One constant factor over my years with Home Assistant is frustration of trying to find affordable tunable white Zigbee bulbs. It seems impossible that there are no solid options at ~$15/bulb, but I’ve searched until my eyes bled with no luck. There are a lot of RGB options, but they’re more expensive and seem a waste since I would never use the colors.
I’ve tried to compile a list of some budget-oriented smart bulbs (back when I made this list it meant < $15/bulb, but now it’s more like <$20/bulb):
Still available:
Innr bulbs: A+ rating. I own two, and so far I like them better than anything else I’ve tried.
Ikea TRÅDFRI: B rating. They’re fine. They’re relatively affordable, and people say that they’re very reliable, but I find them to have an unpleasant greenish tint (especially at higher Kelvin), and they can’t change brightness and color at the same time. If you have automations that set light brightness and color temp, this is a deal breaker.
Aqara bulbs from AliExpress: Untested. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone talk about these, nor do I have personal experience. I’ve had really good luck with other Aqara products, but Tuya Zigbee devices have a bad rap for taking down Zigbee networks with tons and tons of packets. Not 100% sure these are Tuya.
Sengled: F rating. These used to be cheap, which was the only thing they had going for them. They don’t act as Zigbee routers, the fact that they use a lens instead of a diffuser means you’re very limited on the types of fixtures you can put them in due to glare, and their current (Nov 2024) price point of $90 for a 4-pack is absolute insanity. I bought 8 years back, and even at $6/bulb I regret the purchase, as half of them have died. For reference, I have ~10 other smart bulbs and not a single one has died.
Osram LIGHTIFY: Untested. I don’t see the point - $18/bulb isn’t a bargain, and 80 CRI is not good.
Discontinued:
EcoSmart A19: These were IT for budget bulbs. If you could find them in stock, they were $10 for a 2-pack. The light they produce is subjectively nicer than other bulbs (somewhat of a rosy hue), their dimmest setting is quite dim, and they act as routers. Sadly, they’ve been discontinued, as I imagine Home Depot was selling them at a loss. I own 6 and wish I had bought more. My only complaint is that I suspect they cut some corners on the power conditioning, as they would flicker worse than the rest of my bulbs when my tankless electric water heater was running. They also disconnect from the network every few months or so.
EcoSmart BR30: About the same as the above - also discontinued.
It’s crazy to me that there aren’t more compelling options here. Tunable white is such a game changer - is everyone just buying RGB bulbs and using them as tunable white? Or are people just throwing in the towel and using WiFi bulbs? I really liked my tunable white Wyze bulbs, but lack of purely local control was a dealbreaker. I also realize there are HA-friendly WiFi bulbs out there, but Zigbee or Zwave is just better.
Anyway, do you guys have any recommendations for budget tunable white bulbs?
Oh, one last thing: while I think it would be valuable to open the discussion worldwide, I am personally in the US, so some options are not available to me.
I have been using 2 Philips Hue White/Warm un tuneable bulbs for the past few years in a room and they’ve become my favourite smart home integration thus far. I have it integrated with HomeKit and Google Home and I haven’t experienced any issues aside from having to reboot the hub from time to time.
I haven’t upgraded from 2 bulbs due to the price of getting tuneable white or even colour bulbs. Very recently I picked up some tuneable white Ikea TRÅDFRI bulbs for $13 a bulb which is far cheaper than Hue White tuneable bulbs. I was able to add them to my Philips Hue hub with one issue. While they do work with Google Home, Apple HomeKit refuses to add them into my ecosystem despite them being in the Hue app without any issues.
This issue has lead me to attempting to tackle Home Assistant again; I currently use Homebridge but I haven’t found an easy integration to add my TRÅDFRI bulbs into HomeKit through Homebridge.
Now that I have gone over the unnecessary details, based on my experience thus far, I would recommend the TRÅDFRI bulbs from Ikea. I have 2 tuneable white bulbs and 1 colour bulb but I rarely use the colour on that bulb. It belongs to a desk and the lower 800 lumens works well for that space.
The Ikea bulbs are very plentiful at my local Ikea (I’m in Canada) so I would think that they wouldn’t be out of stock for very long as they are a staple to the whole TRÅDFRI ecosystem, especially being very affordable.
Hmm, good to know the Ikea bulbs are available up there. Maybe I’ll just swing by my nearest Ikea to see if they have any in stock, despite what their website says.
I would definitely encourage making the leap to everything inside Home Assistant - it has been getting a ton of improvements lately. I’d first just make sure that all the devices you use have integrations with Home Assistant.
Zigbee devices in particular are super easy - you just need to have a hub connected to your Home Assistant machine (I use this one, though I think it’s now a bit outdated), add the Zigbee integration, and click the “add device” button whenever you want to pair a new device. It literally takes seconds to add new devices.
I will say, if you rely heavily on voice assistant controls, I might think twice. Not sure about Siri or Alexa, but it’s a bit of a chore to get Google Assistant set up with Home Assistant unless you pay for Home Assistant Cloud. If you don’t want to pay, and you aren’t very techy, I’d discourage doing it yourself.
If you are looking for low budget stuff that works, I don’t think it makes much sense to look beyond IKEA. They do that very well, whether it’s furniture or other stuff. Usually there is something else on the market that is better but more expensive while the IKEA product is better than the competition in the same price bracket. I haven’t yet figured out why for many brands WiFi lamps are cheaper than Zigbee lamps but there’s got to be some reason for it.
How good are ikea bulbs in regards to dimming? I bought some Lidl bulbs to try zigbee and it’s dimming is horrible, it’s almost full on and then off. Also i like to turn my lights with 30second (or longer) transition and it just switches off, no transition
Now, those are actually zigbee, right? I failed to find any mention of “zigbee” anywhere on the product page… or… does Ikea have wifi bulbs these days?
Yes, while “tunable” could be used to mean “dimmable”, I am referring to the ability to change color temperature along a spectrum of cool/warm.
You are correct - those two links are the Zigbee bulbs from Ikea. It is strange that they seem to hide the fact that they’re Zigbee, but the fact that they’re advertised to work with the Styrbar remote is indication.
Unfortunately, I am 3hrs from the nearest Ikea, and they don’t seem to sell those bulbs online for some reason. Right now I am making do with the bulbs I have, but if I ever end up buying more bulbs (I will likely get some Aqara bulbs around next Christmas) I’ll update here. In the meantime, I’d love to hear peoples’ experiences with tunable white bulbs.
4000 k is not quite daylight temperature.
Here in Canada, other than Ikea TRÅDFRI, the cheapest I could find that has 2700k-6500k temperature is the Sengled Element Plus tunable white at 18$ CAD on Amazon.
And that’s what I’m about to buy because really there is nothing else. It’s like Zigbee white bulbs are non-existing here.
I’ve got a ton of the EcoSmart a19’s. I’ve moved over to hue. If you’d like to buy them from me, name a price. I think I probably have about 50 or so bulbs.
Ok, my Sengled bulbs have been dropping like flies (think 4/8 have failed), and my EcoSmart bulbs have been dropping off the network (requiring a reset) enough to annoy me, so I’ve circled back to this topic.
I figured I’d just bite the bullet and get the Ikea bulbs. These days $14/bulb isn’t bad, and I’d only heard good things about them so I thought it was minimal risk. Long story short: I’ll be returning all 12 of them, because I’ve found that they have the shocking deficiency that they cannot change brightness and color temperature simultaneously. You could hack around this by having repeating the “turn on” action in automations - once to set brightness and once to set color - but then you would not have a smooth transition (not to mention the work and annoyance). I also find them to have a noticeable green/yellow tint on cooler temperatures, which is quite distasteful.
I guess it goes to show that with LED smart bulbs there’s a heck of a lot more than feature set and brightness to consider.
I decided to give Innr bulbs a try. I couldn’t find anything negative about them on the forums (aside from some people having a few dropping off their network intermittently), and their color reproduction was the highest of any smart bulb tested by this nifty site.
So far, I’m finding the Innr bulbs to be leagues better than the Ikea bulbs. The Innr bulbs have a noticeable rosy tint, but I think most find that more pleasant than the greenish tint seen in the Ikea bulbs. Additionally, the Innr bulbs smoothly transition brightness and color temp between any two states flawlessly. I’ll post back if I have any negative experiences, but for now I think Innr is the de facto king.
Ikea bulbs is what I have started out with since they are inexpensive. It pairs great with phillps hue bridge and most if not all zigbee coordinator devices out there. If you need precise colors, I would find other brands. I recently purchased the same E26 bulb you have linked and the video in that link showing pure white isn’t really white but a slight tint of orange.
I have a few of these and the white is white. The only bad about this is that it will not be fully functional when paired to phillps hue bridge. The on/off is inoperable for some reason. However, if the bulb is on, you can adjust the brightness, change colors, etc. You just can’t turn it on/off. Strange. Pairing to a zigbee coordinator works fine though.