Controlling up to 8 scenes from a single gang box is great.  I can place one of these next to the home entry doors and set a button to turn on every light in house if coming home late at night… or a button to make sure every light is turned off when leaving.  In the kitchen I could have one button for cooking, one for family dinner, one for romantic dinner, and one for party, etc.

Each button is backlit and the backlight intensity can be adjusted between 2 settings.  When a button is presses it by default toggles the scene to be on or off.  When the scene is on the intensity of the individual button backlight is increased.   I like the individual backlit buttons but the light tends to bleed over into other buttons a bit.

The KeypadLinc ships with a variety of preprinted labels.  The labels are made from a grainy paper and as you can imagine, a backlight behind paper isn’t very appealing.  I have read that some people are using label makers to print their own buttons but I have not yet tested this.  Smarthome has responded to this concern and said they are looking into producing etched buttons.

The tactile feel for each button takes some getting used to and the unit I have doesn’t seem to give quite enough feedback on some of the buttons to be confident that I actually pressed the button.  With some practice this probably wouldn’t be a problem.

The functionality of the KeypadLinc is as expected and very convenient, however in this user’s humble opinion is not the most cosmetically appealing controller.  I just happened to look through a home automation magazine at the bookstore the other day and found a few very nice looking multi-button switches (not Insteon).  Maybe we'll see something a little more stylish in the future. They are fine for a business or maybe even a laundry room but I think they are a little too industrial looking for a most rooms in a home.