Best smart bulbs to buy?

[bertabcd1234]

@xamindar

Years ago when comparing Hue, their color was nowhere near as good as the up and coming competition (lifx, osram, etc at the time). Has Hue gotten better?

If you were comparing the first- or second-generation Hue bulbs, then yes--the third gen and newer (and anything with "richer colors" written on the box, though they may have stopped doing that some time after it wasn't new anymore) addressed the most notable weaknesses those bulbs had, particularly in the green and blue areas But really, I spend most of my time in CT mode and not color mode, and I find all generations of Hue to do particularly well with shades of white (some other bulbs can't get below 2700K much or at all; one of my favorite dimmed scenes uses 2250K--though this is far warmer than most would use for day-to-day lighting).

My pick is Hue (with a Hue Bridge, which there are various options for integrating into Hubitat). If I had to pick something else, I think LIFX would be a close second now that Hubitat has native support, but I'm not about to swap out all my bulbs just for that. (And they aren't that different in price, as much as people like to make fun of how much Philips Hue costs...) I've tried some bulbs directly paired, notably Sengled and a couple Z-Wave devices, but was never quite as happy. I also much prefer "real" Hue bulbs on the Hue Bridge, even though a variety of third-party bulbs are also compatible, because they support all Hue features (default power-on state, HomeKit support, etc.).

I know adding more hubs/bridges/gateways isn't fun, but I wouldn't discount Hue entirely just for that if it's otherwise appealing. (But...maybe LIFX if you don't?) Just my take!

@rlithgow1

Even when they are "Powered" they make bad repeaters. when they turn "off" (go into a low power mode) ZLL based bulbs turn off their repeaters so anything routing through them can drop off the mesh and potentially effect everything. Sengled does not use repeaters and this is a good thing. The downside is that you do want zigbee repeaters for them to talk to if you have a big area. Zigbee 3.0 bulbs don't suffer from this.

I've never heard of ZLL bulbs "turning off" their repeaters--how would they repeat for other ZLL devices if they did? Can you link to a source for this? The consensus seems to be simply that some ZLL bulbs have "bad" firmware that causes them to eat messages instead of repeating like they should and that this seems to be a problem only when mixed with non-ZLL devices, despite the fact that per spec it shouldn't matter. Additionally, Zigbee 3.0 doesn't do anything in particular to solve this, and it is likely just coincidence that those bulbs (apparently?) have better-written firmware and repeat properly. (Behavior is likely to vary by brand/model regardless of Zigbee profile.) See this thread for more discussion:

2.2.7 Zigbee OTA updates

the Aqara Zigbee 3.0 devices?, where exactly are these available? BTW alibaba and the like or direct from China don't count as available for most people, including me. So if you want to loan them to me, I'll write/verify drivers for them... There is nothing in the Zigbee 3.0 spec that would guarantee a better routing/mesh experience... and anyone that thinks certification guarantees proper functionality just hasn't been exposed to many devices, Zigbee or Z-Wave...