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Jul 11, 2023

Best LIFX LED smart lights, bulbs, and strips in 2023

Illuminate your world with any (or all) of these fun and colorful smart lights from LIFX Sitting somewhere between premium Philips Hue lighting and bargain-basement offerings like Wyze, LIFX is one of

Illuminate your world with any (or all) of these fun and colorful smart lights from LIFX

Sitting somewhere between premium Philips Hue lighting and bargain-basement offerings like Wyze, LIFX is one of the best smart lighting brands today. It works smoothly with Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa, the two most popular voice assistants available today. Plus, LIFX lights also come in a decent variety of shapes and sizes, with brighter, bolder colors and more in-depth programming than many competitors.

LIFX's selection isn't exactly massive, but what's here is reliable, convenient, and high-quality; we've rounded up the best LIFX lighting for most homes.

LIFX's latest and most popular new E26 bulb is as bright, colorful, and responsive as its competitors, with a 75-watt incandescent bulb and 1,000 levels of white warmth. Like other smart bulbs, it doesn't require a hub, and it benefits from an entire generation of improved engineering, hardware, and software from the lighting experts at LIFX.

A little different from the rest, this six-piece kit lets you design your own custom smart light bar on a wall, piece of furniture, or anywhere else you can imagine. In each of its 12-inch sections, you get the full range of selectable colors in addition to 60 separate zones that let you design or choose preset patterns, waveforms, and color combinations.

The plain white E26 smart bulb from LIFX does little and does it very well at a remarkably low price. For just about $10, you get a soft white bulb that dovetails perfectly with the rest of your LIFX setup. However, it's not ideal for outdoor use, partly because it only gets as bright as 650 lumens.

Far smaller and more intricate than a full-size E26, this E12 bulb has 26 addressable zones that you can set to various custom colors as well as preset Flame, Morph, Paint, and other layouts for eye-catching and mood-setting illumination. It's especially great for small spaces like reading nooks, bedside tables, and gaming rooms, and it's not quite as costly as its larger siblings.

Light strips add a ton of atmosphere to nearly any space, and this 10-foot kit from LIFX is no exception. It's as bright as almost any other on the market and has 24 individually addressable zones, so you can set up your favorite color combinations in advance and access them at the touch of a button. It also comes in a 40-inch standalone and 40-inch extension.

This particular BR30-format bulb comes with all the features you'd expect from full-color LIFX lighting, with an addition that could make a huge difference. An extra set of infrared LEDs inside shed valuable IR light on the bulb's surroundings, making it considerably easier for most security cameras to see in the dark. This smart bulb is a valuable addition to a smart security system.

One of the first LIFX bulbs to hit the market, its original 800-watt equivalent color bulb still works great with all the functionality of the newer models. The only drawback is its slightly lower peak brightness. Most people find 800 lumens bright enough, though, and if you look in the right places, you can find these for half the cost of the 1,100-lumen variant.

Smart lighting takes a big step forward in form and function once you can mount it in your ceiling, but new installations and even replacement of old recessed lighting can be a major hassle. The LIFX Smart Downlight, however, is engineered to clip directly into the most common 5- to 6-inch ceiling can light fixtures, minimizing or eliminating the need for extra power tools and major renovations.

Some lamps don't support full-size bulbs or need a billion colors to choose from. However, those lamps might work just fine with the LIFX Mini, which has all the timing, scene, and dimming options you need for comfortable lighting in small spaces. Luckily, the price is similarly diminutive.

Essentially the company's 1,100-lumen color smart bulb with an extra ring of specialized lights inside, the Clean HEV bulb uses high-energy visible light right around the 400-nanometer range to kill a portion of harmful bacteria over time. While it's not a first line of defense against germs or contamination, it's a great addition to other health-related appliances like modern HVAC systems and air purifiers.

None of LIFX's smart bulbs are "bad," per se, but most people won't find every single one useful. The vast majority of users will, of course, love to have a few standard E26 bulbs since every house has a couple of standard light sockets. But there are also more novel, specialized lighting designs, such as candle strips, candle bulbs, floodlights, and more.

In that light (pun intended), the most useful for most people (and therefore best choice overall) turns out to be the 1,100-lumen E26, which is LIFX's most recent E26 release. However, you can save a bit of money and get a physically less cumbersome bulb if you go with the older 800-lumen equivalent. If you don't need color, the high-value yet low-cost basic white E26 is only about $10 and gets you 650 lumens of warm white at a moment's notice.

At the other end of the spectrum, the LIFX Beam smart light bar offers the kind of customizability that smart home enthusiasts usually love. It's great in a gaming den, behind a piece of furniture as a wall accent, or anywhere else you want a piece of avant-garde neon-colored light. Although it is a bit pricey, it's the first of its kind that we've seen.

LIFX doesn't put consumers through a bunch of marketing nonsense or confusing processes, with just a few great lights to choose from in total. Its products exclusively use Wi-Fi rather than Bluetooth, so you can trust in their robust connectivity and quick response. They also have a remarkably low failure rate, which you can't always count on with cheaper brands. You should be able to find enough smart lights to outfit your entire home here, even if you need easy recessed lighting and path lights for your home cinema.

Chris has spent the last several years writing for numerous online tech magazines, of which Android Police is the latest and most fun. Chris has been a freelancer with AP since early 2022, writing comparisons of cutting-edge smartphones and gathering the most powerful and convenient smart home devices for beginners and experts.His focus lies on straightforward, helpful buying guides that make it easy for the average electronics user to make informed decisions on the most cost-effective devices. In particular, he loves recommending affordable wireless headphones that outperform far more expensive brands.Chris's first foray into electronics included fixing and destroying early PCs in his dad’s basement while testing the overclocking capabilities of an Intel 486 CPU. Since then, he’s melted considerably fewer processors while pushing increasingly powerful gaming hardware to its limits.