Connect 4 or Control4? You’re Not the First to Mix Them Up

Published 17 July 2026 · By SMC Custom Installs

If you’ve landed here searching for Connect 4, we have good news and bad news. The bad news: we can’t do much for your four-in-a-row game. The good news: if you actually meant Control4 (and plenty of people typing it do), you’re in exactly the right place.

The one with the counters

Connect 4: the upright grid, the red and yellow counters, the satisfying clack, the suspiciously confident nephew at Christmas. Available from any toyshop, no installation required, batteries not needed. We can’t help you with that one — though there is a tip at the bottom of this page.

The one that runs your house

Control4 is a smart-home system: the professionally installed kind, rather than a drawer full of apps that don’t talk to each other. One app, one remote and a few tidy keypads run the lot: lighting, heating, television and cinema, music in every room, blinds, cameras, the front gate. Press “Movie” and the lights dim as the screen comes on; one touch at bedtime and the house turns itself off behind you. A dealer configures it around your home and your habits, which is why it keeps working when the broadband hiccups or the in-laws commandeer the remote.

A quick decoder

• Connect 4: get four counters in a row and you win.
• Control4: get four hundred devices in a row to behave themselves. Also winning, frankly.
• Connect 4: takes five minutes to learn.
• Control4: also takes about five minutes to learn — that’s rather the point. The clever work happens before you ever touch it.

If you meant the smart-home one

Then you’ve saved yourself a search: we’re Shropshire’s Control4 Certified Showroom, designing, installing and supporting Control4 smart homes across Shropshire, Cheshire and the West Midlands. There’s a real system running live in our Shrewsbury showroom all day. See what’s on demonstration and come and try it, rather than guessing from a brochure. And if you’re weighing Control4 against the other big name in this world, we’ve written an honest Crestron vs Control4 comparison too.

One more thing, because our sister company SMC Hi-Fi shares our building: if music matters to you, multi-room audio is the part worth doing properly: music that still sounds like music, in every room you actually use.

P.S. The Connect 4 tip, as promised: take the middle column and never apologise. You didn’t hear it from us.