I currently use a variety of smart bulbs and LED strips through the house, all zigbee based, and I thought I would share my experience with these incase others find it useful.
Firstly, if you are looking to save money, I’ve yet to get a bad buy from aliexpress, but there is a caveat. The descriptions on the items can be confusing, and it can take some research to find the actual device you want. Also, even if you buy from the same seller again, the chances are that the device has changed in some way since you last bought it (if some time has passed) as the firmware on (especially!) tuya based devices seems to be constantly changing, even when the device itself looks physically identical. This can mean (in my case), that pre-existing ZHA quirks no longer work, and there can be some effort involved to get the device up and running. However, I’ve never yet failed to get a device working.
So… with that said, lets talk bulbs.
I bought a tuya smart bulb from aliexpress as a bit of an experiment, it was this one:-
Recognised in Home Assistant as a TS0505B variant:
in ZHA, pretty no frills device, only the light entity shows up, nothing else.
Its an RGBCW bulb, and the cool and warm white are great, really bright, no issues at all.
The coloured mode uses the RGB leds and they are pretty dim. Don’t expect them to light up the room in anyway the same as the WW/CW leds. Not much more than night light levels.
Next we have:
From a different seller, but identical description and physical appearance to the earlier bulb.
These are recognised in HA and in ZHA expose more entities:
Other than having some more entities to play with the performance of these bulbs is identical to the first one.
Both batches of bulbs also have a few quirks to make note of:
They both report as being dimmable… this is true to some extent. The RGB LEDs are not, but the WW/CW are, but only in a very small number of increments, perhaps only 4 or 5. (In contrast, I also have some IKEA Tradfri bulbs that you can dim with much more granular control).
Secondly, the bulbs really dont seem to like switching between RGB mode and WW/CW modes, and can get stuck if you do this too quickly.
And finally, despite setting the bulbs on and off transition to 0, the reality is that it still takes about a second for them to come on.
So they are cheap, and decent CW/WW bulbs, but the RGB element is a bit of a side show.
If you want brighter (RGB) bulbs, then perhaps there are other options. The IKEA E14 RGB bulbs are much more vibrant:
The only issue with these is that they are e14 socket only, and here in the UK, most overhead room lights are B22 type.
There are however, adapters you can get to convert those pesky lights, but you’re then trading a strong RGB display over brighter whites, as the IKEA RGB bulbs only go to 470 lumens, when the cheap Tuya stuff (when in white mode) are probably putting out 800-1200 lumens.
One last observation. The Tradfri bulbs (I have both RGB and just CW/WW ones) all seem to get a stronger signal with my zigbee network, as compared to the tuya bulbs. Its not a show stopper, but they are usally 20-30 LQI higher than the tuya bulbs, regardless of position in the house.
Hope that insight helps you a little with your bulb buying choices.
and they also seem to be cloud only at the moment. Still, they work really well in the Sonoff integration from the HACS.
