I just finished testing over 150 of the best smart lights... here’s all the data!

Hey guys, I just finished testing a ton of smart lights and put all the data into a big interactive database, thought y’all might appreciate it!

The Database

Here’s what it looks like:


You can sort and filter by brand, bulb shape, flicker, wireless protocols, CRI, lumens, and more!

You can check out the database here

So far we’ve tested just about all of the lights from the following brands:

  • Philips Hue
  • LIFX
  • Wyze
  • Nanoleaf
  • Amazon Basics
  • innr
  • IKEA
  • GE Cync
  • Geeni
  • Govee
  • TP-Link
  • Sengled

We still have a lot more to do but I thought this was enough to share finally :slight_smile:

If there are any lights you’d like tested next please let me know!

I had actually created a pretty in depth post for this, but apparently new users can only attach one image :sweat_smile: wish I could remember my old HA login…

But anyways, hope you guys like this!

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Promising!

A “few” search improvements that would bump this from ‘marginally useful’ to ‘very useful’ for me:

  1. Have a way to search for bulbs that are able to put out some value in a provided range of color temperatures. (E.g. searching for 1900-2700K would give you a bulb that produced 1950K, a bulb that produced 2600-3500K, etc.)
  2. Have a way to select what color temperature the other data is based off of (in particular, CRI can vary widely depending on selected color temperature).
  3. Have a column for Melanopic/Photopic ratio (and maybe a second for the driver peak frequency. GaN tends to be around 460nm-ish but it varies somewhat, and other LED techs do exist). Be aware that there are multiple definitions of this (linear scalings of each other). I’d just pick one and stick with it.
  4. Have a column for if the bulb is rated for enclosed fixtures / humid environments / installation upside-down / etc.
  5. Have a column for weight. This is a half-decent proxy for how decent the bulb heatsinking is, at least until bulb makers start Goodharting it.
  6. Have a column for max observed bulb temperature. This is a half-decent proxy for bulb longevity.
  7. Have a way to hide / show columns.
  8. Add color coding to e.g. lumens too. Colors are far more easily glance-able than text.

It’s getting more difficult all the time to find ‘decent’ LED bulbs. By which I mean the niche I’m looking for is getting rapidly legislated out of existence. I’m starting to shift towards LED strips as a result, but standalone LED bulbs are still useful in many situations…

Wow thank you for all the suggestions! I’ll try to see if I can find a way to implant some of this. I definitely agree with a lot of it.

For example that why I recorded weight, an A19 at 85g is going to have a nicer heat sink than one at 40g.

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Probably a dumb question but I’ll ask anyway, of the different criteria you measured, which column should the average user organize by, to find the “best” bulb?

Why no E27/E14 bulbs ?

Nothing in the US like that. I’m hoping to get access to European stuff in the future but nothing as of yet.

One question that seems to pop up a lot in regards to smart bulbs is how low they can be dimmed.
People need to find those that can be used in a night light setting.

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Hard to say… right now it’s more of a DB for comparing lights apples to apples. So if you want to see which of two lights has better RGB gamut, you can do that, for example.

Or which ones have better white tolerance (aka black body deviation)

I haven’t developed a metric to give each light an overall score yet.

Personally I gave up on Lfix because it so difficult to read the code on the bulbs, even with glasses. I have 8 Kasa bulbs that work fine with no flickering.
So, it all depends on one’s experience.

We tested lumens down to their lowest for each bulb!

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I understand and appreciate your input. I was just sharing my own experience.