Light as bright as you like with Belkin's WeMo Dimmer

Belkin's newest smart home gadget is the WeMo Dimmer, a connected light switch that'll let you dim the lights up and down in all sorts of ways. Click through to see what it's capable of.

Installation is pretty simple, as far as light switches go. The WeMo Dimmer's four wires (line, load, ground and neutral) are color-coded and clearly labeled on the back of the switch.

The in-the-box instructions are helpful, too.

Once you've wired it in, the WeMo Dimmer will flash blue, indicating that it's ready for you to connect with its Wi-Fi signal on your phone.

From there, you'll sync the switch with your home network using the WeMo app. Be warned though, the app timed out when we first tried it.

Fortunately, all was well once we force-closed the app and relaunched it. Our switch was all set on the home screen, just waiting for us to try it out.

As for the switch itself, you can turn it on and off by pushing the button at the the bottom, or dim things up and down by running your finger over the touch-sensitive groove in the center. LED indicator lights will illuminate as you go, and they'll remain on after the switch is off to let you know how bright it will be when you turn it back on.

You can also program a custom action that you trigger by pressing that on/off button for more than 2 seconds. Those long presses can turn other WeMo gear on and off, or put the Dimmer into Away Mode.

What's Away Mode? Glad you asked. It's a new feature that sets the dimmer to turn on and off automatically while you're gone in order to fool people into thinking you're home when you're not. When it's activated, the lightbar at the bottom of the switch will shine orange during those random lighting changes.

There are other colors for that lightbar, too. Each one offers some subtle, ambient context to help you understand the status of your switch.

The WeMo app makes it easy to set a quick fade timer.

Another nice feature: "Night Mode," which lets you limit the maximum brightness during late-evening hours so that you aren't blinded on your next midnight bathroom run.

One big missing feature: support for three-way switches, where more than one switch is wired to the same light. You can't use the WeMo Dimmer with lights like those.

All of Belkin's WeMo gear works with a wide variety of third-party smart home products and services. Most notable among these: IFTTT, the Nest Learning Thermostat, Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa.

Later this year, you'll also be able to sync your WeMo gear with Apple HomeKit, though you'll need to buy the yet-to-be-released WeMo Bridge.

At $80, the WeMo Dimmer isn't cheap, but it's less expensive than buying in with dimmable smart switches from Lutron or iDevices. Still, is it worth it? Check out our full review for the bottom line.