I have a room with just a ceiling fan/light combo that I’m looking to add four downlights to. The room is going to be my office/maker space so I’m looking for good quality on top of integration. Local control is a must. I’m located in the US.
Some of the options I’ve been looking into:
Hue . Since there are no cans already installed, the $10 difference between this one and the canned version is moot.
Pro: Have the bridge and a number of their lights already. Zigbee grouping.
Con: Cost and some of the downlights I already have installed have slight variance in color.
Of those the only one I’d pick is Hue. The other are all wifi and don’t use industry standards based protocols if they were matter over wifi. I’d feel completely differently about them. You cam make the govee work locally with certain community integration but tbh the coverage isn’t that great and the one govee I have is offline nearly as much as on.
Since you have hue you could do more hue.
I use zigbee and ZWave exclusively for lighting except for one or two aforementioned fixtures. With zigbee linking or ZWave association you can make lighting and switching work together without even the coordinator (hub, stick, etc) being online.
So of your list Hue. But I would look at zigbee and ZWave alternatives and probably an inovelli switch (red for ZWave and blue for Zigbee) controlling them
I already have Zooz switches everywhere so that bit is covered.
I did go down the rabbit hole of Zigbee based downlights and there aren’t a lot of options for the flush mount style aside from Hue. I’d rather steer clear of installing housings that use a standard flood bulb.
My $0.02 is that I went through a lot of research for down lighting and Hue was the only contender as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately my need was for outdoor under-soffit lights and in the end I decided to go with a high-end US made lighting manufacturer (who luckily was also only 5 miles away) and added Shelly relays to them to control them since they support full dim.
For those prices if I were doing a smart bulb in a can - I don’t im a switches person. But if I were forced to - im steering clear of 70 dollar bulbs. Sengled BR30s in a can are what I’m doing. The the bulbs are about 20, cans are 20 each and I can install one in 30 minutes. I can buy an entire box of sengled for the price of one of those hue. Then, Inovelli blue switch (zigbee) in smart bulb mode with linking.
Works no internet, no HA, almost as good colors as Hue (except orange. Nobody does orange like Phillips) clean install and for me I prefer NOT allowing my bulbs to participate as a router in the mesh.
It’s an aesthetics thing for me. I just don’t like the look of recessed lights with the exposed bulb. The rest of the house is nothing but flush mount so I want to stick with it.
@CO_4X4 Would you mind sharing what lighting you went with? I went with Eaton BLE some time ago and now I’m looking at a total replacement for all my cans as they are now EOLd and ending cloud support in a few years. Going local is more important than ever IMHO.
