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    Ring A19 Smart LED Bulb review: Ring dips its toe into traditional smart bulbs

    Ring made a reputation for itself with its video doorbells after which expanded into safety cameras, whole-home alarm methods, and even panorama lighting. Now, the corporate is taking its first tentative steps in conventional sensible lighting.

    Ring is beginning with two very fundamental LED bulbs that require the identical bridge to connect with your Wi-Fi community that the corporate’s panorama lighting makes use of. There’s the $15 indoor Ring A19 Smart LED Bulb reviewed right here, and a $25 weatherproof PAR38 bulb (you possibly can read our opinion of Ring’s PAR38 bulb here). Both bulbs produce white gentle solely and have mounted colour temperatures.

    The Ring A19 bulb boasts a few of the similar performance we’ve seen in sensible lights from the likes of Philips Hue, WiZ, LIFX, and others, together with gentle grouping and scheduling, and it additionally works properly with motion-sensing units within the ever-growing Ring ecosystem. But this dimmable and Alexa-enabled bulb lacks such commonplace sensible lighting options as scenes and a trip mode.

    This evaluation is a part of TechHive’s protection of the best smart bulbs, the place you’ll discover opinions of competing merchandise, plus a purchaser’s information to the options you must think about when purchasing.

    Design and specs

    Rated to last as long as 25,000 hours, the A19 Smart LED Bulb is mainly a garden-variety family bulb with an E26 base that matches in commonplace gentle sockets.

    The Ring A19 bulb is dimmable (it produces 800 lumens at full brightness, which is roughly equal to a 60-watt bulb), however you possibly can’t change the bulb’s colour temperature, which has been tuned to a “neutral white” 3,500 Kelvin. That’s a far cry from the look of a 5,000Ok fluorescent bulb, however 3,500Ok is noticeably cooler than the two,500-ish Kelvin “warm white” bulbs that you just’ll typically discover in bedrooms and dwelling rooms. (I examined the bulb in my spouse’s bedside lamp and he or she instantly noticed the distinction.) The Ring A19 will most likely look greatest in a desk lamp or an enclosed out of doors fixture, though it may additionally work in a living area with an earthy color scheme.

    Speaking of out of doors, the Ring A19 Smart LED Bulb is designed for each indoor and out of doors use, however Ring warns towards utilizing it in a location “where [it’s] directly exposed to water.” If you do wish to use the bulb open air, it ought to be put in in a “protected” location, resembling underneath an overhang or in an outside fixture.

    Setup

    Getting the Ring A19 Smart LED Bulb up and working is a straightforward course of, however do not forget that you’ll want a Ring Bridge to reap the benefits of its sensible options, resembling dimming, scheduling, gentle grouping, and so forth. It’s additionally value noting right here thathe Ring Bridge is proscribed to supporting 50 Ring lighting units, and you’ll’t deploy multiple.

    If you have already got a Ring Bridge in your house, you’re all set; in any other case, you’ll must consider the price of the bridge when contemplating your funding. While the Ring Bridge prices $50 as a stand-alone product, you can too get it as a part of a bundle with different Ring units. The Ring A19 bulb two-pack starter kit, which inclues the bridge, was promoting for $60 as of this writing. There’s additionally a fair cheaper different for these with out a Ring Bridge: choosing a unique sensible bulb that doesn’t require a bridge in any respect, such because the Wi-Fi bulbs from LiFX and WiZ, or Hue’s newer hub-optional bulbs that assist each Bluetooth and Zigbee.

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