And that’s not even getting to the smart functionality. Smart lights can be operated remotely, by voice commands, or on a schedule. Many can also pulse in time to music, or add drama to your TV or gaming set up. Scheduling your lighting to come on at dusk or home time means your house will always have a welcoming glow when you need it. And scheduling it for morning can help you to wake more gently than a blaring alarm. Plus, there’s the lazy pleasure of being able to dim the lights pre-movie, via your phone, tablet or even your smartwatch, without having to get up from the sofa. We’ve reviewed and rated products from simple, white, dimmable lights to smart lamps with additional functionality, smart strips, lights for streamers and more. We’ve also got recommendations for the most fun, versatile and vibrant colour-changing panels. And, if you read the smart buying guide after our round-up, we explain how ditching traditional incandescent bulbs for LEDs can be an advantage. If you’re interested in building up your smart home ecosphere, check out our smart plug round-up, to bring smart functionality to everything from hair straighteners to vintage lamps.
Smart light buying guide
Smart bulbs can create different mood lighting for different rooms in your house, give you control from afar or allow you to schedule on and off times from your phone or tablet. The small, USB-powered light is attached to a three-way stand, allowing it to sit just about anywhere on your desk. Flip it over and there are easy-to-reach buttons on the back that control power, brightness and even the temperature of the light, ranging from cool daylight to a warm candlelight. With no on-board AI or sensors to detect the environment, you’ll have to make the adjustments yourself, but that shouldn’t take longer than a minute, and the results are immediately noticeable. The LED light is covered with a precision optic lens proprietary to Logitech that, when combined with a frameless diffuser, delivers a soft, wide light without shadows or harsh spotlights you get from cheaper ring lights. It means your face will be much brighter and easier to see in dim environments, but crucially, it’s not bright or direct enough to hurt your eyes over long periods. You’ve also got compatibility with Logitech G Hub for PC and Mac, allowing you to not only digitally tweak the light output but save preferences for easy access later on. If you’re a streamer, or you just spend a lot of time on video calls, the Logitech Litra Glow is one of the most capable smart lights around. Control extends to brightness, colour and timing – you can set your lights to come on at preset times, or when you approach or leave the home, and even entirely remotely over the internet when you’re miles away. With the system set up, you can have the three bulbs in the same room or set in different rooms, although many of the preset lighting schemes use complementary colours so work best with the three bulbs in view together. You can control up to 50 bulbs, which should be plenty even for the biggest homes. The latest Hue bulbs now even work without the hub, catching up to smart lighting rivals, though you’ll still want the Hub to link them all together and unlock the full functionality. The Generation 3 lamp outputs 1,100 lumens, and the LIFX + is the same but also incorporates infrared LEDs that shine at night to light up the room for your security cameras. LIFX bulbs are expensive, which is their main drawback, but you can get small discounts if you buy in bulk. The fact no hub is needed means that you save money compared to other systems such as Hive and Philips Hue. Many will find the bulbs worth the outlay, as they offer excellent light quality, whether colour or shades of white, and the colour bulbs also offer the full range of white shades. We particularly like the fact that the app separates whites and colours and you can adjust the colour temperature to mimic natural light at different times of day. If you have more than one bulb, you can group them and either synchronise the colour and brightness, or use one of the ‘themes’ which sets their colours and brightness independently. Grouping lights also makes it easier to control the bulbs from Alexa, the Google Assistant or (if you choose HomeKit enabled models) Siri. LIFX also supports IFTTT, so you can get the lights to turn on automatically when you arrive home and turn off if you leave, as well as plenty of fun things such as making them flash blue when you are mentioned on Facebook, for example. The range has expanded to include GU10 bulbs, and LIFX Mini, which should fit in smaller spaces where the large versions are too big. The design isn’t extremely robust – one knock and the whole construction can go tumbling. However, once you’ve got it in the shape you want, it can be a striking addition to any desk, end table or gaming setup. The Cololight can also be mounted onto the wall with an additional kit. At this price point (from £39.99 for three panels), the Cololight undercuts lots of other similar products by quite a bit, and is a great product to start to experiment with if you’re interested in arty lighting. They’re easy to set up and use, although the app is not very helpful at explaining all of the features. Shapes can be set up to complement your TV or monitor and have touch sensors so that they can be used for games. You can adjust their brightness and they should last for 25,000 hours (34 years for two hours per day). They come with a 2.5m power cable, which will give you a bit of leeway in positioning your design. However, all this comes at a price. Not only are they expensive but their features are limited. Instead of supporting colours, they only display a range of white light. This means they won’t support Screen Mirror or gaming gear integration. The music integration is also a bit patchy but there are other good features in the app, such as scheduling and gesture control. Bear in mind that if you’re not confident in setting up, the included manual isn’t a huge help and you might have to watch a YouTube video or two. However, where the Morph will give you a number of different lighting options, from a bright working light to a soft relaxing glow, the Glow will only give you the latter. It’s not really even bright enough to read by. But as a mood light, it works brilliantly, diffusing light through the punched out holes in its column. You can change the colours and perform all the other controls via the Govee app on your phone or by using a voice assistant. There are also buttons on its base for switching it on and off the old fashioned way. As well as whites and colours, you can choose themes or paint your own selection of colours along the length of the Beam kit, then you can animate those colours with various effects. There’s integration with Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri (plus HomeKit) as well as IFTTT. And like other LIFX lights, this one supports the Day & Dusk feature, which emulates natural light through the day. What’s impressive is how bright these strips are – much brighter than Osram Lightify or Philips Hue, and with far better colour reproduction than the cheap strips you can buy. Plus, like other LIFX bulbs, they don’t require a hub, so can work on their own as long as they’re in Wi-Fi range. Plus, each strip supports eight colour zones and you can either choose a ‘theme’ or ‘paint’ your own colours using the app. Thanks to separate white LEDs, the strip also creates fantastic white light. You can choose from 2500-9000K, which is a huge range covering very warm white to cold bluish light. The strips will adhere to most flat surfaces, are water resistant and bend vertically. However, it’s awkward to make them go round corners or install in a bay window as they’re not flexible horizontally along their length. It’s easy to set up (as long as you have a good wi-fi connection) and the straightforward app makes it simple to control your lights and change their appearance at a touch. There are two lighting options: white and colour. The colour option is controlled with a touch wheel that allows you to choose from an endlessly tweakable spectrum of colours. You can also adjust the brightness and saturation for more subtle effects – good news, because maxed out, the colours are pretty lurid. The white lighting option has a dimmer but no way to change the warmth of the light, which is a relatively neutral white. You can opt to adjust the lighting yourself or choose from one of the pre-set ‘scenes’ that either cycle through colours (‘soft’, ‘colourful’ or ‘dazzling’ are examples) or create moods like ‘night’ or ‘leisure’ (static white light, at various brightness levels). There’s even a reading scene, although I think you’d struggle to read a book by its rather dim setting. Still, it creates a nice atmosphere for reading on an electronic device. You can also create and save your own scenes. Hey! also makes other smart lights, including bulbs and spotlights. The light strip, like most of the company’s products, is compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant for voice control. Hey! smart items are nicely boxed and come with an easy-to-follow start-up guide, making them good options for the less technically-minded. Smart lights come with different fittings, including the bayonet type as well as E27 screw (and some come with adapters to fit both), although it’s harder to find smart bulbs that use the common GU10 spotlight fitting – and expensive to fit out a full range of spotlights. All smart lights (certainly all those we’ve seen) use LEDs. Some key benefits to using LED rather than incandescent bulbs are that they use less energy, produce less heat, and last much longer. But there are some downsides, too. A problem with LED lighting is that it’s still much more expensive than the technology it replaces. Yes, you’ll spend less on your energy bill and in buying fewer replacement bulbs, but how long will it take you to see a return on your investment and enjoy those savings? Colour temperature and brightness are important for home use. The former is measured in Kelvin, where 2700-to 3000K is a warm white; higher values look cooler and lower values warmer. Brightness is measured in lumens – look to match or exceed that provided by your current bulb. Emma is Home Tech Editor at Tech Advisor. She covers everything from kitchen appliances to smart home devices, from floor care to personal care to air care technology. She’s particularly interested in environmentally conscious brands and products that save people time and money.
