In recent times, light bulbs have become immensely smarter. You may now change your traditional incandescent bulb with a choice of smart options that you can manage with two or three touches on your tablet or cellphone. Some are also compatible with smartwatches and voice assistants, allowing you to operate them with only your voice or your wristwatch. But, with more and more smart home choices available, how can you know which one is perfect for you? To assist you in making your decision, we’ve compiled a list of our top-rated smart bulbs, as well as some factors to consider when shopping.
Best smart bulbs for Alexa?
Lightify LED by Osram
The Osram Lightify smart LEDs also utilize Zigbee. Those Osram lights must be paired with the Osram plug-in gateway. It converts Zigbee signals to Wi-Fi, which your network — and Alexa — can use.
LEDs from Sylvania Smart Plus
Osram recently split off their smart lighting business Ledvance, which now distributes Zigbee smart bulbs with the Sylvania brand. The excellent thing is that this Alexa-compatible series of Zigbee smart lights begins at only $12 apiece and comes in a number of forms and sizes.
Aurora Nanoleaf
The color-changing “Aurora” light strips from Nanoleaf are the same way. You can coordinate Alexa’s voice commands with your songs to create a synchronized light display in your sitting room.
Nanoleaf will begin offering square-shaped lighting screens with built-in touch controllers in the near future. They’ll work with Alexa, too.
Lumos LED by Eufy
Eufy is another name to remember. It’s Anker’s smart home spinoff brand, and one of the products on sale is a $20 Alexa-compatible smart lamp dubbed the Lumos LED. It’s a wonderful choice for tidying up a bulb on the budget, and it doesn’t need a hub because it links to your home network over Wi-Fi.
GE Sol
Of course, you could just purchase a new bulb with built-in smarts. That’s the concept behind GE’s quirky-looking Sol, which not only works with Alexa but also has Alexa embedded into the base, making it seem like its own tiny Amazon Echo.
If you like the old school, GE’s Bluetooth smart LEDs now operate with Alexa. However, to let them connect to your Wi-Fi connection, you’ll require a plug-in hub.
Color 1000 Lifx
Because the Lifx Color 1000 communicates with Alexa over Wi-Fi, it does not need a hub. It takes $60, but it gives you complete control. Alexa can also adjust the bulb’s shade or activate your pre-programmed illumination settings. “Alexa, activate party mode!”
Best smart bulbs for Google?
Starter Kit for Philips Hue
Because it is such a well-made technology, Philips Hue is a household brand in smart lighting. It works with an extra Philips Hue hub/bridge, but it’s a strong lighting system once it’s set up. It’s available on all mainstream systems, including Google Home, and comes in a variety of colors or white bulbs, allowing you to quickly automate your home.
Lumiman WiFi Smart Light Bulb
Lumiman is another low-cost smart lighting company. The Lumian Smart WiFi Light Bulb offers billions of various colors as well as white alone, and you can effortlessly convey your wants by voice or smartphone. Things can be scheduled, timers can be set, and groups can be created. The app isn’t perfect, but due to Google Home, voice instructions work perfectly.
Smart Light Bulbs by Sengled
Sengled provides a variety of smart light bulbs, so be sure to choose one that connects with Google Home (and doesn’t require a router).This one handles it all while also having color-changing capabilities, allowing you to create mood-scapes and modify the brightness based on your needs.
Best smart bulbs for Apple?
Essentials A19 by Nanoleaf
This lighting accessory has it all: thousands of shades, 1,100 lumens of full intensity, and HomeKit Adaptive Lighting, Apple’s newest and best feature. That’s not all: this light functions without the requirement of a Bluetooth or Thread-enabled hub. While Bluetooth is fantastic, if you have a HomePod mini, Thread improves reaction times and provides rock-solid dependability.
Color A19 by LIFX
Another of the lightest HomeKit-enabled smart lights on the market is the LIFX Color A19. Don’t be fooled by its little size: this compact bulb produces 800 lumens of illumination delight, which would be the equivalent of a 60-watt bulb. This bulb can also be programmed to accommodate millions of color options, allowing you to create almost any colour you can imagine. While it isn’t as bright as some other bulbs on the marketplace, it doesn’t require a bridge to work.
A19 Yeelight
The color LED bulb from Yeelights uses Wi-Fi to join to your local network with a simple scan of a matching code. It gives up to 800 lumens of multi-color deliciousness through the House application and Siri, but the Yeelight app adds even more fun with a variety of dynamic scene settings that bring your home to life.
What are some of the things you can do with bulbs?
Make a schedule for your lighting.
Any smart lighting system should be capable of running on a set schedule.
To program your lights, go to the authorized application for your equipment, which might be a wall button, smart plugs, or specific light bulbs. Light switches from Lutron, Leviton, or Belkin are cases of hardware with accompanying software.
You may utilize a third-party option as a remedy if the mobile application for your smart lights can not provide this level of management. IFTTT is a great place to begin. The service has a large library of home automation connections, including linked lights. Philips Hue, Lifx, and Belkin Wemo are just a few of the prominent contenders.
When you get home, the lights are turned on.
Coming back home to a dark living room or a pitch-black garage is unpleasant. Leaving lights and bulbs on all the time, on the other hand, is a definite way to waste resources and money.
Test your lighting application to see if you can set your lighting to come on when you go in or turn out when you exit. If you have Philips Hue lighting, for example, you can set it all up through the smartphone app.
For better control, group lights together.
Grouping smart lights by area or zone is an excellent approach to utilize them. You may, for example, set all of the lamps in your basement to turn out after midnight. Alternatively, after 1 a.m., reduce all lights on the main floor to 20% intensity. You get the point.
Set the tone.
Another neat hack We suggest is scenes. Use them for various situations and duties like as viewing movies, reading throughout the day or night, hosting dinner parties, and so on.
You can control brightness, color rendering, and even various colours within a scene, which you may configure in your smart bulb’s application. Save the parameters as a setting with a distinctive title after you’ve perfected the lighting in a place. You’re simply an application touch away from your preferred ambient lighting after your environment is set up.
Lights for home security
Smart lights may also be used to protect your house. Connect any motion sensors you have throughout the home, such as a smart thermostat, camera system, or stand-alone motion sensor, to buttons, lighting, and smart plugs.
Configure the lights to turn on when motion or sound is detected. If someone is lurking around outdoors (or worse, breaking in) and the lighting comes on, opportunistic burglars will probably rethink again.
Adjust to the conditions
This lighting suggestion is for all you weather nerds out there. If you have an internet-connected personalized weather station (PWS), your smart lights should be able to communicate with it. This is useful when bad weather occurs and you want to maintain a consistent light intensity in otherwise sunny spaces.
