The media could not be loaded. This is my very in-depth review for: Wyze Labs WLPA19 LED Smart Home Light Bulb (4 Pack) If you prefer a quicker summary, go straight to the summary section. Background I have a few Wyze cams I bought a bit over a year. I liked them so much that when the Wyze bulb came out I wanted to try it right away. I have other smart bulbs, but I decided that if I liked these I would swap the two I have for these. Spoiler Alert, I liked them. I am installing 9 total bulbs throughout my house, 7 in an area that is partially a construction zone, and 2 to replace my current smart bulbs of a different brand. So far, I have installed the ones in my basement. I don’t think I should have any other problems installing the other two this weekend but if I do I will update the review. Unboxing The presentation is neat. The four light bulbs are packaged in a two by two array inside the box; each bulb comes individually bagged. A quick-start guide comes with them, which points you in the right direction, but I find it to be lacking depth. The four bulbs are 9.5-watt LED bulbs, but they are equivalent in luminosity to a 60-watt incandescent light bulb. They look and feel like many other smart light bulbs, other than perhaps being a bit heavier, but not too much. The color temperature of the light from these bulbs go from very warm (2700K) to very cool (6500K). The guide directs you to download and install the brains of the operation, the Wyze app. I cannot attest to how good the App is for android devices, but it works well with my iPhone. The app itself is very intuitive. No hub is needed for them to work. If you do have a hub, they can also be integrated with other home automation devices through IFTTT (If This Then That). You can share accesses with the app, but I have found that is easier and efficient to just have one account shared across multiple devices when possible. Installation: The Wyze app does a really good job guiding you through the installation process; it was straight forward. In a nutshell, you screw the bulb into a bulb socket, you add them in the wyze app as a new device, get the bulbs to enter setup mode, and then you connect them to the Wi-Fi. A few pointers on the installation: When screwing the bulb to a socket ensure you know which switch controls the socket you are installing them on. You can install them all on a specific socket and move them after they are connected to the system. To start with the installation process, click on the three dots on the top right of the screen. From the menu that pops up, click on “Add a product” then click on “Wyze bulb”. From there, getting the light bulb to setup mode is a matter of flicking the light switch off then on three times as prompted by the app. The bulbs only work with a 2.4GHz WiFi network. If you are connected to 5GHz network change to a 2.4 GHz if you want to avoid some frustration. Once you enter the bulbs into setup mode the app will open your WiFi settings for you to select the bulb connection. This will allow the app to connect to the bulb. The screen will go to a countdown while the bulb and app attempt the connection. Setting them up for daily use: There are several ways to trigger the lights. They can be manually activated with the Wyze App. The bulbs can also use other Wyze devices to serve as inputs. They can be setup to use other non-Wyze smart devices as inputs to integrate all your devices through IFTTT. You can use the Google assistant or Alexa for voice control. The reason for using smart bulbs depends on the individual. My main reason for them is that I want to use them with voice control and I want to make it appear there is someone in the house when I go on vacation. Thus, most of my lights I have them setup to me turn on and off with voice controls. I have light bulb groups and different color temperatures for different reasons (Cleaning vs Hanging out). I also have all of them on timers in case I forget to give the “good night” command to Alexa. I don’t have the Wyze sense but I do have several Wyze cams which I use as sensor inputs. One of those is currently aiming through my backyard door to switch on a group of lights if it “sees” a person, not movement. I also tried the vacation mode for a while to see if it will meet my needs and it is flawless. It is not turning the lights on, every 15 seconds. It mimics, as possible, real patterns. It will turn on a light for a bit, shut down, wait a while, go back at it. Problems encountered: I had a few hiccups when connecting a few of them to my Wi-Fi on the first try. In four of the seven that I have installed to this point, the connection timed out when trying to connect. For those four, after it timed out, it gave me the option to retry. I tried again, and they connected right away (I showed this on the video). When interacting with other devices through IFTTT, they took somewhere between 1 and 5 seconds to react thus, I don’t really see IFTTT as an option I would use. I understand that IFTTT is inherently slow, but just a heads up I guess. Additionally, when ordering a group of lights to turn on and off in rapid succession, one or two of the lights in the group could fail to execute the command, regardless of doing so with the app or voice command. ********** Summary: What I liked about these bulbs is that: - They have a very wide range of white temperatures from 2700K to 6500K. - They are very economical compared to other bulbs in their class (about 10$ per bulb for the 4pack vs 15-20 for their leading competitors) - They integrate very well with other Wyze devices, which are also very economical. - The integration with Alexa is also seamless. - The installation process was easy and intuitive. - Vacation mode works really well. What I disliked about them: - Waiting for the bulbs to connect only to see them fail in four of seven tries was a bit too much. They did connect right away after re-trying but maybe they could have made a wider connection window if this was going to be an issue… - A group of bulbs having some of them not turning on or off successfully after a series of commands in rapid succession, although understandable, is also bothersome. Other thoughts: These are very impressive units, that work well for anyone getting their feet wet in the home automation pit. They will get the job done but they are not free of faults. They are good if planning to integrate with other Wyze devices or Alexa. Integrating them to other smart devices through IFTTT is to slow for my taste. That being said, at this price point they are the best available and although they are not perfect, to me they are well deserving of a five-star rating.
