Commentary: Smart bulbs, smart switches and other smart lights have never been better or more affordable -- and new options are coming this year from Ring, GE, Philips Hue and more.
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| © Philips |
By Ry Crist, CNET
When we write reviews here at CNET, one of our first priorities is to come up with a buying recommendation. Who, specifically, is this gadget a good fit for? Who, if anyone, would benefit from buying it?
Well, here's my broadest buying recommendation to date: If you have a smartphone and you use light bulbs in your home, then you should buy smart lights. Honestly, I really can't think of a good reason why you shouldn't.
Go on -- tell me I'm wrong.
Well, here's my broadest buying recommendation to date: If you have a smartphone and you use light bulbs in your home, then you should buy smart lights. Honestly, I really can't think of a good reason why you shouldn't.
Go on -- tell me I'm wrong.
But smart lights cost too much!
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No, they don't. Really!
Consider Philips Hue,
long thought of as an expensive option in smart lighting. That's
certainly true if you want every light in your home to change colors,
but if you're just looking for a modest setup with a few,
non-color-changing bulbs, the buy-in is much more manageable. As of
writing this, a four-bulb Philips Hue White starter kit with the
mandatory Hue Bridge costs $90 on Amazon. From there, additional bulbs cost $15 each.
Maybe that still sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that switching
from a 60-watt incandescent to a 10-watt LED that's just as bright will
knock about $6 off of your energy bill each year, on average. If you're
still using outdated bulbs like those, that four-bulb Hue kit would pay
for itself in less than four years.
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Other smart lighting products from Sengled, Sylvania, TP-Link Kasa and the Anker-owned Eufy
brand of smart home gadgets are all well-reviewed, well-connected and
well-priced. GE's stepping on the smart lighting gas this year with a greatly expanded lineup of budget-friendly C by GE smart lights and switches, all of which will work directly with Google Assistant. Amazon-owned video doorbell startup Ring has a new lineup of motion-sensing outdoor lights planned for this year, too -- and they're the most affordable Ring gadgets to date.
All
of that competition is good for consumers -- it also means that a good
sale on smart lights is rarely far away. And keep in mind that these are
products that you'll use each and every day. In some cases, they'll be
the first things you turn on in the morning and the last things you turn
off before heading to bed. It's worth paying a little more for really
nice ones with additional features you might not have considered before,
things like voice controls, security lighting and wake-up fades.
In
fact, after spending more than five years talking to folks about smart
lights -- friends, family, co-workers, strangers -- I honestly can't
remember anyone who's bought in and regretted it outright. Can you say
that about phones, laptops, TVs, VR headsets or any other number of popular product categories?
But smart lighting is useless!
No, it isn't. Really!
I
mean, come on, you use your smartphone for everything else -- why not
use it to control your lights, too? Got a smart speaker you'd like to
use more? A set of smart lights is one of the absolute best things you
can pair with it. Being able to say "OK Google, turn all of the lights
off," as you head to bed or "Alexa, turn on movie mode," before
binge-watching your favorite Netflix series are each great examples of
the sort of little things in tech that you come to appreciate over and
over and over again.
Beyond the basic app and voice controls,
smart lights come with a variety of extra features designed to help you
put your lights to work. Recently, we've seen lots of features that
focus on security. Many platforms offer some form of Away Mode lighting
that cycles your lights on and off in the evening while you're out on
vacation to make it look like you're home. Some can combine with motion
sensors to turn on automatically if they sense anything lurking in the
shadows. The Lifx Plus LED
uses invisible infrared light to illuminate things for your night
vision cameras, helping to offer a much more detailed picture in the
dark.
Other features are geared more towards comfort and
convenience. My favorite recent example: an integration between Philips
Hue and Google that lets you trigger slow fades with a voice command.
You can also sync your smart lights to slowly fade on 30 minutes ahead
of your morning Google Assistant alarm, which is a great way to ease out
of bed.
And did I mention dimming? Smart lights do it with
perfect, flicker-free precision, no need for finicky dimming hardware at
the switch. That alone is worth the cost of buying in for me.
But
hey, I mentioned light switches, and that's one of the common connected
lighting concerns -- smart bulbs won't work if you turn them off at the
switch and cut their power. It's true, but fortunately, the days of
putting a Post-it note over the switch to teach your kids to leave it on
might be coming to a close. New switches designed to pair with smart
bulbs and eliminate that problem are already on the market right now, and Philips, GE and other manufacturers tell us that more are on the way. Hallelujah.
And
what about those fancy-schmancy LED wall panels that change colors?
Aren't those just expensive gimmicks? No, actually -- they're more like
functional art pieces (and priced accordingly, in my opinion). One
upcoming option, LaMetric Sky,
wants to go beyond the pretty colors and designs and offer
billboard-like status notifications for everything from Slack to stock
prices. A bit niche, perhaps, but definitely not useless.
But smart lights are risky!
No, they aren't. Really!
It
used to be that, if a manufacturer wanted to release a set of smart
lights, they'd need to cook up the app software to go with it. That led
to all sorts of lighting control apps from companies without much of a
cybersecurity track record. That asked a lot of trust of consumers (and
in a lot of cases, it meant for a poor user experience on your phone,
too).
Things are different now -- and it's largely thanks to
larger players with lots of skin in the smart home game. The trendy way
of putting it at CES 2019 in Las Vegas
was that connections with Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit are
now popular enough to serve as table stakes for any new smart home
product. If a smart light wants to sell, it needs to offer voice
support. That means that you've got a boatload of bulbs and switches
that you can connect and control directly through Apple, Google and Amazon's platforms -- and each of those platforms comes from security-minded software experts with demonstrably high standards, not to mention partner certification programs.
Let me put it another way. Are you comfortable using an iPhone
or an Android device? Are you OK with Amazon knowing your shopping
history and tailoring recommendations for you across the web? Then using
smart lights via Apple, Google or Amazon's cloud platforms shouldn't
bother you, either.
But maybe you aren't crazy about voice controls. It still doesn't matter. Big names in smart lighting like Lifx and Philips Hue have been around long enough at this point to demonstrate a dedicated focus on user security, with frequent updates and speedy action whenever security professionals uncover a potential vulnerability.
And
to be clear, these vulnerabilities are minimal. Despite the
understandable paranoia over the growing number of connected devices in
our homes, there's no evidence that suggests that hackers are taking any
particular interest in consumer smart lights. We haven't seen a rash of
compromised connected lighting platforms dishing out people's network
credentials, for instance. People aren't getting robbed because they use
app-enabled light bulbs -- in fact, smart lighting might actually help you prevent a robbery.
One last point. Stop and ask yourself if you've bought something from or used any of these companies in the past two years:
- Equifax
Surprise!
All of them were hacked over that span. The number of major smart
lighting hacks over that same period? Zero. Using smart lights may very
well be less risky than shopping at the mall.
And sure, lots of poorly secured smart home gadgets were swept up into the Mirai botnet a few years back
-- but most of those devices were things like internet-connected
printers, cheap DVR boxes and no-name webcams from China. Modern smart
lights from well-established names didn't seem to be involved at all.
Bottom
line: Connecting anything in your home to the web is going to be a
potential vulnerability -- but there's no reason to think that pairing
well-developed smart lights with your router is any riskier than
connecting, say, your phone or your laptop. As always, the important
thing is to give your home network a strong password, and ideally, to
change it every once in a while.
Light 'em up
Smart
lights are useful, affordable, easy to install and safe to use. They can
make your home feel more comfortable, more futuristic and more secure.
You'll use them every day you own them, and you've got a lot of very
strong options to choose from. They're the first thing I'd tell you to
buy after getting a smart speaker, and a sensible upgrade even if you
lack one.
So yes, if you haven't done so yet, you should strongly
consider upgrading to smart lights the next time the ones you want are
on sale. Which ones you get depend on what features you're interested
in, what platforms you want to connect with, and the scope of your ideal
setup. Need help narrowing it down? That's what we're here for.
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