This LED smart lamp lets you drop a pop of color wherever you need it

Price When Reviewed

$69.99

Best Prices Today: LIFX Luna

On the floor, good lamps just like the LIFX Luna appear a restricted, even boring, class. A wise gentle bulb might be dropped into any gentle fixture, so why restrict your self to a singular design that may’t be modified—and that may’t be repaired when a number of of its LEDs inevitably dies?

Smart lighting stalwart LIFX makes an attempt to handle a few of these considerations, alongside the best way making a compelling case for a devoted good lamp machine. It received’t work for each setting, however the Luna has sufficient flexibility and a wealthy sufficient function set to advocate it to a wider swath of shoppers than you’d suppose.

Specifications

The lamp itself is innocuous out of the field: It’s an all-white, oval machine measuring about 8 x 5 inches throughout its face and a couple of inches deep. The Luna is designed to both sit upright on a desk, its gentle shining outward at a barely upward angle, or to lie flat on its again, so the sunshine can shine immediately upwards. One might examine it to the Bluetooth-and-Zigbee-based Philips Hue Go, besides that the Luna may also be mounted on the wall, utilizing a intelligent mounting bracket that attaches to a floor with only one screw (included).

Total lighting energy is almost twice that of the Philips product—1,000 lumens in comparison with 520—with a most energy draw of 25 watts. It needs to be famous that the Hue Go can function on both AC or battery energy, whereas the Luna is determined by the 6-foot cable connecting it to a typical energy brick (no removable USB cables right here).

All bodily controls are situated on the highest of the Luna, they usually’re primary and fairly intuitive. Paired + and – buttons brighten and dim the show, and an on/off swap can both flip the sunshine on immediately or, with a long-press, slowly illuminate with a dawn impact. A remaining button can be utilized to cycle by means of numerous preloaded results.

Day-to-day use

Naturally the LIFX app is the important thing to an enormous array of intricate configuration choices, and right here the Luna behaves very like some other LIFX product. I had no hassle onboarding the lamp to my Wi-Fi community (2.4GHz networks solely) by means of the app’s auto-discovery function, after which I used to be capable of put it by means of its paces in full.

Like all latest LIFX merchandise, the Luna helps an enormous vary of white shade temperatures (1500Okay to 9000Okay); plus, full shade help courtesy of RGBW LEDs. Color alternatives could make the face of the Luna a strong shade or seem as a gradient or mix of three complementary colours. Given the small dimension of the Luna’s gentle panel, nonetheless, some look higher than others—there’s simply not sufficient room for a complete lot of variation from one finish of the panel to the opposite for advanced results to point out up effectively.

The lamp’s 31 LED zones may even be individually configured, although goals of spelling your initials in gentle needs to be put to relaxation, because the LEDs all are likely to blur collectively due to the diffusing entrance cowl.

As all the time, LIFX’s huge array of preconfigured themes and dynamic movement results are all obtainable, whether or not you need the Luna to cycle by means of the colour wheel or fireplace off lighting results in time with ambient music (courtesy of your telephone’s microphone). Again, there’s solely a lot complexity you may get on an 8 x 5-inch oval, however if you happen to want a bit of pop of shimmering inexperienced for St. Patrick’s Day, LIFX has it prepared for you with a contact.

Christopher Null/Foundry

The Luna additionally helps Matter-over-Wi-Fi, so it may be utilized in third-party ecosystems, although there are significantly fewer configurability choices in apps like iOS Home and SmartIssues than you’ll get within the LIFX app immediately. There’s additionally a dormant Thread radio onboard, which LIFX plans to activate later this yr. Oddly, when utilizing the Luna with iOS, I used to be capable of freely management the brightness of the lamp, however was unable to alter the colour of the lights till I manually unplugged the sunshine and plugged it again in. I think about this glitch will probably be fastened with a firmware replace.

Matter additionally permits one other function on the Luna by letting the buttons on prime of the machine do double-duty. Not solely can they be used to manage scenes on the Luna itself but additionally to manage different units you’ve in your good dwelling which are linked to the identical hub. Each button might be set to carry out three completely different capabilities: Short-press, double-press, and long-press. It’s straightforward sufficient to arrange. For instance, I used to be capable of set a brief button press on the Luna to open a set of SwitchBot curtains and one other to shut them.

Should you purchase the LIFX Luna?

Potential Luna patrons ought to observe, nonetheless, that urgent a button additionally causes that button to carry out its default motion on the machine (equivalent to switching the lighting theme). This may be useful for some customers, however this latter habits might be one thing that may must be addressed in firmware updates to stop frustration.

[This overview is a part of TechHive’s in-depth protection of the best smart lighting.]

At $70, the LIFX Luna shouldn’t be a significant funding, though, as famous on the prime, it’s definitely a a lot larger one than dropping a wise gentle bulb into a typical lamp fixture. That stated, I actually loved the lamp’s flexibility, together with its capacity to be simply relocated on demand. If nothing else, it certain is much more enjoyable than enjoying with a light-weight bulb.