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he obsession with Lamp O'clock has advanced to a new level - extreme. I wanted to automate all of my lamps. The vision is that once Lamp O'clock hits, each lamp in our house is on and lit to the perfect setting. I've had this idea for almost two years now. I never pulled the trigger because I was highly overwhelmed with the smart light bulb options. Why are there 20,000 different - give or take 1,000,000 - options?! In January, I took it upon myself to do some digging - buy the top highly-rated smart bulbs and see which are worth the hype. Given it's now April, I've decided to take this dig to the next level. Now pay close attention, because if you're from the USA where pricing might be different - there could be a different winner!
Smart Light Bulb Review Criteria
Quite a bit of thought went into which bulbs to choose. First, the requirements: each bulb selected needed over four stars on Amazon and over 10,000 reviews. Now I’m looking at my purchases – one of the six smart light bulbs I reviewed currently has 41 reviews… can we all agree to ignore that oversight and remove it from the list? Excellent. Moving on.
My smart light bulb review criteria included the following parameters:
- Price
- Ease of Set Up
- Ease of Use
- Smart Home Compatibility/Ease of Integration
- Dim-ability – removing from the summaries because none of them can dim with a dimmable lamp, but they can dim through their apps
- Colour change-ability – removing from the summaries because they can all change colours like little chameleons
My final requirement included the settings I inputted into the light staying the same after the light was switched off and back on again. Which I won’t include below because they all accomplished this.
The Line Up of Smart Light Bulbs
For this review of smart light bulbs, I considered the following brands (from Amazon Canada):
Each of these smart light bulbs has a wattage of 10 W LED – whatever that means.
The Smart Bulb Losers
The first light I set up was the Lloyd’s. I’m surprised I even made it as far as I did to have something to say about it because it took me SEVENTEEN minutes to set up. Absolutely zero people on the face of the earth have that much time to set up a smart bulb. Absolute failure for me. But since we are here:
- Price: $17.10
- Ease of Set Up: NOT EASY. 17 minutes
- Ease of Use: Once set up, the functions are easy to navigate. Simple colour tabs, dimmability, etc.
- Smart Home Compatibility/Ease of Integration: Honestly, I don’t even know where this light is and didn’t bother integrating it.
Samantha Potter Home ranking: 0/5 Not welcome here. That was a dollar a minute that I paid for to have myself set it up. Something is wrong here.
The set-up of the Lumiman Pro after Lloyd’s cluster was a breeze. It took all of 5 minutes. You were required to use an app, register an account and then get the light connected. The only reason this is in the loser category is because of the price and the fact you need a separate app for set-up. Annoying.
- Price: $16.99
- Ease of Set Up: Easy, 5-minutes. App download, account registration, device add.
- Ease of Use: Simple app interface, simple colour selection, dimability, etc.
- Smart Home Compatibility/Ease of Integration: Simple to integrate with Alexa. It took two seconds. Also compatible with Google Home.
Samantha Potter Home ranking: 3/5 If it goes on sale below the price of others, I’d do it.
My (Above) Average Smart Bulb Crew
- Price: $14.00
- Ease of Set Up: Easy peasy. 5-minutes. App download, account registration, device add.
- Ease of Use: Simple app interface, simple colour selection, dimability, etc.
- Smart Home Compatibility/Ease of Integration: Simple to integrate with Alexa. It took two seconds. Also compatible with Google Home.
Samantha Potter Home ranking: 4/5 Honestly, the only downfall is that you can’t register it directly in the Alexa app. Otherwise, it would be my winner.
- Price: $19.68
- Ease of Set Up: Easiest one yet – set it up directly in the Alexa app, no additional account needed.
- Ease of Use: So easy because it’s in the Alexa app – however, you can’t seem to change the colour as freely as in the other apps. You can only use the set colours in the Alexa app.
- Smart Home Compatibility/Ease of Integration: Not compatible with Google, but dang easy with Alexa.
Samantha Potter Home ranking: 4.5/5. Expensive. If you want to be able to change colours from a colour wheel, this isn’t your light. I want a dimmed warm white.
My Smart Light Bulb Review Winner
- Price: $17.48
- Ease of Set Up: Easiest one yet – set it up directly in the Alexa app, no additional account needed.
- Ease of Use: So easy because it’s in the Alexa app – however, you can’t seem to change the colour as freely as in the other apps. You can only use the set colours in the Alexa app.
- Smart Home Compatibility/Ease of Integration: Not compatible with Google, but dang easy with Alexa.
Samantha Potter Home ranking: 5/5. Best priced and most user friendly – if you have Alexa. Additionally, like the Amazon bulb – if you want to be able to change colours from a colour wheel, this isn’t your light. I want a dimmed warm white.
That’s it – the winner is Evo Lux! Which is funny because I think it’s related to the clear loser. But they definitely made an upgrade here!
I hope that helped you clear up any confusion on the 20,000 give or take 1,000,000 smart light options out there! Happy Lamp O’clocking.
PS – if you have an old lamp you want to jeush up for your Lamp O’clock, I have some ideas for you here!
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