Cree was hesitant so as to add a sensible bulb to its finest-promoting LED lineup, but that modified this yr with the addition of the $15 Cree Linked LED. Sharing the construct and lighting specs of last 12 months's nicely-reviewed Cree 4Flow LED , the new Linked LED adds in a Zigbee radio. Pair it with a control hub, and you will be ready to show it on and off remotely, or schedule automated lighting changes. At launch, Cree's good bulb was considerably married to the Wink Hub , which made sense given that you will buy both off the shelf at Residence Depot. Since then, nonetheless, 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 EcoLight solar bulbs to the new D-Link version of the Staples Join Hub , too, though there isn't official, Zonoff-certified help simply but. The bulb works well across all of the platforms we've tested it with, and it shares the strong lighting specs of the 4Flow LED that got here earlier than it.
Most appealing is the price. At $15 -- just some dollars more than you'll spend on non-connected competitors -- it ties with the GE Hyperlink LED as probably the most cheap linked bulb on the market. For fundamental automated lighting, it's the very best possibility we've tested yet, and our current Editors' Choice winner. Cree adapted its good bulb design from last yr's 4Flow LED, packing a Zigbee radio into the existing construct. That implies 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 basic incandescents. I appreciated that strategy with the 4Flow, and that i like it with the brand new Linked LED too, although some would possibly find the plastic construct to be a bit low-cost-wanting, especially when the bulb is turned off. The brand new bulb additionally shares the 4Flow's convection cooling trick, which uses vents to circulate air by way of the physique of the bulb, eliminating the necessity for heat sinks.
That helps deliver production prices down, and in addition means that the bulb is exceptionally gentle for an LED, weighing in at lower than 2 ounces. The Cree Connected LED shares the same lighting specs because the 4Flow LED, too, and that's largely a superb thing. Both claim a light output of 815 lumens, and each clocked in even higher than that in entrance of our spectrometer -- 835 lumens for the 4Flow, and a very spectacular 872 for the Connected LED. When it comes to efficiency, the 4Flow places its mild out utilizing eleven watts, but the quantity rises to 11.5 watts for the Linked LED on account of the Zigbee radio's power draw. Once we tested it out, the quantity was really closer to 11.1 watts, so Cree's performed a great job of maintaining this bulb relatively environment friendly. Still, it is price noting that both the Philips Hue Lux LED and EcoLight solar bulbs the Belkin WeMo LED are much more efficient, every one drawing lower than 10 watts.
Cree additionally did a very good job with shade temperature here, touchdown extraordinarily close to the stated 2,700K. At 2,696K, the Cree Linked LED lands nearer to the mark than some other good bulb we've examined, so if you are choosy about that excellent shade of heat, yellowy mild, you may like this LED. The one place where Cree's sensible bulb lags behind no less than a few of the competitors is the coloration rendering rating, which measures how precisely a given light supply illuminates different shades. The Cree Connected LED hits a moderately atypical rating of eighty out of 100, and on condition that both the WeMo LED and the equally cheap GE Hyperlink LED hit closer to 90, I'd have preferred to see Cree do higher. To entry the Cree LED's smart options, you will have to pair it with a management 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 assist at launch, EcoLight however quickly expanded its third occasion compatibility to incorporate choices like SmartThings, Staples Connect , and the Philips Hue Bridge .
Different platforms supply totally different features -- SmartThings and Philips carry IFTTT help into the picture, for example -- but usually, the automating expertise is largely the same. We examined the bulb on a number of platforms, and never ran into any difficulties pairing it or controlling it. No matter which platform you're utilizing, you will be ready to show the Cree Related LED on or off remotely, dim it, or automate it using whatever controls your system presents. These doubtless embody setting the lights to a timed schedule, or syncing them up with issues like motion sensors. The bulb paired easily with each 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 does not supply machine-particular help for Cree simply but, but it surely was capable of detect the bulb as a generic Zigbee device on the first strive. Syncing the Cree LED with a Philips Hue setup was fairly painless, too, although I needed to manually reset the bulb through the pairing course of so as to help the bridge discover it.