WiZ smart lighting review: the better, cheaper option

Cons

Verdict

For years I’ve used LIFX bulbs in my house and put up with pretty frequent Wi-Fi connection issues due to the standard of the colors they produce.

Many low cost sensible lights don’t do white very nicely, and actually battle with colors equivalent to yellow and orange due to a budget, inferior LEDs they’re constructed with. In addition they are likely to have terrible apps that are badly designed and irritating to make use of.

Enter WiZ Linked: a spread of reasonably priced sensible lights that can do correct whites and colors and still have a fantastic app that you simply’ll wish to use to regulate them.

WiZ lights make LIFX – and Philips Hue – bulbs look overpriced (which they’re, actually). And WiZ is now owned by Signify, the corporate that was referred to as Philips Lighting and which additionally makes Philips Hue bulbs.

In truth that WiZ bulbs was offered as Philips WiZ Linked, however have since dropped the Philips branding.

One key distinction between Hue and WiZ is that WiZ lights don’t require a separate bridge. So even when you solely plan to purchase a few bulbs, you don’t must spend further for extra {hardware}. And there are distant controls out there if you’d like them.

Plus, WiZ lights provide just a few bonuses, together with SpaceSense, that you simply gained’t discover elsewhere.

The vary

The selection of bulbs and lights is spectacular on condition that WiZ has solely been round just a few years.

Along with the usual white and color bulbs for screw and bayonet fittings, the vary additionally contains GU10 spotlights and E14 (Small Edison Screw), retro filament bulbs, LED strips, plus many precise mild fittings, identified within the commerce as luminaires.

There are spotlights, ceiling lights (such because the good Rune), wall lights, a ground ‘pole’ mild and desk lamps. There’s even a battery-powered lantern and, only in the near past, the first-ever out of doors addition to the vary, the String Lights.

The selection of indoor lights, then, is great.

For this assessment, I requested WiZ to ship over a collection of these to check out, together with the Linear, a bar mild that’s designed to offer a ‘wall wash’, GU10 spots, screw-in color bulbs, the Rune dual-zone ceiling mild, the moveable, battery-powered lamp and the out of doors String Lights.

Jim Martin / Foundry

All ship equally good mild high quality. The one one which proved tough to make use of was the Rune because it has separate lights for whites and colors: the strip across the edge is colour-only and the primary panel handles whites. The app isn’t actually arrange for this, so getting the mix of white and color that you really want isn’t straightforward.

Jim Martin / Foundry

It was barely disappointing that the bottom color temperature for white is 2700K when all the opposite WiZ bulbs go all the way down to 2200K, however that’s a minor gripe. (The picture above makes the white mild look a lot hotter than it truly is.)

The Cellular Transportable Mild is nice for quite a lot of causes, together with the very fact there are a number of dual-zone presets you’ll be able to toggle between utilizing the button on high, and there’s a helpful touch-sensitive slider for shortly adjusting brightness. Battery life at full brightness is about three hours and, oddly, there’s no technique to see the battery cost stage, even within the app. It’s finest to show it off utilizing the swap beneath, as leaving it ‘on’ and related to Wi-Fi will drain the battery even when the sunshine itself is off.

Jim Martin / Foundry

Nevertheless, it was the String Lights that I favored most. Every of the 12 LEDs is separated by a metre of chunky wire and, in fact, they’re weatherproof. You’ll want to put in them the place the field close to the top of the cable has a good Wi-Fi sign.

Jim Martin / Foundry

As you would possibly guess, the dynamic modes actually come alive on the String Lights, with occasion mode being supreme for conventional vivid colors. However the white modes are additionally nice, with delicate however noticeable modifications within the Golden White mode. Steam Punk is nice, too.

WiZ says every mild produces 10 lumens for a complete of 120, however they appeared brighter than that to me.

Jim Martin / Foundry

WiZ app

As there’s Bluetooth in addition to Wi-Fi in every mild, setup is amazingly straightforward. The app enables you to add particular person lights manually, however also can detect a number of new lights, immediate you to call every and select which room they need to be part of.

I started utilizing V1 of the app, regardless that I knew V2 was attributable to be launched. What I didn’t realise is that V2 will not be an replace: it’s a totally separate app. That’s an odd resolution, however as wholesale modifications have been made, it’s good to must choice to have the ability to use the previous one when you favor it.

Jim Martin / Foundry

And whether or not you want V1 or V2, each are among the many finest apps for any sensible lights, besting the LIFX app in fairly just a few methods.

It’s sensibly primarily based round rooms reasonably than particular person lights. When you’ve created rooms and named them, equivalent to lounge and kitchen, you’ll be able to then simply set a color and brightness for every.

In fact, when you’ve purchased lights that assist colors and never simply white, then there are a bunch of them to decide on as nicely. However the place the WiZ app actually shines is within the dynamic modes, that are readily accessible (in contrast to within the LIFX app, for instance).

Jim Martin / Foundry

In truth, in V2 of the app, it’s simpler to set a dynamic mode than to select a particular color. They’re cut up into White and Color, with two Progressive modes (get up and bedtime).

Merely faucet on one of many choices and all of the lights in that room will always change color, utilizing colors applicable to the mode you’ve picked. Go for Celebration, and also you’ll get vivid main colors, whereas Fall contains oranges and yellows.

A slider on the backside adjusts brightness, however you’ll be able to faucet on Pace to get a slider to regulate how shortly or slowly these colors change.

As you would possibly guess, these work finest when you will have a minimum of three or extra lights in a room, and don’t actually make sense in case you have only one.

If Dynamic modes don’t enchantment, you’ll be able to choose shades of white from cool to heat or any color you want.

A separate tab, Automation, permits you to schedule when lights activate and off. This could possibly be improved. It forces you to decide on a particular begin and finish time, and has no choices to, for instance, activate lights half-hour after sundown.

It additionally forces you to show all of the lights on in a specific room: there’s no choice to pick out which of them you need.

If you wish to flip a room on and off greater than as soon as per day, you’ll must create a separate schedule for every interval, and there’s no technique to duplicate them.

You’ll be able to, a minimum of, select which color, white or dynamic mode you need, and brightness.

Jim Martin / Foundry

A number of the lacking options there are mitigated considerably by the Rhythms choice. By default there is just one: Circadian.  That is in all probability the one one you want, and it modifications the color of the lights based on the time of day, so cool within the morning, then progressively getting hotter within the afternoon and into the night, similar to actual daylight.

The great thing about that is which you could flip lights on and off at will and once you flip them again on, they’ll alter to the suitable color for the time of day so long as Circadian Rhythm is enabled for the room.

Higher nonetheless, you’ll be able to choose within the app what occurs when mild switches (or energy switches) are used. That is referred to as ‘WiZclick’ and permits you to arrange two modes which kick in once you flip the swap a few times.

For instance, you could possibly set one to ‘heat white’ at a particular brightness, and the opposite to a dynamic mode at a special brightness.

This could possibly be helpful when you favor to make use of switches to regulate your lights: sooner than utilizing the app.

You’ll be able to even set how lengthy the lights take to fade on and off, which is a very good choice to have, and you are able to do all this per mild.

It’s value noting that with WiZclick disabled, the sunshine will at all times return to its earlier state when the swap is used. In different phrases, if it was set to blue at most brightness when it was turned off, it’ll be precisely that when turned again on.

One other helpful choice is “Energy outage restoration” which stops all of your WiZ lights turning on after an influence reduce. They’ll solely flip again on in the event that they have been on earlier than the ability outage.

SpaceSense is a brand new characteristic that makes use of the bulbs’ Wi-Fi to ‘sense’ when motion is detected in a room and use this as a technique to automate lights with out shopping for separate movement sensors.

Jim Martin / Foundry

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I spent a while testing this and located that it relies upon upon the place you place the lights in a room as as to if it really works nicely or not.

For a begin, you want a minimum of two lights in a room, and one must be close to the centre, with different a minimum of 2m away. That instantly prompted an issue in room I needed to make use of as a result of I’ve 4 GU10 spotlights, one in every nook.

I attempted to select one because the ‘beacon’ and the others because the ‘processors’ however regardless that the calibration course of appeared to work okay, detection proved unreliable.

There’s a sensitivity slider, however even with it set fairly excessive, it largely did not detect anybody transferring, and didn’t swap on the lights.

But, on events, the lights in that room could be on when no-one was house, suggesting they’d been triggered by the cat or canine.

In the end, you’ll want lights within the optimum positions and to make use of trial and error to get the precise sensitivity. It’s a nifty characteristic, however not one you need to rely on.

Integrations

Final however not least are all of the integrations. You’ll be able to in all probability guess Alexa and Google Assistant assist, however there’s additionally IFTTT, Samsung SmartThings, Enki, Alice, Magenta SmartHome, Ozom, Homey, Marusya and iflares – a lot of which you gained’t have heard of.

I spent most time utilizing the Alexa integration and located it labored fairly nicely. You’ll be able to’t ask Alexa to set any Dynamic modes, which is anticipated, however the massive disappointment was the mismatch between Alexa and WiZ color names.

It’s an issue I haven’t skilled with LIFX or Hue bulbs, however once you ask Alexa to set WiZ lights to, say, pink, you’ll truly get a whitish purple. It’s important to say “Alexa, set lounge to darkish pink” to get regular pink. And it’s comparable with orange, yellow and different colors.

The massive omission, and certainly one cause why WiZ bulbs are cheaper, is the dearth of assist for HomeKit. This implies these with Apple {hardware} can’t simply management WiZ lights with Siri, or from their iPhone Management Centre.

Worth & availability

WiZ bulbs begin at round $10 / £10 for a easy dimmable white bulb and $12.99 / £12.99 for a color A19 / E27.

A 2m LED strip equipment prices $45 / £45, and the Linear (with two lights) prices $84.99 / £79.99.

Speciality lights are dearer: $119.99 / £109.99 for the String Lights and £129.99 for the Rune Ceiling mild.

You’ll discover the vary on sale at Amazon, in addition to different retailers together with Walmart and House Depot within the US, and Very, B&Q, Argos and John Lewis within the UK.

Verdict

In case you’re attempting to determine on a wise lighting system and wish one thing that’s comparatively cheap but continues to be nice high quality – and straightforward to make use of – then WiZ definitely matches the invoice.

In truth, it’s one of many solely choices that ticks all these containers and in addition has a broad vary of bulbs and light-weight fittings to decide on between.

The out of doors choices are reasonably missing, however hopefully WiZ will increase that facet of the vary now the String Lights are out.