I can’t believe these smart LED landscape lights don’t need wires

Price When Reviewed

8-pack reviewed: $130; additionally accessible in a $35 2-pack (launch reductions cut back costs to $91 and $25 respectively)

Best Prices Today: Linkind Smart Solar Spotlight SL5C

Traditional solar-powered path lights are a few of the saddest dwelling décor there’s, their weak, dim beams suggesting that nobody truly lives in the home they’re trying to light up. These stick-and-go lights usually appear forgotten by the owners which have jammed them into the earth, and who can blame them? The actuality simply doesn’t come near matching the promise provided by the image on the field.

Linkind—whose interior smart bulb we recently covered—provides a tantalizing various: What if solar-powered path lights not solely didn’t suck, but in addition included sensible know-how permitting for distant administration?

Specifications

The Linkind Smart Solar Spotlight SL5C package is available in a package deal of eight (a two-pack can also be accessible) with a laminated photo voltaic panel on high of every housing. Two giant banks of LEDs are inside every mild, with a beam-focusing lens on its face. Note that these are directional spotlights, not ambient floods. Measuring about 6 x 3.5 inches, the IP65 water resistant lights present 3 watts of energy, with their LEDs marketed as RGBTW—that’s pink, inexperienced, blue, and tunable white.

Linkind doesn’t specify the wattage of the photo voltaic panel nor the dimensions of the lights’ inside batteries, although the corporate says that when set to low-power mode (i.e., decreased brightness) they’ll run for as much as 14 hours. (More on that in a bit.) They could be ground-mounted with plastic stakes or held on a wall or different exhausting floor; {hardware} is included for both choice. A easy thumbscrew lets you modify every mild’s tilt angle.

The SL5C is an replace to Linkind’s older mannequin SL5 lights, which look nearly equivalent. The primary improve right here is increased solar-charging effectivity; each in charging pace and when charging below totally different climate situations. Note, nevertheless, that the motion-sensing characteristic from the SL5 mannequin has been faraway from the SL5C.

Since these lights don’t want—and don’t accommodate—any energy supply apart from photo voltaic, customers are directed to put them within the solar for at the least a full day earlier than even turning them on. That’s performed by way of a single button on the underside of every gadget that not solely powers the lights on and off, however that can be utilized to cycle the lights by a handful of main colours and two white coloration temperatures. Anything extra requires the AiDot cell app (AiDot is Linkind’s guardian firm).

Connectivity

Given the ability limitations of the gadget, it’s comprehensible that its sensible/wi-fi options are restricted to Bluetooth mesh; as such, there’s not a lot to the setup course of inside the AiDot app. A fast discovery course of turns up every lighting unit individually and drops you straight into coloration administration and scheduling choices as soon as firmware has been introduced updated.

Christopher Null/Foundry

The lights help white coloration temperatures from a heat 2700Ok to a cool 6500Ok, or you need to use a coloration wheel to dial within the particular hue of your alternative from thousands and thousands of choices. Some 43 presets are included that allow varied dynamic lighting modes, together with a music-sync choice that works along with your cellphone’s microphone.

Linkind all however forces you to make use of a scheduling system with the lights, both one that’s strictly tied to the time of day or one which makes use of each time of day and ambient mild degree (“luminance detection”) to activate and off. You needn’t use time restrictions with the latter if you would like the lights to run all night time however notice that the lights are strictly designed to run in darkish situations. The solely technique to get the lights to function throughout daylight is to cowl the photo voltaic panel utterly to emulate night time.

Performance

The lights look good below the cloak of darkness. They are far brighter than your typical ironmongery shop lights, and the colours are wealthy and energetic. I discovered the dynamic modes to be slightly flat—and the music mode is just not very spectacular—but when all you’re in search of is a pop of sunshine after darkish, these lights get the job performed.

Battery life is even higher than promised. I began off operating the lights for 4 hours every night time at full brightness and commonly noticed a completely charged battery by noon the next day. When operating them with out a time restriction, I managed to get greater than 22 hours of operating time at 100 p.c brightness, much better than the 14 hours Linkind guarantees. While the battery meter indicator didn’t replace reliably within the app, I didn’t encounter any actual points with the product.

AiDot/Linkind

What’s to not like right here? The main downside with this setup is that every mild have to be managed individually, which implies as much as eight firmware updates, eight automation mode settings, and eight scheduling operations. On-demand coloration and dynamic modes could be set for “all lights” en masse, however you may’t do this for schedules.

Modes and schedules can, nevertheless, be “copied” from one mild to a different by a barely buried menu merchandise. You’ll additionally must ensure you’re in Bluetooth vary of every mild when controlling it. This may current challenges if you happen to’ve unfold the lights over a protracted pathway, however as soon as a schedule is configured to your liking, you may basically set issues up as soon as after which neglect about it.

Christopher Null/Foundry

There’s a workaround right here within the type of the Linkind B1 Plus Hub, which I’ve not reviewed. It’s a Bluetooth bridge that allows you to management as much as 32 lights en masse from as much as 120 toes from the bridge and the primary highlight. Each highlight should likewise be not more than 120 toes aside, assuming there aren’t any substantial obstructions between them.

That nonetheless received’t be sufficient distance for even reasonably sized homesteads, nevertheless it’s at the least a begin. The hub additionally lets you join the lights to Alexa or Google Assistant, which might’t in any other case be performed with the bare lights. The bridge was on sale for $30 on the time of this writing, not together with an AC adapter.

Should you purchase the Linkind Smart Solar Spotlight SL5C?

An 8-pack of those second-gen panorama spotlights runs $130, whereas a 2-pack prices $35. (Limited-time launch reductions reduce these costs to $91 and $25 respectively.) The bigger bundle is a bit pricier than the older Linkind SL5 ($77 for a 6-pack), however it’s nonetheless an excellent deal, supplied the marginally cumbersome design works on your aesthetic.

While I might usually hesitate to advocate solar-powered lights to anybody, Linkind’s Solar Spotlights SL5C have me rethinking my place.