Just one little smart light bulb. That’s all it takes. At least, that’s all it took for me to start turning my house into a smart home. At the beginning I wasn’t ready to launch into full home automation. But that one little smart bulb was very non-intimidating, very easy to get and very easy to install in the light socket above my front door. And what a difference it has made. I never realized home security could improve so much, easily with a single wifi light bulb. If you’re like me and you’re wanting to start with one bulb, take a look at this best smart light bulbs comparison to find what you’re looking for…

TP-Link Kasa Smart WiFi LED Light Bulb Review – No Hub Required

If you’re looking for a smart bulb without hub then this is perfect. The TP-Link Kasa WiFi LED bulb is one of the best smart light bulbs available. It comes in tunable white, dimmable white or multicolour options.

 

The multicolour option is more expensive than the white choice of bulb but this is normal for most wifi light bulbs. As a start for your smart home project, these smart bulbs are very affordable.

Are these good value?

Even if you need several of them, you’re getting good value because they save electricity (you can reduce energy use up to 80% without brightness loss or quality loss compared to a 60W incandescent bulb) and the expected lifetime of the bulb is up to 22.8 years or 25,000 hours.  With one of these bulbs you can also track real-time and historical energy use to stay informed and save.

These are the best smart light bulbs either for inside your house or outside on a porch. They can tolerate temperatures between -4 to 102 degrees F.

These smart bulbs are very easy to install. Once you have one in the light socket you simply download the Kasa app on your smart phone and once the app recognizes the new bulb you enter your login and password for your home wifi. There is no need for a hub for these bulbs to work. If you’ve tried a hub in the past you may have found problems with it. You can avoid a hub altogether and get these wifi smart bulbs to use you own router directly.

Now, you do need to use the Kasa app from TP-Link. You don’t need to use an Amazon Echo device. However, if you do want to link your smart bulb to use Alexa it’s easy.

What are the advantages of using Alexa with these smart bulbs?

Apart from the obvious advantage of being able to use voice commands, there are several other unexpected bonuses to using an Amazon Echo device.

The Kasa app does not allow you to group bulbs. For example, if you have several Kasa Smart WiFi LED Light Bulbs in one light fitting you’ll want them to all turn on at the same time. While the Kasa app keeps each bulb separate, Amazon Echo or Echo Dot will let you group the bulbs to operate together. For example, if you have 3 bulbs in one light fitting in the living room you can name each light bulb LRm1, LRm2, LRm3 and turn each one on separately and you can have a group called Living Room and when you tell Alexa to turn on Living Room then all 3 smart bulbs will turn on together. This gives you the convenience to choose how you use your bulbs.

And this applies whether you’re putting your smart bulbs in one light fitting or several different fittings but you still want to turn them on together. If you live in an open plan house and you want the kitchen and living room lights to turn on at the same time you can create a group for them to do so.

Using an Amazon Echo device gives you much more control over how you use your smart light bulbs. Since the Echo Dot is now very affordable, check today’s price here, you can easily use an Echo device even if you don’t want to feature it as a major part of your smart home.

Will the smart bulb work with a dimmable wall switch?

This is interesting. If you’re installing the Kasa Smart WiFi LED Light Bulb by TP-Link into an existing light socket attached to a dimmable wall switch you may face a few problems. Overall, the bulb will work but if you place the dimmer on maximum brightness and try to dim the light using the app the bulb will possibly make a noise and flicker.

If you do need to use them with dimmer switches in your home it might be worth just buying one to start with and experimenting to see how it works at your place. You could always add a lamp to the room with the smart bulb in it and dim from the app using the lamp as the light source (it’s just a thought, but I know this is annoying when you really want to use it in the room’s main light socket).

Can this smart bulb adjust the light based on the time of day?

Yes. There is a circadian mode that automatically adjusts the light based on the time of the day.

These are one of the best smart light bulbs because the app also allows you to set schedules manually so you could set the brightness to increase every 3 minutes or set it to decrease in brightness every 30 minutes, whatever you desire.

You can set lots of schedules by the exact time of day, day of the week and by brightness level from 1% to 100% brightness. There’s loads of flexibility in the app to suit your lifestyle. If you’re looking for the best smart light bulbs to suit your daily or weekly schedule, you’ll love these TP-Link Kasa Smart WiFi LED Light Bulbs.

Can I control these smart bulbs when I’m not on wifi?

Yes. As long as the wifi is on in your home and the bulbs are connected to the wi-fi signal you can control them from the app using your mobile network or any internet connection.

So, if you’re looking for the best smart light bulbs to work while you’re away on vacation and you want to turn your smart bulb lights on or off in your home, you can do this from anywhere with the app on your smart phone and an internet connection.

LUMIMAN WiFi Smart Light Bulb Review – Hub Not Required

This LUMIMAN wifi smart light bulb is another bulb that doesn’t require a hub. You can use it with the LUMIMAN app or with Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant.

This smart bulb is very affordable and at the time of writing it had an average of 4.4 out of 5.0 stars for almost 200 reviews on Amazon.

They include a dimmable white option as well as a tunable white choice. There’s plenty of choice for everyone. If you’re only buying one for your front porch, start thinking about other places you can use them.

What about the stair light down to your basement? What about using a smart bulb in your bedroom to wake you instead of an alarm? Have you thought about the laundry light when you have your hands full and would benefit from using Alexa voice commands to turn the light on?

What is the difference between these dimmable and tunable bulbs?

These LUMIMAN dimmable smart light bulbs are a soft white color, 2700K, and the brightness can be decreased whereas the tunable bulb can fine tune light appearance from soft white 2700K to daylight 6500K so you can change the actual white color.

The dimmable is 6.5W equivalent to 50W, the tunable is 7.5W equivalent to 60W and the multicolor is 7.5W equivalent to 70W.

Are these wi-fi bulbs energy efficient?

Yes, these LUMIMAN wifi bulbs are some of the best smart light bulbs because they are more energy efficient in comparison to many other smart bulbs.

As you read above, the 6.5W white is equivalent to a 50W bulb and the 7.5W white is equivalent to a 60W bulb. These bulbs claim to save you 85% on your electric bill (this would be compared to incandescent bulbs) and they have a life of 18.6 years.

Do you get bang for your buck?

Yes, these LUMIMAN are a good price compared to other smart wi-fi bulbs. They don’t monitor your energy use like the TP-Link bulbs reviewed above but they are less expensive so you’d expect them to be missing an extra feature like the monitoring function. This is usually not a big deal for most people.

Essentially, you just want them to be a good smart light bulb and that is what they do well.

MagicLight WiFi Smart Light Bulb Review – No Hub Required

The MagicLight smart light bulbs come in a variety of colors and watts. You can get white dimmable, white tunable and colored wifi bulbs.

These are A19 smart bulbs varying from 4.5W (40W equivalent), 6.5W (50W equivalent), 7W (60W equivalent), up to 10W (80W equivalent).

There’s a lot of variety if you choose the MagicLight smart bulb. No hub is required to use these smart bulbs which connect by wifi directly to your router. You can download the free app to control the bulbs.

The color bulb includes a separate set of white LEDs for the white color (separate from the color LEDs).

Buying Tip:

If you’re buying one of these bulbs to use as the main light in a bedroom you’ll need higher than the 40W equivalent. The 60W or 80W equivalent is better for a room. The 40W bulbs are really meant to be used together with other light sources in the same area.

Can I use voice commands?

These wifi smart bulbs are compatible with Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home Assistant. The bulbs also work with IFTTT.

To set them up you need to download the MagicLight WF V2 app onto your smart phone. If you want to use a voice device controlled device, you can then enable the smart bulbs for remote control. Once you’ve done that you can get Amazon’s Alexa device or Google Home device to discover the bulbs by the name you’ve given them in the app. You can then control your wifi bulbs using your voice.

The bulbs can be grouped together using the MagicLight app. You can then use these groups with Alexa or Google Assistant.

MagicLight are the best smart light bulbs if you want lots of settings included. There are more than 30 dynamic modes including sunrise wake up mode, sunset, sunlight, timer, flickering candle mode, color settings, music sync and more.

You can cycle through different colors using a gradient function so if you go from blue to red it will pass through the purple colors as it changes. There are lots of different settings to play with. If you do want all these features make sure you get one of the color bulbs because they offer the most settings.

Are MagicLight bulbs the best smart light bulbs for value?

Yes. If you want lots of different modes, these are the best smart light bulbs. For a price similar to other smart light bulbs, these MagicLight bulbs offer more features. The MagicLight color wifi bulbs are the best value compared to other colored wifi bulbs.

With so many different settings these MagicLight wifi smart bulbs are perfect to use as a night light for kids or adults. You can choose the color and the level of brightness. You can also set a timer on the bulb. This is not only convenient but is also energy efficient.

Can I control these lights from anywhere?

As long as your wifi is turned on at home then you can control your MagicLight bulbs from anywhere you have an internet connection using the app on your smart phone.

How many bulbs can I group?

With MagicLight there is no limit to the number of bulbs you can group together. The bulbs and app do not have a limit. However, the limit is set by the number of devices your router can support.

Is there a Bluetooth compatible version of this smart bulb?

Yes. MagicLight also make a smart bulb compatible with Bluetooth 4.0. Android and iOS are supported.

Similar to the wifi version, there are different watts available.

They are colored bulbs with true white included from 2700K to 6500K so you can choose warm white or cool white.

 
If you’re looking for a Bluetooth smart bulb this is an affordable and high quality product. If you buy the color option you can use music sync, group the bulbs and operate it all from your smart phone without needing a hub. These are practical and fun to use.

 

 

 

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