantly quieter, and smoother. It closes completely and in the fully open position, it’s completely out of the doorway. The dual lights are brighter than what I had before which is a huge help in my dark garage.

As for reliability, garage doors are something you don’t really think about until they aren’t working properly or break entirely. I’ve been using this for a full month and it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do and then some. The wall mounted opener has the time and the temperature which while not necessary is actually pretty handy.

The App allows me to check if I closed the door, and then actually do it without needing to trudge out to the garage. Here’s what the app looks like, and yes I named my garage Sesame.

Chamberlain partners with Nest, Wink, Xfinity Home, Google Assistant, IFTTT, Alpine, Clare Controls and Eve Connect for Tesla. I paired mine up with Nest to find the reverse of what I was looking for. Instead of being able to see and control the status of my garage from within the Nest App (which I’m in with some regularity) I can control my garage and see my Nest devices in the Chamberlain app which I’m not sure why I need to do.

Hmmm. I haven’t played around with IFTTT, but that’s likely next.

We recently got a new car and the plan was to actually park a car in the garage, something that we have not done previously. The new car has Homelink functionality and I was able to train it easily using the visor remote. The car has the ability to auto open and close the garage at a set distance. This seemed amazing and actually was for most instances. I’d open the garage, get in the car, back out and the garage door would close as I pulled away. On returning the garage door would open right as I pulled up. Great, right?

After leaving one morning, we turned around realizing we had forgotten a couple items. Pulled into the driveway and the door started opening, so I stopped it and closed it from the car controls. As we pulled away, we crossed that distance threshold and the door started opening. It’s then I figured out that it was just toggling the open/close and had no knowledge of which position the door was in. Needless to say I turned it off as it’s not to hard to hit the button when you need to. I do think this is an issue on the car side of the equation as the Chamberlain App definitely knows if the door is up or down.

What I like

• Relatively easy install (clear instructions!)
• Quiet and smooth operation
• App integration – Status awareness
• Automation partnerships

What needs to be improved

• Nest integration should be bi-directional
• Bundle option without the deadbolt?

Final thoughts

I’m very happy with Chamberlain’s product here. The instructions were very well written and easy to follow. As long as you aren’t installing a whole garage door for the first time, it’s a pretty easy task to take on. I would feel comfortable telling most people that they could handle the install themselves. As I mentioned previously, this is one of those products that just hangs in the background and does its job. Chamberlain has added some useful additional features and created a product that worth upgrading to. For me, the peace of mind of knowing I can get into the garage if the power is out, and even just knowing the garage door is down is well worth it.

Price: $348
Where to buy: Chamberlain.com and Amazon.
Source: The sample of this product was provided by Chamberlain.

Filed in categories: Reviews

Tagged: Car Gear, Garage

Chamberlain Ultimate Security Bundle smart garage opener review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 28, 2018 at 11:00 am.

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