That Helps Carry Manufacturing Costs Down
Cree was hesitant so as to add a smart bulb to its best-selling LED lineup, but that changed this yr with the addition of the $15 Cree Related LED. Sharing the build and lighting specs of last year's well-reviewed Cree 4Flow LED , the brand new Connected LED provides in a Zigbee radio. Pair it with a control hub, and you will be ready to turn it on and off remotely, or schedule automated lighting changes. At launch, Cree's sensible bulb was considerably married to the Wink Hub , which made sense given that you're going to buy each off the shelf at Dwelling Depot. Since then, nevertheless, we've seen official assist roll out for additional management gateways, together with SmartThings and the Philips Hue Bridge . You'll be able to add the bulbs to the brand new D-Link version of the Staples Join Hub , too, although there is not official, Zonoff-certified help simply yet. The bulb works properly across all the platforms we have tested it with, and it shares the robust lighting specs of the 4Flow LED that got here earlier than it.
Most appealing is the worth. At $15 -- just some dollars greater than you may spend on non-related competitors -- it ties with the GE Link LED as probably the most inexpensive related bulb available on the market. For basic automated lighting, it's the perfect choice we have tested but, and our current Editors' Alternative winner. Cree adapted its sensible bulb design from last 12 months's 4Flow LED, packing a Zigbee radio into the present construct. That means that this is not a bulb that goes out of its technique to look fancy or newfangled -- as a substitute, it copies the 4Flow's emphasis on mimicking the silhouette of classic incandescents. I appreciated that strategy with the 4Flow, and i prefer it with the new Connected LED too, though some would possibly find the plastic build to be a bit low cost-trying, particularly when the bulb is turned off. The brand new bulb also shares the 4Flow's convection cooling trick, which makes use of vents to circulate air by way of the body of the bulb, EcoLight home lighting eliminating the need for heat sinks.
That helps carry production costs down, and also signifies that the bulb is exceptionally light for an LED, weighing in at less than 2 ounces. The Cree Linked LED shares the same EcoLight home lighting specs because the 4Flow LED, too, and that is largely an excellent factor. Both declare a gentle output of 815 lumens, and both clocked in even greater than that in entrance of our spectrometer -- 835 lumens for the 4Flow, and a very impressive 872 for the Connected LED. When it comes to effectivity, the 4Flow places its mild out using 11 watts, however the quantity rises to 11.5 watts for the Connected LED on account of the Zigbee radio's power draw. Once we examined it out, the number was truly closer to 11.1 watts, so Cree's accomplished an excellent job of maintaining this bulb relatively environment friendly. Still, it is worth noting that each the Philips Hue Lux LED and the Belkin WeMo LED are even more environment friendly, each one drawing less than 10 watts.
Cree also did a very good job with coloration temperature right here, touchdown extremely near the acknowledged 2,700K. At 2,696K, the Cree Linked LED lands closer to the mark than every other good bulb we have examined, so if you are choosy about that perfect shade of heat, yellowy mild, you'll like this LED. The one place where Cree's good bulb lags behind no less than a few of the competitors is the coloration rendering rating, which measures how precisely a given mild supply illuminates totally different shades. The Cree Linked LED hits a moderately extraordinary rating of eighty out of 100, and given that both the WeMo LED and the equally cheap GE Link LED hit nearer to 90, I would have preferred to see Cree do higher. To access the Cree LED's smart features, you will have to pair it with a control hub that can translate its Zigbee sign into Wi-Fi. Just like the GE Link LED, the Cree Linked LED got here out the gate trumpeting Wink help at launch, however soon expanded its third party compatibility to incorporate options like SmartThings, Staples Connect , and the Philips Hue Bridge .
Totally different platforms supply different options -- SmartThings and Philips deliver IFTTT help into the picture, as an example -- however typically, the automating experience is essentially the identical. We tested the bulb on a number of platforms, and never ran into any difficulties pairing it or controlling it. Regardless of which platform you are using, EcoLight you'll be able to turn the Cree Linked LED on or off remotely, dim it, or automate it using no matter controls your system offers. These probably embrace setting the lights to a timed schedule, or syncing them up with issues like movement sensors. The bulb paired easily with every of the above-talked about platforms. Wink and SmartThings each have devoted settings and pairing instructions for energy-saving LED bulbs the Cree LED right within the app, which helps. Staples Connect does not supply system-specific support for Cree just but, but it was able to detect the bulb as a generic Zigbee system on the primary strive. Syncing the Cree LED with a Philips Hue setup was fairly painless, too, though I needed to manually reset the bulb during the pairing course of so as to assist the bridge find it.