I’m completely fed up with LIFX bulbs, I have several hundred dollars worth of them in lamps around the house. I love the light / colour quality, but the bulbs themselves are unreliable.
The issue for those wondering, is that they don’t work well with modem wifi mesh systems. I’ve been able to get them to 90% reliability by getting an old 2.4ghz 802.11n only router and running it as an AP only.
But 90% isn’t good enough and the complete lack of support from LIFX is galling considering how expensive their bulbs are. LIFX supports recommendations to me was basically turn off all the features that make wifi 6e fast.
So I’m looking for recommendations. Zigbee or wifi is fine, but if they are wifi, they must be compatible with a modern wifi 6e mesh system.
I also want bulbs that are compatible with Homekit adaptive lighting (I never thought this was a big deal till I tried it).
Suggestions?
PS I’m in Australia, so the product must be available here.
I personally dislike my three LIFX bulbs, as they drop off our solid mesh network randomly. I am hoping that they burn out soon so I can replace them with reliable Z-WaveZigbee switches and regular low wattage efficient light bulbs.
I don't know what I was thinking when I thought that intelligent network connected light bulbs would be a great thing. Never again! Fool me once...
The “obvious” answer is a Philips Hue bridge with genuine Philips Hue bulbs. Not the lowest cost solution, but it has been 100% reliable, works great with Apple HomeKit, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Logitech Harmony, Hubitat, Home Assistant, SmartThings, etc… And, Philips Hue is delivering Matter Bridge functionality via their Hue bridge as well.
I know some will say that Hue is too expensive, or that they now really want all users to have a Hue cloud account now. For me, the reliability and compatibility with all major systems more than makes up for it.
YMMV, of course! Good luck with whatever you choose.
I would say mine were more like 98% reliable. But on occasion they would drop off wifi... Then I had to reboot them (remove power). Then they would work great again, until they didn't.
Govee has some bulbs that should provide decent color with different levels of light output. I dont own anymyself but have heard they work with the Govee integration I have.
I do have 6 different Wiz connected bulbs and they have been rock solid for me on my Google Wifi mesh system.
The Govee bulbs are cloud dependent while the wiz bulbs are able to be controlled locally. I am hoping Govee will fix that eventually though. A ton of there stuff is controllable locally now.
The thing i fear is you may not get a bulb as good as lifx for color production though.
Philips Color and Tunable White A21 LED High Lumen 100W Equivalent Dimmable Smart Wi-Fi Wiz Connected Light Bulb, Compatible with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri Shortcuts (2-Pack) (9290024493) https://a.co/d/4gbjIEm
This is one of them I have.
These are the others
PHILIPS Color and Tunable White A19 LED 60W Equivalent Dimmable Wi-Fi Wiz Connected Smart LED Light Bulb, Easy Control with App or Voice, Works with Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri Shortcuts (4-Pack) https://a.co/d/6DzVZhh
The latest govee bulbs may be lan capable. I just can't confirm it. Most of their new devices support the lan as well. They have made a ton of changes to their API stuff and the documentation for the developers hasn't kept up.
I can offer that’s Shelly bulbs aren’t much better, probably a bit worse in the reliability area . I experimented with three of them and they were so unreliable they were taken out within a week. And that was in lamps I normally wouldn’t care about. No way they would have made it in the lamps we use every day.
I used to have constant problems because of the reliance on the LIFX cloud, but I have had zero issues since they figured out local control with Hubitat. Just give your lights static IPs and they should be fine. You can even remove them from the LIFX Cloud after they're set up in Hubitat.
