Ideal makes terrible products. Man, what a steal of a deal.
And do you believe Cree makes good products? I like the connected bulb, the way to distribute the light is unique but they are the worst repeaters ever.
Just like every other brand of zigbee bulb?
IMO they make perfectly good light bulbs, with warranties that last several years. I’ve gotten free replacement bulbs from them twice.
Nop, I replaced them for Sengled. And Hue bulbs should go with Hue bridges so doesn't count.
I don’t own any, but I believe sengled bulbs don’t repeat at all, from what I have read here.
Edit: GE, Osram, also terrible repeaters. I don’t have enough background to understand why, but the issue seems to be bulbs in ZHA networks. So even hue bulbs, when not in ZLL mode, are problematic.
You said just like any other brand of zigbee bulb but not if they repeat or not 
I started with Cree when they first came out but had 2 fail on me after a year or so. The light part worked but the HA did not. Looked elsewhere after that - Hue etc. Ended up with with Sengled bulbs.
GE and OSRAM would be good repeaters if they would just fix their firmwares to properly handle buffer overflows and increase the memory space allocated AND properly purge messages held in the buffer. To date, neither company seems to want to put any resources into those efforts.
I get why Philips doesn't "fix" their bulbs to work properly in a ZHA mesh: $$$. They don't want to sell just bulbs and they don't want to have to stuff a ton of features into the firmware on the bulbs when they can sell you a hub and put features there with endpoints in the bulb firmware. I totally understand that and to be fair, in a proper ZLL mesh (which CAN be achieved outside of the Hue bridge), they are fantastic repeaters and rarely have I seen the bulbs fail.
They don't and that is both a pro and a con. When someone not experienced with Zigbee gets a couple of Sengleds and tries to put one 10' and the next one 40' from the hub and the second light doesn't work as it is supposed to, rarely would anyone assume that it is because of the first bulb not repeating and not an issue with the hub. I love the Sengleds, but I also know the ins and outs of Zigbee and so I plan my mesh placements accordingly. Your average Joe User isn't going to know this.
I ended up ditching my Hue Hub and bulbs not because the system was 'bad' but because I felt it added an unnecessary layer of complexity to the HE ecosystem.
Cree makes so much more than the LED bulbs. Small part of their overall business.
In regard to quality, I only ever bought on 4Flow bulb before they stopped selling their connected bulbs in Canada. It’s been working fine for years. Not the best bulb I’ve ever used, but definitely not anything to complain about. It was an innovative design concept at the time.
I'm on the fence, to be honest. I like having a separate ZLL mesh for my lights versus everything on ZHA. Kind of a "keep the noise down" for critical devices (contact sensors, motion sensors, and locks) kind of thing. But, at the same time, I'm not 100% happy with the Hue integration with Alexa and HE.
But, I'm actually doing the same thing. At one point, I had 48 bulbs on my Hue. I'm down to 12 now. All my Ikea bulbs are now paired directly to HE, but I'm regretting it a bit as I'm seeing some slowness in my contact and motion sensors. It could be my mesh is still repairing (I did a bunch of moves yesterday), but we shall see how I end up.
Would definitely recommend the IKEA on a Hue Bridge instead
Normally I would too, but looking at XBee, I'm seeing that they are actually routing better using ZHA than ZLL. It's a bit weird actually and why I decided to try them on HE and see how it affects my mesh there. Plus (and this actually has me baffled) my RSSI is better when connected to the HE than it was on the Hue.
How did you see RSSI on Hue? I’m not familiar with where to find that?
I don't like Cree bulbs. The LEDs have always fallen apart. None of them have lasted more than a year. Should fit right into the Ideal Industries product line up.
I use a V1 bridge that I never update. The old version of the API (I think it's 1.0.2) still has an RSSI output in the /lights/. So, when testing various bulbs on Hue, I connect them up to my V1 bridge, test and then move them to my V2 bridge for "production".
