Ever because the Philips Hue LED($199.99 at Verizon) lighting kit hit the digital house market, there was a gentle uptick in competing good bulb EcoLight products just like the LIFX LED Gentle Bulb( at Amazon) and the Connected by TCP Smart Lighting System in addition to recent product announcements from electronics giants LG and Samsung. Add the Lumen TL800 from Tabu to that checklist. Priced at $69.99 per bulb (however obtainable on-line for around $50), the TL800 makes use of Bluetooth wireless expertise to speak along with your smartphone via a neat little app that lets you turn lights on and off, select colours, and have the lights behave a sure approach when you have an incoming phone call. Not like the Philips and TCP bulbs the TL800 would not require a bridge, however it would not connect to the Internet either, which means you cannot control it when you’re away from residence or have it work together with different house automation units. With a vented steel casing separating the spherical glass dome from the Edison screw base, the TL800 appears to be like prefer it would be right at dwelling in an Apollo spacecraft.

The bulb measures 4.75 inches in size and places out solely four hundred lumens, which is equivalent to a 40 watt incandescent bulb. That is not very bright when compared to the LIFX (1,017 lumens), TCP (800 lumens), and Philips (600 lumens) bulbs. As with the Philips and LIFX bulbs, it can display sixteen million colors, however because it does not connect to the Internet you can’t control it with home automation hubs from companies resembling Revolv( at Amazon) and SmartThings($149.99 at Amazon). Nor can you utilize the popular IFTTT (If This Then That) internet service to have it activate and off or change colors primarily based on issues like Fb requests, Foursquare notifications, and EcoLight ESPN sports scores. You do not get much in the best way of instructions with the TL800, however there’s not a lot to elucidate. I screwed it into a lamp in my office, downloaded the app onto my iOS smartphone, made positive Bluetooth was enabled on my machine, and opened the app.

The Lumen app is uncomplicated and simple to make use of and EcoLight products lets you management up to 10 bulbs at a time. You’ll be able to management every bulb individually or EcoLight reviews control a group of bulbs. The home page lists all installed bulbs and shows you what coloration they’re at present set to. Pressing a bulb icon takes you to a page where you may choose shade or warm white settings and turn the bulb on or off. If you select the heat white setting you are presented with a monochrome wheel that allows you to manually alter brightness, or you possibly can choose one of 4 brightness presets (90, 70, 50, or 30 %). Under the wheel is a Name Alert icon that takes you to a web page where you’ll be able to configure the light to flash a specific color when your phone has an incoming name. There’s additionally a Wake-Up timer that can turn the sunshine on using a dim warm white setting that progressively gets brighter to create a sunrise impact, and a Proximity choice that will have a light activate to a preset coloration and brightness when your cellphone comes into range (about 30 toes).

In coloration mode you get a wheel that lets you select a color for every bulb and assign a coloration brightness setting. For deep, sturdy colors you set the brightness stage to the darkest setting