Tabu Lumen Good LED Bulb TL800 Evaluate
Ever because the Philips Hue LED($199.Ninety nine at Verizon) lighting kit hit the digital house market, there was a steady uptick in competing good bulb merchandise just like the LIFX LED Light Bulb( at Amazon) and the Linked by TCP Smart Lighting System as well as current product announcements from electronics giants LG and Samsung. Add the Lumen TL800 from Tabu to that listing. Priced at $69.99 per bulb (however available on-line for round $50), the TL800 makes use of Bluetooth wireless know-how to speak with your smartphone via a neat little app that permits you to turn lights on and off, select colours, and have the lights behave a certain way when you've gotten an incoming phone name. Unlike the Philips and TCP bulbs the TL800 doesn't require a bridge, but it does not connect with the Internet either, which suggests you can't management it when you're away from dwelling or EcoLight bulbs have it interact with different residence automation gadgets. With a vented metallic casing separating the round glass dome from the Edison screw base, the TL800 looks prefer it can be proper at home in an Apollo spacecraft.
The bulb measures 4.75 inches in size and places out solely 400 lumens, EcoLight which is equivalent to a 40 watt incandescent bulb. That is not very bright when compared to the LIFX (1,017 lumens), TCP (800 lumens), and Philips (600 lumens) bulbs. As with the Philips and LIFX bulbs, it may possibly show sixteen million colors, but since it does not connect to the Internet you can't management it with house automation hubs from companies comparable to Revolv( at Amazon) and SmartThings($149.99 at Amazon). Nor can you use the favored IFTTT (If This Then That) web service to have it turn on and off or change colors based on things like Facebook requests, Foursquare notifications, and ESPN sports scores. You don't get a lot in the way in which of directions with the TL800, but there's not a lot to explain. I screwed it right into a lamp in my workplace, downloaded the app onto my iOS smartphone, EcoLight made sure Bluetooth was enabled on my gadget, and opened the app.
The Lumen app is uncomplicated and simple to make use of and allows you to control up to 10 bulbs at a time. You may management every bulb individually or management a gaggle of bulbs. The home web page lists all installed bulbs and shows you what coloration they are at the moment set to. Pressing a bulb icon takes you to a page the place you can select colour or warm white settings and turn the bulb on or off. When you choose the warm white setting you're introduced with a monochrome wheel that permits you to manually regulate brightness, or you possibly can choose one of four brightness presets (90, 70, 50, EcoLight products or 30 percent). Below the wheel is a Name Alert icon that takes you to a page where you possibly can configure the light to flash a particular coloration when your cellphone has an incoming call. There's additionally a Wake-Up timer that can turn the sunshine on utilizing a dim heat white setting that progressively gets brighter to create a sunrise effect, and a Proximity choice that can have a gentle turn on to a preset color and brightness when your telephone comes into vary (about 30 feet).
In coloration mode you get a wheel that lets you choose a shade for every bulb and assign a colour brightness setting. For deep, strong colours you set the brightness level to the darkest setting; for lighter pastel colours, use a brighter setting. Beneath the shade wheel are seven preset icons together with two occasion modes that show pre-programmed flashing colours; a Romance mode that gradually transitions between orange, yellow, and red; a Relaxation mode that is presupposed to simulate a calming moonlight ambiance; and a Music Sync mode that accesses your saved music database and flashes the light to the beat utilizing various colours. Right here you may also adjust Proximity and Call Alert settings, but you can't create your own custom presets like you'll be able to with the Hue and LIFX bulbs. From the house web page you possibly can flip all or some lights on and off and add them to teams.
The group possibility is helpful if you want to manage a number of lights all of sudden. All of the settings and presets that can be found for individual bulbs are also out there in group mode. The TL800 uses Bluetooth 4.0 to speak with the smartphone, which accounts for its wonderful responsiveness. It turned on and off instantly when informed to do so, and there was no lag time between shade and EcoLight products brightness modifications. The Wake-Up function turned on in response to my schedule and the bulb grew to become step by step brighter over time. The decision Alert feature additionally worked as advertised and is available in very handy if you're wearing headphones. Color high quality was good with very deep reds, blues, and greens, but if you're lighting a big room you might have a couple of bulb, as four hundred lumens just isn't very brilliant. The Tabu TL800 is an effective choice for anybody looking so as to add a couple of colorful lights to a room that they can control from a smartphone.