SMART LIGHT BULBS

One of the best places to start when building a smart home ecosystem is smart light bulbs. Not only are they relatively low priced compared to other IoT gadgets, often costing between $10 and $50 a bulb, but they can also completely change the feel of your home.

One of the biggest appeals of smart lights is being able to control them from your phone. Most of them are able to do so by connecting to it via WiFi or Bluetooth, or via an external hub, which handles the connection for them.

Bluetooth connectivity limits the range in which you will be able to control the light, so it’s only best for a limited number of bulbs and ones you don’t expect to control when you’re away.

WiFi smart lights are easy to set up and can be cheaper overall since they don’t require a hub to connect them. However, having something like a central Zigbee hub can make your whole system more reliable since its connection is separate from your home’s WiFi network.

For that reason, hub-based bulbs tend to be more expandable, so we mainly recommend those if you want to eventually have dozens of smart lights around your home. All of the bulbs were tested that it supported both Amazon’s and Google’s virtual assistants, allowing us to use voice commands to turn lights on and off, dim them and more.