That Helps Convey Production Costs Down
Cree was hesitant to add a smart bulb to its finest-selling LED lineup, however that modified this year with the addition of the $15 Cree Linked LED. Sharing the build and lighting specs of final 12 months's properly-reviewed Cree 4Flow LED , the new Linked LED provides in a Zigbee radio. Pair it with a control hub, and you'll be ready to turn it on and off remotely, or schedule automated lighting adjustments. At launch, Cree's smart bulb was considerably married to the Wink Hub , which made sense given that you will purchase each off the shelf at Home Depot. Since then, however, we have seen official assist roll out for added management gateways, together with SmartThings and the Philips Hue Bridge . You can add the bulbs to the brand new D-Hyperlink model of the Staples Connect Hub , too, although there isn't official, Zonoff-certified assist simply but. The bulb works nicely throughout all of the platforms we have examined it with, and it shares the robust lighting specs of the 4Flow LED that came before it.
Most interesting is the price. At $15 -- only a few dollars greater than you may spend on non-linked opponents -- it ties with the GE Link LED as essentially the most inexpensive linked bulb available on the market. For fundamental automated lighting, EcoLight it's one of the best possibility we have examined but, and our present Editors' Choice winner. Cree adapted its good bulb design from last year's 4Flow LED, packing a Zigbee radio into the prevailing build. That signifies that this isn't a bulb that goes out of its technique to look fancy or newfangled -- instead, it copies the 4Flow's emphasis on mimicking the silhouette of traditional incandescents. I favored that strategy with the 4Flow, and i prefer it with the new Linked LED too, although some would possibly find the plastic build to be a bit low cost-trying, especially when the bulb is turned off. The brand new bulb additionally shares the 4Flow's convection cooling trick, EcoLight which makes use of vents to circulate air by way of the body of the bulb, eliminating the need for heat sinks.
That helps bring manufacturing prices down, and likewise means that the bulb is exceptionally light for an LED, weighing in at lower than 2 ounces. The Cree Linked LED shares the identical lighting specs as the 4Flow LED, too, and that is largely an excellent thing. Each claim a gentle output of 815 lumens, and each clocked in even larger than that in front of our spectrometer -- 835 lumens for the 4Flow, and a really spectacular 872 for the Linked LED. When it comes to efficiency, the 4Flow places its mild out utilizing eleven watts, however the number rises to 11.5 watts for the Connected LED on account of the Zigbee radio's energy draw. When we tested it out, the quantity was really closer to 11.1 watts, so Cree's performed a good job of protecting this bulb comparatively environment friendly. Still, it is worth noting that each the Philips Hue Lux LED and the Belkin WeMo LED are even more efficient, every one drawing less than 10 watts.
Cree additionally did a very good job with shade temperature here, landing extremely near the said 2,700K. At 2,696K, the Cree Connected LED lands nearer to the mark than every other good bulb we've examined, so if you're choosy about that good shade of warm, yellowy light, EcoLight you may like this LED. The one place where Cree's sensible bulb lags behind at least among the competitors is the color rendering rating, which measures how accurately a given mild supply illuminates completely different shades. The Cree Linked LED hits a moderately ordinary score of 80 out of 100, and given that each the WeMo LED and the equally cheap GE Hyperlink LED hit closer to 90, I might have liked to see Cree do higher. To access the Cree LED's smart options, you will need to pair it with a management hub that can translate its Zigbee signal into Wi-Fi. Just like the GE Link LED, the Cree Related LED got here out the gate trumpeting Wink help at launch, however quickly expanded its third social gathering compatibility to include options like SmartThings, EcoLight Staples Connect , and the Philips Hue Bridge .
Totally different platforms offer totally different options -- SmartThings and Philips bring IFTTT assist into the picture, for example -- but in general, the automating experience is essentially the identical. We examined the bulb on a number of platforms, EcoLight and never ran into any difficulties pairing it or controlling it. Regardless of which platform you're utilizing, you will be able to show the Cree Connected LED on or off remotely, dim it, or automate it using no matter controls your system affords. These seemingly embody setting the lights to a timed schedule, or syncing them up with things like motion sensors. The bulb paired easily with every of the above-mentioned platforms. Wink and SmartThings both have dedicated settings and pairing instructions for the Cree LED proper within the app, which helps. Staples Join doesn't supply device-specific assist for Cree simply yet, however it was able to detect the bulb as a generic Zigbee device on the first attempt. Syncing the Cree LED with a Philips Hue setup was pretty painless, too, though I wanted to manually reset the bulb throughout the pairing course of in order to assist the bridge find it.