I'm tired of buying expensive bulbs that crap out in 2 years. Witch, if any, are the recommended brands to buy now? At a bare minimum I am talking about color temperature bulbs.
My past experience:
Osram/Lightify - I have owned at least 10 of these - all have died.
Sengeled Element - They seem to die after 4 years. At first will only stay on warm white, then start flickering.
So far I have no problems with these:
Lifx
Ikea bulbs (I only have three of the color temp ones so not a very large sample size)
What do you guys recommend or have had good experiences with?
If you are partial to expensive bulbs, then Philips Hue. But others will have other opinions.
Personally, I liked the fact they provided a complete solution outside of my HE setup, not that I had that at the time I outlaid the money.... There's a few other reasons why I'd still contribute to the yachts of the Philips management, but happy to contribute those thoughts if requested.
Like @sburke781 , I have switched all of my smart bulbs over to Philips Hue using the Hue bridge. This setup has been 100% reliable with Hubitat, Apple HomeKit, Logitech Harmony, Amazon Alexa, etc... You also get some nice features like the ability to configure every bulb's behavior when power is lost and then restored (i.e. no more every bulb on at 100% when there is a power blip at 2am!)
I have personally decided that having multiple best-in-class subsystems, that are compatible with multiple home automation platforms, is the ideal configuration for my requirements. I use Lutron Caseta for all switches, dimmers, fan controllers and Pico remotes. I use Philips Hue for all table and floor lamps. Hubitat ties it all together very nicely. I can also use Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Home, Logitech Harmony Hub, Node-RED, and Home Assistant with these two lightning 'sub-systems' all at the same time, in addition to Hubitat. It is good to have options and flexibility, IMHO.
LIFX is now officially supported by Huibitat as well. So, that is another viable option. Just be aware that LIFX's parent company in Australia has filed for bankruptcy. Not sure if that will impact LIFX or not eventually. For now, LIFX says it is business as usual.
I am glad it isn't just me. Probably one of the many reasons they aren't around anymore. I've got a few spares, but at some point I'm going to have to look for a replacement.
Just got some TP-Link Kasa color bulbs-1000 Lumen. Price is right(23USD for 2 bulbs) and it seems to be very bright and nice colors. Can't speak to longevity yet, too soon-2 year warranty
However the Kasa products seem to be at the top of the resource utilization items. Even though overall it's a small percentage, I have had issues when I had about 10 LAN devices, seems the hub is dragged down by LAN devices-at least for my setup
Oh no. I've been super happy with Sengeled Element, but then I just realized I'm only 3 years into that journey. Have most of yours really dies in "4 years" ?
No, I have 12 of these in my house, in 3 separate fixtures. However, these 4 that are all broken are on nearly every day for 8+ hours a day as they are in my office and I work from home.
The remaining 8 are in the master bedroom and living room (large windows on both) and are hardly ever on.
Phillips Hue with Bridge for sure. The Bridge saved my backend a few times when HE went down.
I gave my lifx plus away due to interference and drop offline once in a while. One died after around 3 and half years
I also have Singled color plus with no issue.
I had nothing but hassle with their earlier bulbs - are the newer ones better? I could literally open their app and watch them fall off/rejoin the network constantly.
I think it all comes down to how robust your WiFi network is. These bulbs have been solid on my (old) mesh network, including one of the original bulbs from their kickstarter. Which BTW, also works with the Hubitat LiFX integration - way to go @bcopeland!
I tried some of the early bulbs (gen 1 - retail) on a couple of different wifi networks. No mixed 2.4 and 5ghz. Would not stay connected. I returned all but one. The one I kept I've updated the firmware any time it has an update.
I've moved houses and set up a very robust wifi network with ubiquiti access points - same issue. Maybe I just got a bad one. I will say the lifx stuff I've seen has, by far, the best color reproduction out of all the RGBW bulbs on the market.
There are multiple ratings on LED lights. There is cycle counts, hours, and of course heat/temperature. 25k hours are the ratings for the Sengled 800 lumen bulb which is 2.8 years.
My bulbs are going on 4 years and still going strong but I only illuminate them to 90% brightness which I think extends the life by a percentage by not producing all the heat. Most of the time they are between 30 and 70% when the rooms are idle. I have installed about 200 of these bulbs at various client locations and personally I have 15 of them here at home and about 10 at my mom's house. Not a peep about their service life.
Yes I can totally attest to this. When LIFX were relatively new, I bought three bulbs and set them up (this was before HE existed). I literally watched the bulbs firmware disconnect/reconnect constantly. Best I figured was it had a memory leak and was crashing/resetting. Couldn't get any help from LIFX so I returned them all. Come a couple years ago I see some LIFX sales and bought them again. Absolutely no problems this second time around so they have definitely found and fixed their firmware problem. I currently have 6 LIFX in my house and they are all rock solid. Glad I gave them a second chance.
General question regarding smart bulbs and best protocol. Several of you have suggested LIFX, which are WIFI only from what I understand. Very new to Hubitat, so still trying to understand all the options and how it handles various protocols. With LIFX Wifi bulbs, I believe I would setup with the LIFX app first, then use the Hubitat built-in app to add to Hubitat. But being Wifi, I just want to make sure I'm not internet dependent now. Does Hubitat directly control the LIFX bulb via my local WIFI network?
If so, then what would be the advantage of Z-WAVE or ZIGBEE bulbs over Wifi?
