I bought every smart white lightbulb on Amazon that fit my criteria of being locally controlled with no required manufacturer app, and after testing their brightness, energy efficiency, dimming curve, flicker percentage, min and max color temperature, and CRI, this Zigbee bulb from innr and this Matter over WiFi bulb from Linkind stuck out as way better than the rest.
I’ve got links to those bulbs below but stick around to see exactly why they’re the best, and as always there are no sponsored reviews on this channel, and I bought all these bulbs with my own money.
Why Smart Bulbs?
The first important question is why would you choose a smart bulb instead of a traditional bulb with a smart dimmer? The answer is that in addition to more precise dimming with less flicker, smart bulbs also give you the option to adjust color temperature throughout the day so you can use cooler, more energizing light while the sun is up and warmer, more relaxing light at night. And of the 16 bulbs on Amazon that fit my open protocol criteria, 13 of them also have controllable color temperature.
Brightness and Efficiency
In the first test, I used a power monitor and lux meter to measure efficiency. After setting each bulb to a 3000 K color temperature, the brightest bulb by far was the IKEA Tradfri at 1083 lm, while the LightingInside, innr, Orein Filament, and Nanoleaf were all around 900 lm. I then divided their brightness by their measured power draw in watts and I was surprised to see 6 of the 16 bulbs, including the brightest IKEA Tradfri above 100 lm/watt, which is excellent even for a non-smart LED bulb.
I also measured the brightness at 75, 50, 25 and 1 percent to be able to plot the dimming curve and determine the minimum brightness. I found that the Kauf, Shelly Vintage, Hue, and Nanoleaf bulbs could all dim down impressively low to less than 1 lumen. For the dimming curves, humans perceive brightness logarithmically, so the ideal dimming curve is more J-shaped rather than a straight line. Thus, the curves shown in green will appear more even and natural than the ones shown in orange.
Flicker Testing
Another big advantage of using smart bulbs instead of traditional bulbs with a smart dimmer is that they aren’t limited to 120 Hz for their dimming frequency. This means they can have low flicker even when dimmed and they can use much higher PWM frequencies which means that the flicker should be much less noticeable.
I measured the flicker of each bulb throughout the entire dimming curve using a Hoppocolor flicker meter and found that 7 of the 16 bulbs had less than 1% flicker throughout their entire brightness range, which is excellent, but the only Zigbee bulb with zero flicker was the one from innr.
However, it is worth noting that while the Zigbee bulbs from Hue and ERIA had fairly high flicker percentages, their PWM frequencies were 1.2 kHz and 1.8 kHz. This means that any flicker should be imperceptible to the human eye, but I still prefer zero flicker to high frequency flicker.
Color Rendering Index
In addition to low flicker, my other big sticking point for all the lightbulbs in my house is their Color Rendering Index or CRI. The concept behind CRI is that every light source has a slightly different emission spectrum, and every object will reflect unique wavelengths within that spectrum. But if the light source has a spikey or uneven spectrum that is missing those specific wavelengths, then those objects won’t look quite right.
I used my Hoppocolor 350C colorimeter to measure the emission spectrum and CRI of each bulb when tuned to a 3000 K color temperature and found that the Zigbee bulb from innr had the best CRI at 94.4 including a very decent R9 score of 85 which is typically the most difficult color for LEDs to reproduce. I have to say that overall, I was impressed with the CRI performance of almost all of these bulbs with only five bulbs coming in under 90 CRI at 3000 K.
CCT Range
I also used my Hoppocolor to measure the minimum and maximum color temperature that each bulb could produce and the subsequent CRI at those color temperatures and found that the Nanoleaf bulb had the largest range at 2035 kelvin for its warmest setting and 6729 kelvin on its coolest setting. But the Orein, innr, Hue, and Wiz bulbs all had similar ranges of around 2000 kelvin to 6500 kelvin, though the Orein was clearly using RGB lighting for its warmest setting and had a CRI under 40, which is not acceptable. The two best performing bulbs when looking at their CRI at min and max color temperatures were the Zigbee bulb from innr which had a CRI of 91.7 at 2056 kelvin and a CRI of 89.5 at 6490 Kelvin and the Matter over WiFi bulb from Linkind was just slightly better with a CRI of 91.0 at a minimum color temperature of 2682 kelvin and an impressive CRI of 92.8 at 6396 kelvin.
Duv Testing
I also measured their Duv values which show if the hue of the bulb is shifted away from a completely neutral white. I found that the Shelly, Wiz, and Sengled Vintage bulbs all had positive Duv values meaning they were slightly green shifted, the Hue, Sylvania, and LightingInside bulbs were all very close to completely neutral, and the rest of the bulbs had negative Duv values meaning they are shifted toward a pink hue, with the innr bulb being the most pink with a Duv of 0.00865 when set to a 3000 K color temperature.
Installation Ratings
Another important aspect of lightbulbs is whether they are rated to use in fully enclosed fixtures, and whether they are sealed properly for use in damp spaces like a bathroom or a covered patio. To my surprise, none of these smart bulbs are rated for fully enclosed fixtures, but over half of them specifically say they can be used in damp locations.
Warranty
However, while buying the correct bulb for your installation location will help extend its lifespan, sometimes components fail. Since these smart bulbs are considerably more expensive than traditional LED bulbs, you may want to get them replaced under warranty and I found that most of the bulbs had either a two or three year warranty as long as you have proof of purchase, and the only bulbs that didn’t have a clearly advertised warranty were the ones from Orein, Linkind, and Kauf.
And the last thing to cover, but maybe one of the most important things with these smart bulbs, is their connectivity and smart performance, which I’ll break down into three different categories, starting with the adoption process.
Smart Performance – Adoption
For the Zigbee bulbs, I used Home Assistant with a CC2531 Zigbee dongle and ZHA and all of the bulbs joined into my existing Zigbee network extremely quickly and with absolutely zero issues.
For the Matter over WiFi bulbs, I used Apple Home and my AppleTV 4K to add each bulb to my network via Matter, and then I used Matter sharing to add the bulbs to Home Assistant. Not only was this process more complicated than adding a Zigbee device, it also just didn’t work as well.
The worst of which was the Wiz bulb which added to HomeKit fairly easily but failed consistently when shared with Home Assistant. My attempt to factory reset the bulb caused the Matter compatibility to break completely and from that point on it only worked with the Wiz app.
The Orein RGB Tunable White bulb and the Sengled RGBW bulb also don’t work quite as well as the rest and although they adopted into HomeKit and shared to Home Assistant fairly easily. After a power cycle, each bulb takes between 30 and 60 seconds before it’s rediscovered and controllable in home assistant.
The Nanoleaf bulb uses Matter over Thread, and again, I used my AppleTV 4K as my thread border router, but it was extremely buggy and after successfully adding it to HomeKit it immediately became unavailable. The Nanoleaf app showed it constantly switching between Bluetooth only mode and thread mode, and I was never able to get it connected to Home Assistant via Matter.
The Kauf and Shelly bulbs use WiFi but are not Matter compatible, but they work very well with Home Assistant and don’t require a manufacturer app. Both were simple to add to my network by joining their WiFi hotspot, adding my IoT network credentials, and after that they were automatically discovered in Home Assistant using the Shelly integration and the ESPHome integration.
Power On Behavior & Local Control
The second smart performance category is what happens when your smart bulbs lose power or internet, because if you have a power surge or power flicker in the middle of the night, you don’t want all your lightbulbs to randomly turn on while you’re sleeping. I found that if you plan on using these bulbs without their manufacturer app, all the Matter bulbs have a default state of “On” that can’t be adjusted via Matter alone. But if you connect them to their manufacturer apps, most are configurable, and the only one that I couldn’t easily change was the Kauf bulb that would probably require some coding experience with ESPHome. For the Zigbee bulbs, all the default states were configurable via ZHA in Home Assistant except for the Sylvania Smart+ bulb and the Sengled Vintage which had an unchangeable default state of “On”.
I also tested whether the bulbs could be controlled locally when the internet was down and I’m happy to report that all of them passed the test when controlled with Home Assistant and HomeKit. But the manufacturer apps from Linkind, Orein, and Sengled needed an internet connection AND a WiFi connection to function which obviously isn’t possible when your home internet is down.
Response Time
And the last category for smart functionality is response time. I found that on my network, the Zigbee bulbs had the quickest and most reliable response, followed by the WiFi bulbs from Shelly and Kauf, and most of the Matter bulbs were fairly quick except the Orein and Sengled which occasionally timed out. As I said, the Nanoleaf thread bulb was a constant problem and never fully worked via Thread or Matter and for all my testing I had to control it with the Nanoleaf app via Bluetooth.
Conclusions
In conclusion, as I said at the beginning of the video, the two best bulbs are pretty clearly the $15 innr 1100 lm Zigbee bulb, and the $7.50 Linkind Matter over WiFi bulb.
The Zigbee bulb by innr requires you to have a Zigbee hub, and Zigbee performance will have a lot to do with how many other Zigbee devices you have. But to me it’s a serious standout with high max brightness, almost zero flicker, great CRI, a huge CCT range from 2056 K to 6490 K, and a two year warranty. As far as I can tell, the only downsides to the innr bulb are that it isn’t rated for damp locations, it has slightly lower efficiency than others at 87.9 lm/watt, and its $15 price tag put it in the middle of the pack for affordability.
On the other hand, the Linkind Matter over WiFi bulb is half the price of the innr and doesn’t require a hub. Of the Matter bulbs I tested, it was one of the easiest to add to HomeKit and shared with Home Assistant almost instantly. The Linkind had even less flicker than the innr, not even registering on my flicker meter until it reached 1% brightness, and it had a higher cool white CRI, better efficiency, and it’s rated for damp install locations. The only downsides of the Linkind are the fact that it can’t go lower than 2682 K color temperature, the inability to change the power on behavior without the AiDot app, and the fact that Linkind doesn’t list any warranty information on the box or on Amazon.
The Matter over Thread Nanoleaf bulb also performed extremely well on paper with very low flicker, high efficiency, great CCT range, and great CRI, but on my Thread network using AppleTV, it just didn’t work. However, if you already have a strong Thread network or just want to invest in the Thread protocol, the Nanoleaf bulbs are worth considering at $10 each.
And last, the best exposed filament bulb by far was the Orein Matter over WiFi bulb, which was just $8, had good CCT range, good CRI, great efficiency, and is rated for damp locations, but it did have almost 30% flicker at 100% brightness, which gradually decreased until 80% brightness and then remained under 1% for the rest of the dimming curve.
Again, there are no sponsored reviews on this channel, but I do have links to all the bulbs below and as always, I appreciate when you use those links since as an Amazon Affiliate I do earn a small commission on the sale at no cost to you. Thank you so much to my awesome patrons over at Patreon for your continued support of my channel, and if you’re interested in supporting my channel, please check out the links below. If you enjoyed this video, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel and as always, thanks for watching The Hook Up.
