Zwave Plus or Zwave Gen5 or Gen500

ZWave is one of the most popular home automation protocols, using wireless RF signals to communicate between devices.  Zwave plus is actually a new certification program developed to help identify new Zwave products that take advantage of the new 500 series Zwave, otherwise known as Gen5 Zwave.  Certified Zwave Plus devices will display the Zwave Plus logo.

Zwave series 500 technology and products offer a number of advantages, including:

• Much longer battery life, up to 50% improvement
• Longer range, up to 150 feet compared to 100 feet previously
• Network Wide Inclusion (NWI) allowing devices to be added from anywhere in the network
• Over the air (OTA) firmware updates
• Improved self-healing, more bandwidth, more RF channels for increased reliability

Zwave Plus certified devices are backwards compatible with older generation Zwave devices, minus some of the new features and benefits of course.