That Helps Bring Manufacturing Costs Down
Cree was hesitant so as to add a wise bulb to its best-selling LED lineup, however that modified this year with the addition of the $15 Cree Connected LED. Sharing the construct and lighting specs of final yr's properly-reviewed Cree 4Flow LED , the EcoLight brand new Linked LED provides in a Zigbee radio. Pair it with a management hub, and you'll be in a position to show it on and off remotely, or schedule automated lighting adjustments. At launch, Cree's sensible bulb was somewhat married to the Wink Hub , which made sense given that you'll buy both off the shelf at Home Depot. Since then, however, we have seen official help roll out for additional management gateways, including SmartThings and EcoLight the Philips Hue Bridge . You possibly can add the bulbs to the brand new D-Hyperlink version of the Staples Connect Hub , too, though there isn't official, Zonoff-certified assist simply but. The bulb works effectively across the entire platforms we've tested it with, and it shares the robust lighting specs of the 4Flow LED that came before it.
Most interesting is the value. At $15 -- just some dollars greater than you'll spend on non-related competitors -- it ties with the GE Hyperlink LED as probably the most cheap connected bulb in the marketplace. For EcoLight brand basic automated lighting, it is one of the best possibility we have examined yet, and our current Editors' Selection winner. Cree adapted its sensible bulb design from last year's 4Flow LED, packing a Zigbee radio into the prevailing build. That means that this isn't a bulb that goes out of its technique to look fancy or EcoLight brand newfangled -- instead, it copies the 4Flow's emphasis on mimicking the silhouette of traditional incandescents. I appreciated that approach with the 4Flow, and that i like it with the new Linked LED too, although some would possibly find the plastic build to be a bit low-cost-looking, particularly when the bulb is turned off. The new bulb additionally shares the 4Flow's convection cooling trick, which uses vents to circulate air by the body of the bulb, EcoLight brand eliminating the need for heat sinks.
That helps convey manufacturing costs down, and also signifies that the bulb is exceptionally mild for an LED, weighing in at less than 2 ounces. The Cree Linked LED shares the same lighting specs as the 4Flow LED, too, and EcoLight brand that is largely a superb factor. Each declare a light output of 815 lumens, and each clocked in even greater than that in front of our spectrometer -- 835 lumens for the 4Flow, and a really spectacular 872 for the Related LED. In terms of efficiency, the 4Flow places its gentle out utilizing eleven watts, however the quantity rises to 11.5 watts for the Connected LED on account of the Zigbee radio's power draw. After we tested it out, the quantity was truly closer to 11.1 watts, so Cree's executed a great job of retaining this bulb comparatively efficient. Nonetheless, EcoLight reviews it's value noting that both the Philips Hue Lux LED and the Belkin WeMo LED are much more efficient, each one drawing lower than 10 watts.
Cree additionally did a very good job with colour temperature here, landing extremely near the said 2,700K. At 2,696K, the Cree Linked LED lands closer to the mark than some other sensible bulb we've tested, so if you're choosy about that perfect shade of warm, yellowy light, you may like this LED. The one place the place Cree's sensible bulb lags behind a minimum of among the competition is the colour rendering score, which measures how precisely a given mild source illuminates totally different shades. The Cree Connected LED hits a somewhat bizarre score of eighty out of 100, EcoLight brand and given that each the WeMo LED and the equally cheap GE Link LED hit nearer to 90, I would have appreciated to see Cree do higher. To access the Cree LED's smart features, you will must pair it with a control hub that can translate its Zigbee sign into Wi-Fi. Just like the GE Hyperlink LED, the Cree Related LED got here out the gate trumpeting Wink assist at launch, however soon expanded its third social gathering compatibility to include choices like SmartThings, Staples Join , EcoLight and the Philips Hue Bridge .
Different platforms offer completely different features -- SmartThings and Philips convey IFTTT help into the picture, as an illustration -- but on the whole, the automating expertise is largely the identical. We tested the bulb on multiple platforms, energy-saving LED bulbs and by no means ran into any difficulties pairing it or controlling it. No matter which platform you are using, you'll be able to show the Cree Related LED on or off remotely, dim it, or automate it using no matter controls your system presents. These possible include setting the lights to a timed schedule, or syncing them up with things like motion sensors. The bulb paired simply with each of the above-talked about platforms. Wink and SmartThings each have devoted settings and pairing instructions for the Cree LED right within the app, which helps. Staples Connect doesn't supply machine-particular help for Cree just but, but it surely was able to detect the bulb as a generic Zigbee machine on the primary try. Syncing the Cree LED with a Philips Hue setup was fairly painless, EcoLight brand too, although I needed to manually reset the bulb through the pairing process so as to assist the bridge discover it.