Chamberlain MYQ Review

The MyQ, pronounced "my queue", is our favorite garage door opener among those tested. The large square unit in the picture is the MyQ base station.

It maintains a constant Wi-Fi connection to your home router and controls your garage door like an extra garage remote.

The small rectangular unit you see on the left is the open/close sensor. It is able to tell whether the garage door is open or closed by sensing its physical orientation. Since you mount it to the top panel of your garage door, it will only be perfectly vertical if the garage door is completely closed. A rudimentary but elegant solution that functions more reliably than fancier technologies.

The main myQ unit requires a power outlet nearby, whereas the door sensor is powered by an included button battery.

After installing and setting up the MyQ, you will be able to control your garage door through your Android or iOS app.

The combination of its reliability and price (check on Amazon) makes the MyQ our favorite pick among the tested smart garage openers.​

Specs at a glance:​

What We Love:

Reliable

The connection between the MyQ and the router is very reliable, more so than other smart garage openers. The Wi-Fi receiver in the MyQ are robust, allowing for a constant connection between your router and the MyQ. A big plus since a smart garage door opener that is unable to maintain a reliable connection would useless.

​Simple Setup

Unlike other smart openers, the MyQ does not require a wired connection to your garage door opener, making setup a snap. Most people are able to set it up in 15 to 30 minutes, which is considerably faster than other smart garage door openers. 

Works with more than 90% of all garage door openers

The MyQ will work with almost all garage door openers, especially if it was made after 1993. If your garage door opener was made by one of these brands, it will most likely be compatible: Chamberlain, Craftsman, Genie, LiftMaster, Linear, Overhead Door, Raynor, Stanley, and Wanye Dalton. This page contains more details on compatibility.​

Reminds you to close your garage door

I get paranoid sometimes and constantly worry whether I forgot to close the garage door or not. With the MyQ, this is no longer a problem. You can set it up to send you an alert on your smartphone when the garage door is left open for a specified time interval.

Safety Warnings when closing

When you close the garage door remotely (through the smartphone app), the MyQ will flash and beep and delay alert anyone in the garage that the door is about to close by flashing and beeping. Thank goodness they thought of this, saving anyone who scares easily from a potential heart attack.

Customizable Alerts ​

The MyQ app, as shown on the right, gives you just enough options. As you can see, you can choose to get an alert every time the door is opened or closed, through either a push notification on your smartphone or an email. Nothing fancy but reliable and works well.

Installation:

See current Amazon price and any available discount

What Needs Improvement:

Only Supports a few Smarthome Hubs

Not being a Z-Wave or Zigbee device, the MyQ is only able to integrate with the Wink and Nest. Granted, you are given control through the MyQ app, but integration down the line with more smart home devices would make life easier for the user. 

No IFTTT Support

In this age of the internet of things, most IoT devices provide some form of support for IFTTT. This is not the case with the Chamberlain MyQ. We hope the manufacturer will open up the platform in the future to include IFTTT compatibility.

​Worse than useless if Wi-Fi connection is lost

The MyQ is very stable in its connection to the internet. However, we did test to see what would happen if the Wi-Fi connection was turned off. Disaster. It turns out that the mobile app has no way of knowing that the MyQ is offline. It will show the animation of opening or closing the door for about 60 seconds before running into an error. ​Had the MyQ not been able to maintain a stable Wi-Fi connection consistently, this would've been a deal breaker.