Several months ago one of my sengled bulbs failed. I called them and after a lengthy process (6-8 weeks) they eventually sent a replacement.
Another bulb failed about 4 weeks ago. I discovered that they have closed their phone lines so I emailed. After an initial response asking for the s/n and mac, I heard nothing; it's been 3 weeks. Yesterday a third bulb failed.
I also left a phone message at the corp HQ but have gotten no reply.
Ihave more than a dozen of these bulbs installed and I'm worried that they are going to continue failing.
I have concluded that:
1 - the bulbs seem to be less reliable than they were before
2 - these may be signs that the company is financially unstable and/or has unresolved management issues.
Personally, I am going to avoid sengled products until it is clear that their reliability and management issues have been resolved.
I generally find "n=1" blanket statements about product reliability to be pretty difficult to rely on themselves (positive or negative statements). My neighbor and I discovered some years ago that we happened to have the same exact washing machine, purchased a few months apart. His died a few years back, mine is going strong. But I don't think either of us is in any position to make a reliable statement about the product's overall reliability - was he unlucky (it's a good product, few failures) or am I lucky (it's a bad product, many failures). Just can't say w/the tiny bit of reliability data we have...
Yes, you're absolutely right. Non-parametric stastics teach us that it takes 7 identical results in a tow ro achieve p=0.05 and something like 9 of 12. Since I have 12, all bought at the same time, I'm just not going to buy anymore until I have a chance to see whether these failures suggest a pattern.
It's more doncerning to ke that they seem to have made it impossible to talk to anyone there and are not responding to email promptly. I like them well enough that, if it was quick and easy to get replacements, I would probavly stick with them. But right now I have 2 duds. Do I buy more while I wait to see if the companynis viale and supportive? Or do I buy something else in the meantime while mynstatistical study continues in search of significance?
By the way, I also have 5 of the Element Classic. 2 at one location, upgraded to new C-8 no problem. # others at second location, and since updating to C-8 have not got any to work. They do make great repeaters when they work, which is unusual for bulbs.
I would highly recommend replacing them with Innr (though admitadly some of their bulbs have been harder to find lately). I had switched whole scale to Sengled (from Cree and Sylvania) when they were widely recommended in the community. but within months found them to be kind of flakey. I haven't had any issues with Innr bulbs that replced the Sengled.
TP-Link/Archer makes some great devices. I have their flagship WiFi 6e router AXE300. I also have three TP-Link 2.5 gbe Ethernet switches and some older 1 gigabit switches. I have also equipped my desktop computers with TP-Link PCIE to 2.5 gbe ethernet adapters. I even have a Tp Link WifFi 6 range extender. They are all great devices.
I do have a couple of TP-Link Kasa switches, but I prefer using Zigbee and Z-wave rather than Wi-Fi, so they are in my spare parts drawer.
I found their color bulbs to be terrible. Their temperature adjustable white bulbs seem better for some reason. Anyways I and done with Zigbee bulbs, Kasa wifi bulbs are local and suit me fine.
I avoid all Zigbee HA bulbs. I do have a few Zigbee Hue bulbs connected to a Hue bridge, but they are using the lighting protocol and not HA. I use Zigbee smart plugs as repeaters and that has proven to be a formula for success.
I'm not at all sure that the bulbs have actually failed. I should have said that they get to a point where they don't respond, even if I reset them. I started with 12 bulbs, I now have 18. ^ were in the "bad"pile - not responding. Today I successfully reset all 6 "bad".
As I mentioned 7 of 9 bulbs in one room stopped responding to commands. 6 refused to turn on and 1 refused to turn off.
I happen to have a sengled hub. I reset these 7 bulbs and successfully paired them to the sengled hub. They all work as expected.
Again, I have no idea why everything in this room suddenly started behaving erratically since I migrated to the C-8, and I have no evidence that the C-8 has a problem because the rest of the house is working normally. These 7 (actually all 9) bulbs are all within 15 feet of the HE, so it can't really be a repeater issue.
In this room, automation is essential because the only manual control that I have is to kill the circuit feeding 9 bulbs.
I wish/hope that someone can explain what's going on.
An additional point of reference, I have about 12 Sengled bulbs as they have been fantastic for 3+ years.
The only issues I have ever had is when I've had zigbee instability - which was my/HE fault, not the builbs.
I replaced 9 of the 12 sengleds with hue last week. No problem with that. This mornig I found another Sengled stuck on. Would not respond to off signals from hubitat. Replaced that with another hue with no difficukty.
I suspect that I will be able to reset the sengled bulb. The strange thing is that after resetting all sengled bulbs they seem to work if paired to a sengled hub. Of course that's no use to the hubitat because there is no sengled hub integration.
The fact that these bulbs all worked flawlessly with the hubitat for over 1-1/2 yeard and thrn all became flakey over the course of 3 months suggests one of two possibilities:
1 - there is some undocumented feature of the sengled zigbee implementation that the updated hubitat software has "discovered" that keeps throwing the bulbs into a zombie state.
2 - some aspect of the bulb hardware deteriorates over time and then responds differently to the hubitat signals thsn the ones from the sengled hub.
None of these sengled bulbs has failed outright because they can all be reset and then work on the sengled hub. The hubitat however refuses to recognize (discover) some of the reset bulbs.
I don't know what this means technically but from a practical standpoint it means I am never wasting any more time on sengled. When the last 2 fail, as I expect they will, I will swap in hue and be done with it.
If anyone would like a bunch of sengled bulbs, you can have them if you pay for the shipping.
I had the exact same problem with my sengled bulbs. They worked for years then started to get unresponsive. Tried everything to no avail. They constantly fail within days.
In the end I transfered them to Z2M and they worked flawlessly since.
As a note: I had also Sengled switches where Hubitat eats battery like crazy. They would not last more then a week. Now they have been working for months on Z2M with the same battery.
So definitely there is something wrong with Hubitat and Sengled.
