Smart bulbs can make your life easier and save you money over time. However, they can do more than just provide you lighting. It is no wonder they are quickly replacing CFL bulbs in homes everywhere.
By being ‘smart’ these bulbs provide several features you won’t find in other bulbs. Everything from turning your house into a party, to creating you personal and secured internet hub, these lights can do it all. Here are some of the most useful features of smart bulbs that make them well worth the investment.
- Energy-Efficient
- Can offer Ambiance
- Can promote Better Sleep
- Can Act as Speakers
- Can Be Remote Controlled
- Can offer Home Security
- Can Be Voice Activated
- Can Create a Party in Your Room
- Can Replace WiFi
They Are Energy-Efficient
Although your initial investment in smart bulbs will be more than if you bought CFL bulbs, you will be saving even more money over time. An old-fashioned incandescent light bulb will only last 1,000 – 2,000 hours whereas a smart bulb can last you up to 25,000 hours. This means years or even decades of having the same bulbs lighting up your house.
Besides LED lights lasting far longer than other lighting technologies, you can control their energy-saving output using your smartphone. You will also be saving your own energy by having to spend less time physically turning lights on and off.
They Offer Ambiance
Gone are the days where a light bulb could only display one color or level of brightness. With smart lighting, you can have color-changing RGB lights that can become dimmer or brighter using voice control or a swipe on your phone’s screen. The active atmosphere you can get with different colors can create a sublime or fun atmosphere, depending on what you are looking for. Smart bulbs make it simple to change your lighting according to your mood.
They Promote Better Sleep
Besides having the ability to change colors, smart bulbs can also change the temperature of colors. What this does is help your body get a more restful sleep and help it produce more melatonin. By shifting away from the blue spectrum into the green and towards the red spectrum, your body will become more relaxed. The opposite is true as well. If you want to feel more productive, you can raise the temperature of your smart bulbs towards the blue spectrum.
Promote sleep
They Can Act as Speakers
A smart bulb has the unique ability to turn into a speaker. Bluetooth-activated smart bulbs with speakers can offer you with an immersive sound experience. You simply connect your smart lighting to your smartphone using an app and stream music from a Bluetooth-connected device. You can sync up multiple light bulbs at once to provide an extraordinary surround sound experience.
They Can Be Remote Controlled
Smart bulbs have the innovative feature of being able to be remotely controlled from anywhere in the world. As long as you have your smartphone with you, it will be easy for you to monitor your home’s lighting. Turn your lighting on or off at will, or set up timers so that you can turn a few lights on at night, giving the appearance of someone being home.
They Offer Home Security
Not only can smart bulbs be turned on and off using timers, you can also customize how and where your lights turn on and off. Instead of leaving your lights on all day and night, which wastes more money and will not fool burglars, you can set up custom lighting rules. You can set up a rule which creates a room group so that groups of lights in an area of your home get turned on and off at predetermined times.
You can add an additional rule which would switch these lights on and off at various times. These are great deterrents to would-be burglars. They will move on when they see the semblance of someone being inside of your home using lights, like they would be in a more natural way.
They Can Be Voice Activated
With smart bulbs, you can control them by using your voice. There are many smart bulbs that are compatible with Amazon Alexa, Amazon Show and Google Home. These home assistants can help you turn your lights on or off, dim them, or command them to stream your favorite music and change different colors. This hands-free control over your lighting system is a tremendous stride in lighting technology designed to make your life easier.
They Can Create a Party in Your Room
Some smart bulbs have built-in ‘recipes’ which go through a sequence of colors that can turn any room into a nightclub or fun moving motif like falling snowflakes on your wall. You can create an even more sensational party vibe by syncing up the lights to music. There are many opportunities to have fun with smart lights, with the possibilities being nearly endless.
They Can Replace WiFi
As a testament to how dynamic smart lighting is, these lights can even replace WiFi by acting as internet hubs. Li-Fi technology, as it’s called, is able to deliver internet through smart bulbs. The bulbs turn into wireless internet transmitters, capable of speeds up to 40 Mbps, which is nearly twice the speed considered to be high-speed internet. Li-Fi does not go through walls, so you have no risk of anyone hacking into your network. This is a technology that has barely appeared on the scene, but it is destined to make serious headway towards providing fast and secure internet as part of the Internet of Things.
What Smart Bulbs Should I Buy?
With more manufacturers designing new smart bulbs all the time, there are many options to choose from. Here are some of the best smart bulbs you can buy right now.
The Best Smart Light Bulbs Brands for 2019
| PHILIPS |
| LIFX |
| SENGLED |
| TP-LINK |
| CREE |
| YEELIGHT |
| EUFY |
Philips Hue Smart Bulbs
The Philips Hue smart bulb is an extraordinary feat in smart bulb technology. With this revolutionary light bulb, you can experience the richness of 16 million shades and colors emanating from the same source. That is quite the upgrade from the drab and boring incandescents, CFLs, and even most LED lights currently available. Enjoy nearly-unlimited combinations of hue and brightness with the Philips Hue smart bulb. You can change any room’s mood, emotion, and theme with these futuristic light bulbs. These bulbs use ZigBee wireless technology in order to communicate with a bridge which you have to connect to a WiFi router. This means you need a dedicated hub to control all functions of these bulbs.
Colors effect our mood and emotions, which helps this smart bulb turn into your own color therapy device. Ignite passion and increase blood pressure by making your bulbs emit red light. Activate green to invoke feelings of calmness and peace. Thanks to the app designed for Hue bulbs, you can enhance your life by creating an immersive entertainment experience, increase your feelings of safety and security, and have a wireless lighting system that allows you to customize it in practically every way.
TP-Link Smart Bulbs
As impressive as the Philips Hue smart bulb is, it requires a dedicated hub for it to work. The TP-Link connects directly into your router. This avoids the issues of finding an Ethernet port, which most laptops do not even have anymore, or wasting more electricity to power an additional hub. You can control the TP-Link smart bulb through its app. You can set up ‘scenes’ which can turn off all your lights when day turns to night and vice versa. There are also upgrades which allow you to synchronize turning the lights on with the sunset in your particular location.
If you have a smart assistant such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, you can control it through those devices. As with many smart bulbs, you can dim or increase the brightness of the bulbs. You also get a rainbow of colors to select from depending on what mood you want to have in a particular room. These bulbs have the ability to deliver a bright 800 lumens and are rated as being equivalent to a 60W incandescent light bulb.
LIFX Smart Bulbs
The LIFX smart bulb is a WiFi-enabled multi-colored light bulb that has some great features. Thanks to its smartphone app, you can creating different kinds of lighting scenes according to your preference. These bulbs are larger than the Philips Hue bulbs. The way these bulbs communicate also differs. The LIFX smart bulbs do not need any special bridge to communicate. There is WiFi circuitry built right into the bulbs.
These smart bulbs offer colors that are brighter and more vibrant than some other smart bulbs as well. At 1,107 lumens, you will be getting around 75 watts of luminescence. If you think these bright bulbs would last less than other bulbs, you would be mistaken. They are rated to last 40,000 hours, which is an incredible 27 years if you were to use them for four hours a day. As with Hue bulbs, these can display 16 millions colors.
Comparison between Smart Bulbs with Hub and No Hub Smart Bulbs
| Functions | Smart Bulbs with Hub | Smart Bulbs without Hub |
| Remote Controlled | √ | √ |
| Voice Controlled | √ | √ |
| Timer | √ | √ |
| Multicolored | √ | √ |
| Group Control and Device Sharing | √ | √ |
| Hub | √ | × |
| Signal stability | √ | × |
| Money-saving | × | √ |
Some other brands like Novostella Smart Bulbs Don’t Need a Hub
Another fantastic smart lighting solution available is the Novostella smart bulb. These bulbs are more affordable than all the others we have reviewed, yet deliver all the features you would expect in a smart light bulb.
There are many helpful features beyond just being a shining light in your home. Some of the most notable features are the following:
- Remote Controlled
- Voice Controlled
- Timer
- Multicolored
- Group Control and Device Sharing
- No Hub
Remote Controlled
Control your Novostella smart bulbs from anywhere. Using an app on your smartphone, you can control when your lights are on and off, whether you are at home in your bed or on a vacation on the other side of the world.
Voice Controlled
By using the Novostella smart app, you can use your voice to control the settings on your smart bulbs. You can use a smart assistant such as Amazon Alexa or Google Home to control your smart lighting system. You can even assign a name for every single bulb you have. This will make it easier to communicate with each specific bulb individually using your voice.
Timer
The time-setting feature on these bulbs allows you to preset times for when the lights will turn on and off in your home. Forget about spending time and effort controlling your lights by letting your automated timer presets do it for you.
Multicolored
The multicolored-RGB option on the Novostella smart bulbs gives you over 16 million colors to choose from. This includes being able to change their temperature and brightness to match your mood. You also get four static scene modes, along with four dynamic scene modes. An example of this would be a party mode, which puts out orange-red light to create a vibrant atmosphere.
Group Control and Device Sharing
Use the app for Novostella smart bulbs to create groups so you can control more than one bulb. You get the option to synchronize your lights, ensuring lights in specific areas of your home turn on and off, dim, or change color simultaneously.
No Hub
Unlike some other smart bulbs like the Philips Hue, there is no additional hub required. All you need to do is to connect your bulbs with your WiFi internet connection using the app. If you have an iPhone, you can even use Siri to control it.
Join the Lighting Revolution
Incandescent and CFL lights are a thing of the past. Smart LED light bulbs are a revolutionary spin on a crucial part of any home. With smart bulbs, you get to remotely control your lights no matter where you are in the world. You also get to enjoy any color imaginable and set different atmospheres according to your preference and mood. Some smart bulbs can even turn into your own secure internet.
Join the lighting revolution by switching to smart LED bulbs. Your life will get easier and more fun thanks to this innovation in lighting technology. There are many options available today, with most having the same features. You will have different options depending on what your budget is and what kind of features you need. Smart bulbs will save you plenty of effort and money over time. When you make the switch, you will never look at lighting the same way again.
