With the bulb up and running, you'll specify the room it's in and give it a name.
For instance, when you set the bulb to pairing mode, it'll start pulsing purple once its Wi-Fi network is ready for you to connect. It's especially simple because the bulb uses its color capabilities to signal you along the way. You'll start by turning your bulb on and beginning the pairing process, which requires you to connect to the bulb's Wi-Fi network so the app can add it onto your home network. You either have to turn them on in the app, or buy a physical Wiz remote and assign them to its customizable preset buttons. My big quibble here? There's no way to activate these with your voice or via any third-party integration. Some, like "Ocean" or "Forest," follow a theme, while others just dance between random colors for romantic mood lighting, party-appropriate dance floor lights, or a simulated candle-like flicker. The app also features a number of "dynamic" color settings that cycle through various shades.
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When I asked it to jump to the "Macaroni and Cheese" setting, it triggered that ugly, milky white again - but that's better than I got from Alexa, which just looked at me funny before adding mac and cheese to my grocery list. Google Assistant seemed to recognize more of them, at least, sort of. Ugly-looking pinks aside, stalwarts like red, blue and green come through just fine - and if you open the Wiz app, you'll find a color selector with dozens of different settings, including oddball Crayola rejects like "Razzmatazz," "Free Speech Green" and "Gorse." What's extra odd is that Alexa and Google seem to recognize some of these settings (including a great-looking "Deep Pink"), but not all of them.
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If you're interested in deeper integrations with third-party products and services, or advanced features that can sync your lights with your TV or with your music, then you'll still need to spend up on something from Philips Hue, Lifx or Nanoleaf - but for simple, voice-activated, color-changing light that you can control and program from your phone, these Wiz Connected bulbs will do the trick for a fraction of the cost.Ĭolor quality is mostly accurate, but the bulb's palette has a few weak spots. Despite the fact that it doesn't work with the Philips Hue app or with Hue's immense list of third-party integrations, the bulb still finds plenty to offer via the surprisingly well-featured Wiz app.Īll of that makes these bulbs a terrific and worthy value pick if you're interested in changing up the colors in your home - and newly announced bulb shapes like a candelabra bulb and an outdoor-rated PAR38 bulb make it easy to expand your setup to include any fixture you like. Its colors aren't quite as bright or vivid as you'll get from our top performer in the color-changing category, the Lifx Mini LED, but they still do an admirable job at splashing accurate, eye-catching shades across your walls. Available at Home Depot for just $13 each, it's a full-fledged color-changer that needs no hub, and it supports voice control via Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri Shortcuts. Things seem to be turning a corner in 2020, though - most notably with the Philips Wiz Connected Smart Wi-Fi LED. Even if you caught a good sale, you'd be lucky in most cases to get one for anything less than $30. Even as the price of LED lights fell steadily over the past five years or so, color-changing bulbs from well-established names like Philips Hue and Lifx continued to sell at a steep premium.
There's an exception though, or an asterisk perhaps, and that's smart bulbs that can change colors.