Wink Hub Gen 2 Setup with Amazon Echo Alexa, Migrate and Review for Wireless Smart Home Automation

The Gen 2 Wink Hub has recently been released and today we are going to do a full review and setup.

Wink has made a bold move by continuing to offer the Gen 1 hub, which currently sells for around $70. The Gen 2 hub will sell for around $100. 

If you are thinking about getting your first hub, or upgrading from a Gen 1 Wink let’s go over what’s new in the 2 point 0.

The Gen 2 Wink is 25% slimmer. In reality this is a decrease from 1.75 inches to 1.25 inches. The other dimensions remain the same.

The Gen 1 has the activity light on the front, this has been changed on the Gen 2.

The overall design goal appears to make look more suited for a bookshelf.

It boasts a more powerful Wifi, but other than the 5GHz radio, I can’t find any information on what more powerful actually means.

They did add an ethernet port which is not required for connection, buy may improve reliability and speed up response time and updates.

This is also a good thing since Wink and other hubs have had connection problems if they sit too close to WiFi routers.

Generally you are warned to keep your smart hub over 5 feet away from your wifi router.

They’ve also added a Bluetooth Low Energy radio for expanded device support. This may be one of the cooler features next to the 5GHz WiFi radio.

The RAM has also been upgraded from 64MB to 512MB, which should also help improve command processing speed.

Enhanced local control is another item on the what’s new list. In the Gen 1 hub, all of your robots and schedules sit on servers in the cloud. Local control brings those into the hub, meaning that if your internet goes down, your robots and schedules will still work as long as your Wifi is still operational.

Finally, they highlight Industrial Grade Security, which makes me happy to hear.

So let’s open the box and get this setup.

As usual, Wink does a nice job with the packaging. Inside the box you will find the hub, instruction pamphlet, power supply, and an ethernet cable. I’m alway happy when I see a minimalist instruction manual. This usually means the company has worked hard on making the process very simple.

Step 1 – Plug in the hub.

Step 2 – connect to the Internet. The easiest thing to do is to connect it to the ethernet cable.

If you use this option, the new hub will automatically bring over all of your settings. This will speed up your setup time.

But for the sake of this video, we will connect it to the WiFi. This is the more complicated route and I want to see what that is like.

Step 3 – download or update your Wink App. Mine is already installed and updated, so let’s press on from here.

It’s important that you check all of your devices after you transfer to the new Wink.

I have been reading reports of some devices not coming over properly.

This has mostly been the case with Zigbee devices, door sensors and water leak sensors. I plan check mine in detail after this video is complete.

Now that we are all set up, let’s explore how to connect this into my Echo. In a recent video, I added three of the all new Echo Dot’s into my home, so making sure this is integrated early is important to me. 

My overall impression of the Gen 2 Wink Hub is very positive.

I have always been pretty happy with my Gen 1.

I like the book-like shape, but I do wish that there was a way to mount this on the wall.

The smart home is essentially a centerpiece of my house, so having the ability to display this as an “eye in the sky” would be pretty cool.

But, that is really my only complaint.