Compare smart bulbs

Smartbulb FAQ

Lumens

Lumens is a way of calculating the brightness of a bulb, more lumens: brighter bulb.

400 lumens gives about the same brightness as a 40W incandescent bulb, and a 60W bulb would give around 700 lumens.

Lifespan

The less you use your lamp the longer is will last. If you use your bulb for 5 hours a day and the bulb is rated at 15000 hours you can use it for about 8 years. 40000 hours would last for 21 years.

Connection

With a bulb that connects over WiFi you simply let it connect to your WiFi network. For Philips Hue bulbs this requires a hub that in turn connects to the bulbs. You can then connect to the bulbs using an app.

Bulbs using bluetooth uses the built in bluetooth antenna in your smartphone, some older phones does not have bluetooth 4.0.

Using bluetooth you usually need to be within 30ft (9 meters) of the bulb for it to connect.

Which one is the best?

Well... That's really a matter of personal opinion. It's LIFX vs. Hue that is the real fight for me. Hue is much cheaper per bulb ($60 vs. $99) but changing every bulb in my apartment would probably cost quite a pretty penny either way.

Both LIFX and Hue have very good apps and LIFX is still updating theirs with more features.

The Lumen bulb has an app that is not quite there yet.

When the lifetime is much longer than 5 years it stops mattering quite so much, LIFX is cheaper in the long run but 21 years is a very long time, who knows if the app will still be around in that long? There might be much cheaper bulbs by the time your Hue bulb dies.

Since neither LG or Samsung has actually released their bulbs it's quite hard to compare them but the bulb LG is offering is very cheap.