Cree was hesitant so as to add a wise bulb to its greatest-promoting LED lineup, EcoLight solar bulbs however that modified this 12 months with the addition of the $15 Cree Linked LED. Sharing the construct and lighting specs of last 12 months's nicely-reviewed Cree 4Flow LED , the brand new Linked LED provides in a Zigbee radio. Pair it with a control hub, and you'll be able to turn it on and off remotely, or schedule automated EcoLight home lighting modifications. At launch, Cree's sensible bulb was considerably married to the Wink Hub , which made sense given that you will purchase both off the shelf at Residence Depot. Since then, however, we've seen official assist roll out for additional management gateways, including SmartThings and the Philips Hue Bridge . You'll be able to add the bulbs to the new D-Hyperlink version of the Staples Join Hub , too, although there is not official, Zonoff-certified help simply yet. The bulb works well across all the platforms we've tested it with, and it shares the sturdy lighting specs of the 4Flow LED that got here before it.
Most interesting is the value. At $15 -- just a few dollars more than you'll spend on non-connected competitors -- it ties with the GE Link LED as essentially the most cheap connected bulb available on the market. For basic automated lighting, it's the most effective choice we have tested yet, and our present Editors' Choice winner. Cree adapted its smart bulb design from last 12 months's 4Flow LED, packing a Zigbee radio into the existing build. That means that this isn't a bulb that goes out of its way to look fancy or newfangled -- as an alternative, it copies the 4Flow's emphasis on mimicking the silhouette of classic incandescents. I liked that approach with the 4Flow, and that i like it with the new Connected LED too, although some may find the plastic build to be a bit cheap-trying, particularly when the bulb is turned off. The brand new bulb additionally shares the 4Flow's convection cooling trick, which makes use of vents to circulate air via the body of the bulb, eliminating the necessity for heat sinks.
That helps bring production prices down, and also signifies that the bulb is exceptionally mild for an LED, weighing in at less than 2 ounces. The Cree Linked LED shares the identical lighting specs because the 4Flow LED, too, and that's largely a great thing. Both claim a light output of 815 lumens, and both clocked in even greater than that in front of our spectrometer -- 835 lumens for the 4Flow, and a very impressive 872 for the Connected LED. When it comes to effectivity, the 4Flow puts its mild out utilizing eleven watts, but the quantity rises to 11.5 watts for the Linked LED on account of the Zigbee radio's power draw. When we examined it out, the quantity was truly nearer to 11.1 watts, so Cree's carried out a great job of keeping this bulb comparatively environment friendly. Still, it is price noting that each the Philips Hue Lux LED and the Belkin WeMo LED are even more environment friendly, each one drawing less than 10 watts.
Cree also did an excellent job with color temperature here, landing extremely close to the acknowledged 2,700K. At 2,696K, the Cree Connected LED lands nearer to the mark than any other sensible bulb we've tested, so if you're choosy about that good shade of warm, yellowy light, you may like this LED. The one place where Cree's good bulb lags behind at the very least some of the competitors is the coloration rendering rating, which measures how precisely a given gentle supply illuminates different shades. The Cree Related LED hits a somewhat peculiar score of 80 out of 100, and on condition that both the WeMo LED and the equally cheap GE Hyperlink LED hit nearer to 90, I would have appreciated to see Cree do better. To access the Cree LED's sensible features, you will have to pair it with a control hub that can translate its Zigbee sign into Wi-Fi. Like the GE Link LED, the Cree Related LED got here out the gate trumpeting Wink help at launch, however soon expanded its third occasion compatibility to include choices like SmartThings, Staples Join , and the Philips Hue Bridge .
Different platforms supply different options -- SmartThings and Philips bring IFTTT assist into the picture, as an illustration -- however normally, the automating expertise is basically the same. We examined the bulb on a number of platforms, and never ran into any difficulties pairing it or controlling it. No matter which platform you are using, you will be able to turn the Cree Related LED on or EcoLight home lighting off remotely, dim it, or automate it using whatever controls your system gives. These doubtless embrace setting the lights to a timed schedule, or syncing them up with issues like motion sensors. The bulb paired easily with each of the above-mentioned platforms. Wink and SmartThings each have devoted settings and pairing instructions for the Cree LED right within the app, which helps. Staples Connect would not offer system-specific support for Cree simply yet, however it was in a position to detect the bulb as a generic Zigbee gadget on the first try. Syncing the Cree LED with a Philips Hue setup was fairly painless, too, though I needed to manually reset the bulb during the pairing process in order to assist the bridge find it.