Lutron is a longtime mainstay of the lighting aisle, and its Caseta smart light switches have long been some of our favorite gadgets in the CNET Smart Home. Now, there's a new smart switch in the Caseta family -- not for your lights, but for your ceiling fans.

It's called the Lutron Caseta Fan Speed Control, and it sells for $60. Use it to replace your ceiling fan switch, and presto, your ceiling fan is now a smart home gadget, complete with control over how fast it spins.

Like other Caseta switches, the Fan Speed Control syncs with the Lutron Bridge using the company's proprietary ClearConnect wireless protocol, and it supports voice commands via Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant. It comes in white, black, ivory or light almond, and looks just like Lutron's other Caseta switches, so it'll fit right in if you've already bought into the ecosystem.

That's a winning pitch if you want to automate your ceiling fans along with your lights -- especially given that Lutron's smart home platform is about as speedy, stable and reliable as any that we've tested. $60 isn't a bad price, either, especially as an alternative to getting a smart ceiling fan, which can cost hundreds. If your fan has a built-in light, Lutron's switch won't do anything to automate it, which might give me pause in certain cases, but aside from that, this smart switch is easy to recommend.

Lutron's Caseta Fan Speed Control looks and works like other Caseta products. Instead of turning a light on and off and dimming it up and down, it'll turn your ceiling fan on and off and speed it up and down. 

A simple pitch, perhaps -- but a welcome one since there aren't currently a lot of options for smartening up ceiling fans on a budget.

To test it out, I set out to install the Lutron Fan Speed Control at the CNET Smart Home. It wires in easily enough -- just shut the power off at the breaker and remove the old switch, then wire in the new one. 

Along with the usual line, load and ground connections, you'll need to be sure that you've got a neutral wire ready to go in your gangbox, as the Lutron Fan Speed Control won't work without one.

Performance-wise, there's not much to say other than this thing works as promised. Syncing it up with Lutron app is simple -- just hold a button down for a few seconds, then give it a name and assign it to a room in the app. 

From there, you can control it from your phone, automate it or connect it with your voice assistant of choice. As for your pull chain, just leave it pulled to the fastest setting and forget it exists.