Smart Bulbs Comparison + Review 2020

You can easily drop thousands of dollars on
smart home tech everything from nest thermostats,
smart locks, ring door bells, hue bulbs, the
price adds up quickly.
It’s fun to come up with other ways to get
to the same end goal though, like looking
into other more affordable products that compete
with some of these bigger brands.
In todays video I’ll be looking at other brands
in the smart bulb space.
Hey guys Will here and here is a round up
of four different smart bulbs to give you
an idea of difference between budget and higher
prices smart bulbs like LIFX, which is the
most costly out of the bunch coming in at
99 dollars.
All of the following work over WiFi network
so that’s pretty much a must have before you
can consider upgrading to smart bulbs for
your home.
To start with, let’s look at some competitors.
LIFX is a crowd funded company that started
out back in 2012, with support for iOs and
android LIFX bulbs are really efficient because
of the WiFi capability.
So they work via a mesh network with one master
bulb, connecting to your WiFi and the rest
of them connecting to each other.
These bulbs are definitely the brightest out
of the line up but also the

most expensive.
These have infrared which makes it a great
addition to night time photography, you can
see the subject of the shot instead of just
the flash or light and can also come in handy
to improve the image quality of your security
cameras.
Next up is Brilliant Smart which is a smart
home product company in Australia who are
affiliated with Chinese AI and IOT platform
developer TUYA, who have supplied the smart
home technology they sell.
Their smart bulbs don’t feel as premium as
LIFX, the brightness is a little less at 800
lumens and the colours are also less bright.
Theres some more competitors in the low cost
range coming up to give you an idea of how
it performs to other bulbs in this lower price
range of $20 to $40.
Which leads us to the Arlec RGB bulb, which
is apart of the Grid Connect ecosystem.
Arlec is a well known brand in the electrical
industry and have dozens of products in the
smart home category, that all tie into the
Grid Connect ecosystem.
It has a similar weight to the Brilliant Smart
bulb giving it a cheaper feeling build quality.
It’s 800 lumens, works off your WiFi and is
cheaper again coming in at just $24.
Lastly there is Wiz, which is a French-Asian
lighting company based in Hong Kong.
They entered the smart home market in late
2018.
Wiz works via Wifi connection to and spec
wise, it’s the same as Arlec and Brilliant
smart but feels and looks like a more premium
bulb than both of those.
It’s got a bit of weight to it and design
is similar to LIFX but costs less than half
the price at $39.
Spec wise although they are the same as the
previous two competitors, Wiz is much brighter
when switching it over to colours.
The warranty on these bulbs is different across
the line up, Wiz comes out on top at 5 years
followed by Lifx with a 2 year warranty, leaving
Brilliant and Arlec trailing with a standard
12 months, and all these come in a standard
E27 Edison mounting or bayonet as well.
Lets cover setup.
All for options here require an account to
control the lights at all and in general I
found the setup process for all 4 ecosystems
was pretty straight forward.
Wiz has a slight advantage here with its ability
to pair multiple lights at once with smart
pairing.
Wiz or LIFX required no messing around with
the light switch, with Arlec and Brilliant
however you need to perform an extra step
to enter the bulb into pairing mode, quickly
switching the light on and off in a sequence
which could be a little difficult for some
people to follow if you haven’t done this
before, it might take a few tries.
With the lights setup, it’s time to look at
the Apps which cover all aspects of how you
can control how the lights actually works.
LIFX has probably the most features and has
a lot of 3D looking design elements, like
the colour and brightness wheels which are
a bit different from the standard colour picker
the other smart bulb apps went with.
Bringing us to Arlecs Grid Connect App which
I found to be a little buggy, there was a
number of times where it froze and became
unresponsive so I had to restart the App to
get it going again but other than that it
did what it was designed to do.
Brilliant smart was ok with an easy to navigate
interface and was responsive to the light
but lacked a wide range of scenes that LIFX
offered.
The main screen did offer power on and off,
but no slider to adjust the brightness or
colour.
So you had to navigate to other screens to
change those settings.
The weather notification felt a little out
of place on the main screen, and it was taking
up unnecessary space.
I would do away with the weather features
and add sliders for brightness and colours
instead.
Which brings us to Wiz which I found to have
the best user experience of the lot.
All the features are straight forward to navigate
to within the app, power and brightness are
available on the main screen and setting up
schedules is really easy.
The layout of the main screen was just a lot
more thought out, everything you wanted to
change with the lighting including which room
it was allocated to, adjusting the brightness
or connecting additional lights was all right
there.
Lastly looking at smart home functionality,
all four platforms have support for Alexa,
Google Home and IFTT.
For Apple Home Kit users out there, LIFX is
the only compatible one out of the four, so
that’s something to keep in mind.
That being said, each one of these has support
for iOs and Android to use independently,
so it’s not a big deal for Apple users unless
your only interested in using Apple Home Kit
to operated your smart devices.
For me, the lower cost of the Wiz, its colour
brightness, App functionality, and overall
build quality make it my first choice.
If your looking for the brightest, LIFX is
the way to go and as for Arlec and Brilliant
smart, if you need an entry level smart bulb
for white or Amber only, they’re ok for that.
But I wouldn’t bother using them for their
colour functionality, the brightness just
isn’t there.
That’s all from me, if you enjoyed this review
make sure to leave it a like and thanks for
watching.
I’ll leave links for the lights covered today
down in the description and make sure to subscribe
to see more tech videos in the future.
See you in the next one.

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