In their quest for total smart-home tech disruption, Wyze has once again delivered a quality product at an incredible price. The latest, the Wyze Bulb Color, comes in a four-pack with the pre-order price of $34 plus shipping and features a 91 CRI, voice control, and 1,100-lumen brightness. Following our announcement coverage, we were able to go hands-on with some in-use thoughts on these affordable RGB lights. Be sure to hit the video below and see all the details.
Wyze Bulb Color: setup
Setting up the Wyze Bulb Color is very simple. Since there is no hub needed to control the bulbs, just screw in a bulb with the power turned off and then turn the power on. The bulb will start pulsing green to let you know it’s in pairing mode. Then just push the “add new device” button on the home page of the Wyze app and select the bulb color. Follow the few steps to connect to a WiFi network it’s good to go.
CRI and light quality
One of Wyze’s big features on the Bulb Color is the quality of light coming out of the bulb. A CRI, or color rendering index, of 91 helps to see colors more accurately. Maybe it was because of the brightness, but I actually found the Philips Hue bulbs to appear more vivid when trying to set them to a deep red. Granted, the Philips Hue bulbs are much more expensive for a similar pack.
As a video creator, one thing that got me very excited at first was the lack of line flickering that I saw in my video. Flickering lines were almost always present in the video that I shot while using the Philips Hue bulbs. With the Wyze Bulb Color, though, I couldn’t see any flickering in the color temperature ranges that I tried, but it appears some colors have some visible lines. It is still much better than the Hue bulbs, which had lines with any color, but not completely flicker-free.
With 1,100 lumens, the Qyze Bulb Color also gets plenty bright. That’s about a 75W equivalent. On the other side of the spectrum, the Wyze Bulb can also be dimmed down to a 30 lumen output or a 2W equivalent.
App control
Within the Wyze app, it’s easy to make adjustments to the Wyze Color Bulbs. From what I can tell, the more Wyze products you add to your account, the more it can get a little hard to find a specific bulb and change the color in the app, but I imagine that’s where voice control and routines can come in handy with the Bulb Color.
Selecting a bulb color inside the app brings up controls for brightness, as well as color dials for complete color control or color temperatures ranging from soft white to cool white, which translate to 1800k-6500k. Without any actual numerical representation for color temp, it can be hard to dial in the exact color, but the range makes it easy to make adjustments.
Wyze Bulb Color: video
Under the color wheel are other scene options. By default, there are four color temperature scenes and four color scenes, but you can also save and name your own scenes.
Hitting the settings button in the upper right brings up controls for naming the bulb and changing the icon, as well as settings routines, schedules, and automations. Within sleep routines, Wyze has options to slowly bring the light up or down for a more natural experience when waking up or going to sleep. The lights will turn slowly turn off or on in a designated time period. The default is 30 minutes.
Voice control
Like many of Wyze’s products, even their Band fitness tracker, the Bulb Colors can be controlled by smart assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant. As soon as I connected the first bulb to my WiFi, I got a notification from Alexa that I can control the bulbs. I already have some Wyze products connected to my Alexa account, so there will be a bit more setup required if this is the first time trying to control a Wyze product with Alexa.
Wyze Bulb Color: The not so good
While everything seems to work well so far, I also found that without a hub, color selection isn’t as responsive as the Philips Hue bulbs. In the Hue app, I can just drag my finger around the color wheel and make a light show, but on the Wyze app, it takes a bit for changes to set in. Not a big deal, but definitely something I noticed when testing them back to back.
Additionally, Wyze Bulb Color can’t be used with Apple’s HomeKit. That’s another benefit of the Philips Hue bulbs, as well as the ability to sync them with other media like Razer’s Synapse for a bright and immersive gaming environment.
9to5Toys’ Take
Overall, like many of Wyze’s products, I’m impressed with the Bulb Color for the price. Voice control and anti-flickering light are all things that I will be using a lot around my studio and home. If you need more features like a hub or HomeKit support, you’ll have to look elsewhere like the $200 Philips Hue starter pack, but for most people, I imagine the Wyze Color Bulb will check most of the boxes they’re looking for and are a perfect way to start getting some custom color lighting in your smart home.
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