Wyze Bulb Colour overview: So near being our favourite sensible bulb

It certain took lengthy sufficient for Wyze Labs to unwrap a colour sensible bulb, however the Wyze Bulb Colour was well worth the wait. Accessible in a four-pack for $35, the Wi-Fi- and Bluetooth-enabled Bulb Colour doesn’t want a hub, and it packs options that the majority colour sensible bulbs on this worth vary don’t, together with sleep/wake routines and a trip mode. The brand new Wyze bulb can be unusually vibrant given its worth vary, whereas the slick, intuitive Wyze app makes it simple to group a number of bulbs collectively.

Tempering our enthusiasm is the truth that one of many Bulb Colour’s most fascinating options—the flexibility to alter colour relying on triggers from the Wyze Cam, Wyze Lock, and different Wyze Labs gadgets—is a piece in progress. Additionally, you possibly can’t purchase only one Bulb Colour, or a minimum of not but.

This overview is a part of TechHive’s coverage of the best smart LED bulbs, the place you’ll discover critiques of the competitors’s choices, plus a purchaser’s information to the options you must contemplate when procuring this class.

Specs

Whereas Wyze has moved aggressively into such smart-home classes as door locks, video doorbells, thermostats, sprinkler controllers, and—after all—security cameras, it’s been surprisingly gradual to enter the sensible lighting market. Wyze’s solely different bulb, the tunable white Wyze Bulb, got here out again in 2019, and it has but to tip its hand about any future bulbs or lighting merchandise.

At $35 for a four-pack (or about $8.75 per bulb), the Wyze Colour Bulb is (characteristically for Wyze) among the many least costly colour sensible bulbs in the marketplace, matching the finances worth of such latest entries as Sylvania’s A19 Smart+ color bulbs. As with the Sylvania bulbs, nevertheless, the Wyze Bulb Colour is simply accessible in a four-pack. Wyze does be aware {that a} two-pack may be accessible in “just a few months.”

The Wyze Bulb Colour is an A19 bulb with a traditional Edison form and an E26 base, which implies it’s going to slot in an ordinary mild socket. Rated to final 25,000 hours, the Wyze Bulb Colour’s white mild could be tuned from a really heat 1,800 Kelvin (most colour sensible bulbs gained’t get any hotter than about 2,500K) to a cool 6,500K, which is equal to sunlight on a hazy day. The bulb may glow in as much as 16 million colours, much like different colour sensible bulbs.

Wyze says that the Bulb Colour can shine at as much as 1,100 lumens, making it among the many brighter A19 sensible bulbs we’ve examined; usually talking, competing Edison-style sensible bulbs are nearer to about 800 lumens. In any occasion, a single Wyze Bulb Colour simply lit up my daughter’s bed room, whereas a pair of them have been good for lighting the main bedroom.

Setup

If you have already got a Wyze Cam or one other product that makes use of the Wyze app, organising a Wyze Bulb Colour is comparatively easy. When you screw the bulb into a light-weight socket, you press the “+” button within the Wyze app so as to add a brand new system (you’ll have to create a Wyze account when you haven’t already), choose Wyze Bulb Colour, decide your Wi-Fi community and enter your community password.

As with just about each sensible bulb we’ve ever examined, the Wyze Bulb Colour isn’t suitable with 5GHz Wi-Fi networks; consequently, I wanted to change my router to 2.4GHz-only mode earlier than the Wyze app may efficiently make the connection. As soon as the bulb was related to my Wi-Fi, I used to be capable of change my router again to dual-band mode with none points.

Moreover Wi-Fi, it’s also possible to management the Wyze Bulb Colour by way of Bluetooth, though doing so means you’ll must be in the identical room because the bulb, and any schedules or system triggers you’ve arrange (extra on these in a second) gained’t work.

Options and performance

The Wyze app helps you to group your numerous bulbs collectively, so I went forward and created a “Grasp Bed room” group for 2 of the bulbs, whereas I left a 3rd bulb by itself in my daughter’s room. For now, nevertheless, you possibly can’t group a Bulb Colour with the older, white-tunable Wyze Bulb, though Wyze stated it’s going to add “new grouping skills” sooner or later.

Ben Patterson/IDG

Whether or not you’re controlling a Bulb Colour group or a single bulb, you get the identical easy, intuitive interface, together with a brightness slider and a colour/white temperature picker which you could toggle by tapping a tab. In case you’re coping with a gaggle, you possibly can choose the colour and brightness for every particular person bulb inside the group, then save your settings as a lighting scene. You can even select from quite a lot of preset white temperature and colour scenes, starting from “Evening Mild” and “Cozy” to “Power” and “Gaming.”

You may schedule the Bulb Colour utilizing Guidelines inside the Wyze app. You may put the bulb on a day by day or weekly schedule, and you’ll decide a selected brightness or white colour temperature. That stated, you possibly can’t but set a scheduled bulb to a colour, nor are you able to decide a lighting scene; that performance is being “actively labored on,” I’m instructed, with colour choice first adopted by scene assist.

Ben Patterson/IDG

The identical limitation goes for setting the Bulb Colour to activate based mostly on a set off from one other Wyze system, such because the Wyze Cam or Wyze Lock. For instance, you possibly can create a rule that activates the Bulb Colour when your Wyze Cam detects movement, however you possibly can’t set the sunshine to glow pink or one other colour; as a substitute, all you are able to do is ready it to some time colour temperature. Search for colour and scene choices to reach to trigger-based guidelines in Could, Wyze stated.

The Wyze app does assist a few key lighting options for the Bulb Colour, together with sleep/wake routines and a trip mode.

The sleep and wake routines allow you to decide how lengthy it takes for the bulb to dim all the way in which down or slowly brighten up, and you’ll decide an “ending” brightness in addition to a white colour temperature. In the meantime, the holiday mode setting is a straightforward, non-customizable toggle that turns the bulb on and off at random instances, useful for deterring would-be intruders.

Sadly, there’s no circadian rhythm mode for mechanically altering the bulb’s colour temperature based mostly on the time of day. If we had to decide on, nevertheless, we’d take the sleep/wake routines and the holiday mode over a circadian rhythm mode.

Good residence integrations

As with most Wyze gadgets, the Wyze Bulb Colour is suitable with each Alexa and Google Assistant, in addition to IFTTT. I had no hassle including the Wyze Bulb Colour in each the Alexa and Google Dwelling apps, and I’ve been utilizing Alexa and Google Assistant voice instructions to show the bulbs on and off, in addition to change their colours. There’s no Apple HomeKit assist, however that’s not a shock given the Bulb Colour’s worth.

I used to be additionally in a position so as to add the bulb to Alexa and Google Assistant routines—that means, for instance, the Bulb Colour in my daughter’s room turns off (together with all the opposite lights in her room) whenever you say “Alexa, fall asleep.” That stated, neither Alexa nor Google Assistant have been capable of management Wyze’s pre-set or colour mild scenes, so that you’ll want to stay with commonplace colours and white temperatures (equivalent to “pink” or “mushy white”) when utilizing voice instructions to regulate the bulb.

Backside line

The Wyze Bulb Colour is near being our favourite budget-priced sensible bulb, nevertheless it must dot some “i’s and cross just a few “t”’s first; specifically, relating to specifying colours and lighting scenes to schedules and triggers from different Wyze gadgets. In any other case, the Wyze Bulb Colour ticks a formidable variety of packing containers given its price ticket.