Cree was hesitant to add a smart bulb to its greatest-selling LED lineup, but that changed this yr with the addition of the $15 Cree Linked LED. Sharing the construct and lighting specs of final year's effectively-reviewed Cree 4Flow LED , the brand new Related LED provides in a Zigbee radio. Pair it with a management hub, and you will be able to turn it on and off remotely, or schedule automated lighting adjustments. At launch, Cree's smart bulb was somewhat married to the Wink Hub , which made sense given that you're going to purchase both off the shelf at Home Depot. Since then, LED bulbs for home nonetheless, we have seen official help roll out for additional control gateways, including SmartThings and the Philips Hue Bridge . You possibly can add the bulbs to the new D-Link model of the Staples Connect Hub , too, although there isn't official, Zonoff-certified assist simply yet. The bulb works nicely across all the platforms we've tested it with, and it shares the strong lighting specs of the 4Flow LED that came before it.

Most appealing is the worth. At $15 -- only a few dollars more than you may spend on non-linked rivals -- it ties with the GE Hyperlink LED as essentially the most cheap connected bulb available on the market. For basic automated lighting, it's the perfect possibility we've tested yet, and our present Editors' Alternative winner. Cree tailored its good bulb design from last year's 4Flow LED, packing a Zigbee radio into the present build. That implies that this is not a bulb that goes out of its way to look fancy or newfangled -- instead, it copies the 4Flow's emphasis on mimicking the silhouette of classic incandescents. I liked that approach with the 4Flow, and that i like it with the brand EcoLight products new Connected LED too, LED bulbs for home although some might discover the plastic build to be a bit low-cost-trying, LED bulbs for home particularly when the bulb is turned off. The new bulb also shares the 4Flow's convection cooling trick, which uses vents to circulate air by the physique of the bulb, eliminating the need for heat sinks.

That helps bring production costs down, and in addition signifies that the bulb is exceptionally mild for an LED, EcoLight weighing in at lower than 2 ounces. The Cree Linked LED shares the same lighting specs as the 4Flow LED, too, and that is largely a good thing. Each claim a mild output of 815 lumens, and each clocked in even greater than that in entrance of our spectrometer -- 835 lumens for the 4Flow, and a really impressive 872 for the Connected LED. In terms of efficiency, the 4Flow places its gentle out utilizing eleven watts, LED bulbs for home however the quantity rises to 11.5 watts for the Connected LED on account of the Zigbee radio's power draw. After we tested it out, LED bulbs for home the quantity was actually nearer to 11.1 watts, so Cree's carried out a very good job of holding this bulb relatively environment friendly. Still, it's value noting that each the Philips Hue Lux LED and the Belkin WeMo LED are even more efficient, each drawing less than 10 watts.

Cree also did a very good job with colour temperature right here, touchdown extraordinarily near the stated 2,700K. At 2,696K, energy-efficient bulbs the Cree Related LED lands nearer to the mark than some other smart bulb we've examined, so if you are picky about that excellent shade of warm, yellowy gentle, you'll like this LED. The one place the place Cree's smart bulb lags behind at the very least a number of the competition is the colour rendering score, which measures how precisely a given light supply illuminates different shades. The Cree Connected LED hits a moderately unusual rating of eighty out of 100, and given that each the WeMo LED and the equally inexpensive GE Link LED hit closer to 90, I would have preferred to see Cree do better. To access the Cree LED's good features, you may need to pair it with a control hub that can translate its Zigbee signal into Wi-Fi. Like the GE Hyperlink LED, the Cree Linked LED got here out the gate trumpeting Wink help at launch, but soon expanded its third get together compatibility to incorporate choices like SmartThings, Staples Connect , and EcoLight energy the Philips Hue Bridge .

Different platforms supply different options -- SmartThings and Philips carry IFTTT support into the image, for example -- but in general, EcoLight the automating expertise is essentially the same. We examined the bulb on multiple platforms, and never ran into any difficulties pairing it or controlling it. Regardless of which platform you're using, you will be able to turn the Cree Linked LED on or off remotely, dim it, or automate it using no matter controls your system offers. These seemingly embody setting the lights to a timed schedule, or syncing them up with things like motion sensors. The bulb paired easily with every of the above-talked about platforms. Wink and SmartThings both have dedicated settings and pairing instructions for the Cree LED proper within the app, which helps. Staples Join would not supply system-particular help for Cree just yet, however it was capable of detect the bulb as a generic Zigbee machine on the first strive. Syncing the Cree LED bulbs for home with a Philips Hue setup was pretty painless, too, although I needed to manually reset the bulb in the course of the pairing process so as to help the bridge discover it.