Tewke Tap smart light switch review: so much more than just a wall switch

What if your light switch could be smarter? We’ve had clever switches for years, capable of changing the brightness, temperature and colour of light bulbs, or even running a range of lighting pre-sets. But what about a truly smart switch? A switch that’s actually a networked HD touchscreen full of sensors, doubles as an energy meter, and is ready for frequent software updates.

That’s what the Tap is. It comes from a British start-up called Tewke, founded in 2020 by Piers Daniell, who Grand Designs fans will recognise as the man building a modern-day castle in Warwickshire.

The Tap, which launched at the CES tech show in early 2025, is primarily a touchscreen that replaces a conventional light switch and brings smart control to the connected lighting circuits. But in time it’ll learn to do much more, from acting as a smart meter and air quality monitor, to a home automation controller and even reduce household energy costs when used with a variable tariff.

Is the Tap the truly smart (and attractive) switch we’ve all been waiting for? Piers personally delivered a pair of Taps to my home so I could find out.

Tewke Tap smart light switch review: Price and availability

Before we get to the good stuff, it’s worth flagging that smart switches and entire lighting systems can cost much more than a set of smart bulbs from a company like Govee or Philips Hue.

With that hedging done, I’ll get to the price. For a complete Tap – which includes the touchscreen, the dock that wires to the wall, and a plastic frame, you’re looking at a little over £300. That’s an awful lot for a clever light switch – and it’ll be even more if you go for a premium metal frame instead of the white plastic one of my test units.

But Piers and the Tewke team are confident that the Tap will save its users money in the long term, and that it’s actually cheaper than “comparable installed smart lighting systems.” Invest now, and you’d better hope those software updates and extra features come as frequently as Tewke promises.

The Tap is available now, and Tewke recently added a couple of future products, called the Lite (due later in 2026) and the Sonar (arrival TBC), to its website so there’s already a healthy product catalogue in the pipeline.

Tewke Tap smart light switch review: Design and installation

The hardware is seriously impressive. Compared to the Hue dimmer switches I have in other rooms – white plastic buttons magnetised to a blank panel covering the original switch – the Tap is a night-and-day improvement.

The dock is designed to replace your existing switch, and can work with up to three circuits. There are three white buttons on the dock for controlling each circuit should the touchscreen be removed. This is a smart move, since it means your lights remain functional if the touchscreen breaks and is awaiting replacement, or has been swapped for an upgraded model sometime in the future. Ideally, the dock (and frame) only needs purchasing once and the touchscreen can be upgraded later.

Tewke has designed the dock to fit inside a standard light switch back box, but in my new-build home installation was unexpectedly tricky. There wasn’t enough space back there to accommodate the dock plus wiring for all three kitchen lighting circuits. Piers arranged for an electrician to do the job instead, which took around three hours since more space had to be carved out behind the dock.

A second Tap installed in my hallway and controlling two circuits was far simpler, and took the electrician around 30 minutes to fit. On that note, the electrician praised Tewke’s installation guide, which he said was far more comprehensive than those supplied to fitters by other smart switch companies.

Once fitted, the Tap looks lovely. It protrudes just 13.5 mm from the wall (much like a regular switch) and takes up the same 10 cm x 10 cm space on the wall.

The 3.92-inch OLED screen is a seriously high resolution for its size – 1080 x 1240 pixels, meaning a smartphone-like pixel density of 419 per inch. It’s a 10-point touchscreen that operates at 60 Hz, has a peak brightness of 630 nits and is protected by Gorilla Glass 3.

The screen connects magnetically to the dock, and while it can’t be used wirelessly, the screen stays on long enough to tell you to place it back on the dock if removed. It really is a lovely thing to hold, touch and interact with.

Once installed, the Tap’s own interface is used to configure how it controls your lighting. You can then finish the setup (and start exploring the various scheduling and automation options) from the Tewke smartphone app.

Although not immediately obvious, the clever bit here is how Tewke has designed the Tap to draw power even when the lighting is switched off. Smart lighting normally needs the switch to be permanently on, then controls the bulb directly. Here, the Tap’s display wakes up as soon as nearby motion is detected, and it can be interacted with without the lights being on.

Last bit of housekeeping: the Tap can function with or without a neutral wire, but not all types of lighting are compatible. See this installation guide for more info, or speak to an electrician.

Tewke Tap smart light switch review: Performance

It seems like no time since I reviewed smartphones and even computers with quad-core chipsets with 2 GB of RAM. But that’s what we have here; a light switch with a quad-core, 1.8 GHz processor with 2 GB of memory and 16 GB of storage. No wonder the user interface reacts and scrolls with the speed of an iPhone Pro.

There’s also dual-band 2.4 GHz/5 GHz Wi-Fi, plus support for Thread and Matter at 2.4 GHz, and a whole range of sensors, including: Doppler radar, temperature, humidity, air pressure and volatile organic compound (VOC), plus a microphone and a small speaker. All this gives the Tap plenty of headroom for future updates and extra features, and is a signal of intent from Tewke; that it has big plans for its products and services.

As a light switch, the Tap responds instantly to a tap of its screen. The UI is sharp, clean and extremely responsive, in a way that makes using the Tap feel like living in the future. And it does much more than merely control the lights. Swipe across to the health screen and you’ll see a score out of 100 for the air quality in that room. This sits alongside the temperature, humidity, air quality (in terms of VOC content) and CO2 level.

Each metric is simple to understand, and appears in green, orange or red depending on how healthy or not it is. The Tap will also flash up notifications when you walk by if any metric is particularly bad, such as high humidity or CO2 levels. These can all be tracked over time in the Tewke app.

Swipe to the Tap’s third screen and you’re shown live energy tariff data. This feature isn’t fully active yet, but once it is (Q1 2026, Tewke tells me), it’ll show a live price for whatever tariff you’re on, plus data on live home energy usage. In the future, Tewke says, this could be used to help lower your household energy usage – and since the Tap has Matter and Thread support, it could turn on your connected dishwasher when cheaper electricity is available at night, or control all manner of appliances in a similar way. There’s support for Shelly smart plugs, too.

Tewke is working with Google to bring its Gemini AI voice assistant to the Tap. Pressing and holding an icon on the Tap will summon TewkeAI, which can be asked about weather forecasts, news headlines and other typical smart speaker duties.

I encountered a couple of software issues during my test. One Tap was disabled by a faulty software update, then the other failed to recognise being reattached to its dock. Both of these were resolved with a quick reboot via the Tap’s own settings page. Not ideal, but being able to easily reboot on-device – and retain access to basic lighting functions even with the touchscreen removed – demonstrates the thoroughness with which Tewke is approaching this product.

Tewke Tap smart light switch review: App

Tewke’s smartphone app is good for a start-up’s first attempt. Even seasoned smart home players sometimes struggle to deliver apps that are as clean, logical and stable as Tewke’s.

That said, there’s a bit of a learning curve if you want to get the most out of your Tap. The Taps themselves are simple enough, and can be controlled from within the app (giving you remote access to your lights while away from home). You can also change the accent colour of each Tap’s icons, and rearrange how they appear on the display.

Dig deeper, and you’ll find Scenes, Habitats and Automations. The former is a way to save lighting preferences, while Habitats are like the routines of other smart home systems; an example could be ‘All Off’, where an icon on one Tap turns off every light of every Tap in your home.

Lastly, Automations perform an action at a certain time of day, or when motion is detected. For example, I set a Tap to turn on the hallway light for one minute when motion is detected between sunset and sunrise. That way, the hall is instantly lit up when someone enters that space, but only at a time of day (or night) when a light is actually needed. Similarly, I have a Tap set to turn on the kitchen counter light strips when motion is detected between 6:30 am and 9:00 am on weekdays.

You can get really granular with these automations. There’s an option to create a schedule, use sunrise and sunset times, or even tell a light to only come on when ambient light around a specific Tap falls between a configurable range. It’s then possible to set how long the light stays on for, from one minute to up to 24 hours, or for it to stay on indefinitely.

I’ve used other smart lighting systems for years, but I still found there was a lot to get my head around. For now, I just have a couple of simple automations, and I’ve added four Habitats to the kitchen Tap, each turning on a different combination of the three lighting circuits of that room – a ceiling light above the dining table, some spotlights in the kitchen area, and a set of LED strip lights illuminating the worktops.

It’s worth stressing that none of these bulbs are smart; they are the basic bulbs that came with the house, but are now controlled by the Tap. It’s possible to adjust bulb brightness – but only with dimmable bulbs, which I don’t have. Colour and temperature control, like that of Hue, Govee and many others, is not an option here. But since the Tap has support for Matter and Thread, it could potentially control smart bulbs from other companies in a more granular way later.

Tewke Tap smart light switch review: Verdict

As far as the hardware is concerned, the Tap scores Tewke a home run. It really is beautiful, and the crisp OLED screen brings me joy every time I see and touch it. I also enjoy the little details, like how the Tap can be set to make a clicking sound when tapped, or even make a second tap when you let go of the screen, like a spring-loaded switch.

There’s huge potential here, thanks to the performance headroom of the Tap and its compatibility with other smart home standards – plus I can’t wait to use one as a smart meter, telling me exactly what our house is costing to run, and offering suggestions of ways to lower the bills. Air quality is a nice addition too, and I’m keen to see how this could be used to control a fan, heater, dehumidifier or air purifier. I suspect the Tap’s brightness sensor could be taught to work with motorised window blinds too, and I gather Tewke has plans to expand what the Tap can do with its radar and proximity data.

But that’s all for the future. For now, the Tap is a very young product indeed. It’s a high-end, luxury item with hardware and a price tag to match. But it’s also something primarily for smart home fanatics who are keen to see the product evolve over time, and feel a part of that journey. It isn’t a finished item, and the learning curve can feel steep at first. Only once you’ve lived with Tewke for a few weeks do you start to fully understand its capabilities – then, like me, you’ll be eager to see what it can do next.