How Much Are The Control 4 Ea Controllers?

Control4 EA-1, EA-3 Controllers Review

The EA-3 and EA-i are entry-level controllers for single-room use, or for expanding a larger Control4 organisation into additional rooms.

When you get correct down to it, automation controllers seem like a curious thing to go excited well-nigh, don't they? You've got some ins, some outs, some what-accept-you, and if your home automation platform of choice offers a diverseness of controllers, you lot choice the ones whose innies and outies best fit the job you're working on. Elementary as that, right? So why is everyone making such a brouhaha over Control4'south new EA line of entertainment and automation controllers?

I'll be the outset to admit that I've contributed to the hype myself. Was information technology justified, though? That was the question running through my mind every bit I unboxed the visitor's new EA-iii and EA-1 entertainment and automation controllers and readied myself for the laborious process (or and then I thought) of replacing my existing Control4 arrangement with the new entry-level and mid-priced solutions in the EA line.

The numerical designations of these new EA controllers, by the way, indicate the number of independent, simultaneous audio zones that each controller is capable of outputting. The new flagship EA-five (v zones) simply would have been overkill for my habitation and my organization, I figured, as I've been running a pair of HC-250s for the past iii and a one-half years with no problems to speak of (or so I thought) and there aren't v zones worth of sound in my domicile to begin with. And on newspaper, the motility from dual HC-250s to the EA-ane and EA-iii is pretty much a lateral one, if you ignore the dramatic increase in processing ability. The combined total is roughly the same in terms of MSRP and connectivity, but this does bring up an important question: given that I was using two one-room Control4 controllers to operate my home before, why not move to a pair of EA-1s? The answer: More often than not because the company doesn't allow it.

The Control4 EA Line

The entry-level controller in the new lineup is strictly for unmarried-room use, or for expanding a larger Control4 system into additional rooms. For a single-room arrangement, the EA-i is awesome, but equally soon as your customers want to add a 2d room, either an EA-3 or EA-5 is pretty much essential.

Getting back to the installation of these 2 new controllers, though, I'll acknowledge I felt a little trepidation at commencement. I'd heard from a couple of dealers that they'd had problems with the new Migration Sorcerer built into Composer Pro, which automates the process of moving a arrangement and all of its connections to new control hardware. And the thought of migrating my system manually gave me the heebies.

Thankfully, I had no such issues. The process went smoothly, and total installation of the two new controllers, including hardware setup and migration of all my bindings and connections (for 44 devices in total), took a k total of 35 minutes. And that'due south not counting the time it took me to read over the documentation for the Migration Wizard, just it is counting the time it took for me to contact The Drivers Lab and go a new license key for my Ecobee commuter. Everything else copied over perfectly, including scenes and programming. The longest step by far was migrating the ZigBee mesh from the old hardware to the new.

And actually, for all the talk about the high-resolution and multi-room audio capabilities built into these new EA controllers, ZigBee performance is where I'thou noticing the biggest twenty-four hours-to-day benefit. All of the ZigBee devices in my habitation now respond to button presses more quickly than my pit bull Bruno responds to the sound of a crinkling potato chip bag. The occasional delayed responses that I previously attributed to simply having as well damned many wireless devices in my house are no longer an issue. Volume commands in my home theater are candy at the sorts of speeds by which only gossip usually travels. My front door unlocks every bit if it'southward reading my listen, and the fourth dimension-of-day-dependent lighting scenes triggered by that unlocked door are delivered to my Lutron RadioRA 2 organization but every bit chop-chop.

The Control4 EA-i Bundle

Let'due south non ignore the sound side of things, though, because I think that's a huge depict of this new lineup. Simply put, the sound coming out of this new EA gear is incredible. True, the EA-ane'south merely audio output is HDMI, which puts the majority of the heavy audio lifting onto whatever receiver or processor it's connected to. Even still, there'southward no denying that what it delivers is clean, dynamic, and uncolored, with no interference and an imperceptible noise floor. And it still kinda pales next to the audio capabilities of the EA-3 (much less the EA-5).

Distributed audio is something I've just never really considered a top priority for my home. But given the built-in multi-zone music capabilities of the EA-3, and the utter lack of programming and setup required to brand it work, I decided to route its analog output through the wall to the NEAR 6XL amp on my back patio. And boom–merely similar that, with no boosted programming to speak of (not to mention no additional hardware components), I added an outdoor audio zone to my system in the fourth dimension information technology took me to drill a hole in my wall and find a 3.5-millimeter-to-RCA cablevision. Bluntly, it was an guild of magnitude easier than tapping into the Zone 2 capabilities of my AV preamp.

Information technology's worth mentioning here that adding an boosted zone like this does drop the output capabilities of the system from a maximum of 192/24 down to 96/24 (at four bindings or more, it would drop down to 48/24), but as best I tin can tell this has absolutely zero aural touch on on sound performance. No matter the resolution, the audio output of these controllers is just stupidly practiced.

Worth mentioning, too, are the EA line's ShairBridge capabilities (originally added to the former flagship HC-800 tardily last year, but at present available across the entire new lineup). Adding ShairBridge does require dragging and dropping a driver in Composer Pro, but information technology adds AirPlay capabilities without the need for boosted hardware.

Then far, ShairBridge has been the nearly reliable AirPlay system that I've ever used. It can exist a weensy bit laggy, but that's a minor complaint. All in all, ShairBridge works ameliorate for me than Control4's Wireless Music Bridge did (although, merely a reminder: the WMB too enables Bluetooth and DLNA streaming, and then it's not quite as obsolete for users of non-iThingies).

I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of my experience with the EA-1 and EA-3 to appointment, but I'll leave y'all with this: A few weeks back, my friend and colleague John Sciacca made a comment that actually resonated with me. "Ultimately," he said, "When I'm working on a review, the most important question is whether or not this is a product I would sell in my own shop."

I don't have a shop of my own, granted, then my criteria are slightly different. For me, now, the ultimate question is this: is this a product I would spend my ain money on? In the case of the EA-ane and EA-3, the answer is: absolutely yes. That pair of HC-250s has been actually proficient to me over the past three years and has fundamentally changed the way I interact with my dwelling house. But I couldn't imagine going dorsum to them now. There'south no doubtfulness nigh it: Control4's EA lineup is the futurity.

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Kudos

The new controllers make music an integral part of the smart habitation ecosystem with fewer components, improved operation, and flawless ZigBee capabilities.

Concerns

The decision to require a more expensive EA-three or EA-v controller in systems with more than one room is sure to be a source of frustration for dealers who might have liked to sprinkle EA-1s around in smaller installations.

Product Specs

EA-3
► Video out: HDMI ane.iv; HD 720p/1080p, fifty-60 Hz
► Sound out: 1 HDMI, 1 stereo analog (3.5 mm), 1 digital coax
► Audio in: 1 stereo analog (3.5 mm), i digital coax
► Sound playback formats AAC, AIFF, ALAC, FLAC, M4A, MP2, MP3, MP4/M4A, Ogg Vorbis, PCM, WAV, WMA

EA-i
► Sound/Video out: HDMI ane.4; HD 720p/1080p, 50-sixty Hz
► Sound playback formats AAC, AIFF, ALAC, FLAC, M4A, MP2, MP3, MP4/M4A, Ogg Vorbis, PCM, WAV, WMA
► Wireless: Wireless-N (2.4 GHz, 802.11n/g/b)