Gadgetory

am CNET's right Chris with another color-changing smart LED to look at today the lifx bulb this is an LED that we saw on Kickstarter back in 2012 it asked for $100,000 from its backers and it raised over 1.3 million dollars by the campaign's end so a lot of interest in this bulb about a year later in 2013 it started shipping to backers and now in 2014 it is open for sale so you can get this bulb right now for $99 but is it worth it compared to other options like the lumen LED or the Philips hue LEDs well this is a very bright bulb it's a 75 watt replacement that puts out over a thousand lumens of light at full brightness using 17 watts of power so it's efficient it's a good LED and it's very bright one thing that I really like about this bulb is that it puts that extra brightness to really good use in terms of color what it does is it will add those white LEDs that are typically used for the natural tones the incandescent yellow and white light it adds that on top of the color light at the top of the spectrum so you can get pure saturated green light but then you keep on dimming up and then you get those white LEDs added on top of it and you'll get a whitish light tinted with green and that's a little more practical a little more natural colored light the lifx bulb also features a dedicated spectrum of natural incandescent style tones you get yellow light white light hot blue light like the lamp behind me whatever you want you can replicate with lifx so we've talked a bit about this bulb in terms of how well it produces light but what about the smarts what about the extra oomph that you expect from a smart LED well if you look at the lifx app the color selector is this kind of gradiated wheel and I like this a lot more than the spectrum you get from Philips hue or taboo with the lifx app you just spin that wheel you can tap you can drag it exactly where you want it you can see what you're doing it's a lot more precise it's a lot easier I'm a big fan of it I've got to say though when it comes to smarts I find this bulb a little bit disappointing in its current state it doesn't yet have basic scheduling in the app you can't have it come on and off at certain times you can havoc come on at sunset very basic things that smart lights should offer you right at the onset that said this is a young bulb it hasn't been that nearly as long as Philips hue and that bulbs got a head start right so it's been out for a while it's got IFFT integration now with smart things that's the type of stuff that I can see in this bulbs future so it's got potential and it's got an open API so you've got developers doing cool things like developing a double tap gesture for the phone that you can install to turn it on and off or even developing games that'll work with the lifx and change dynamically as you blow things up and go from night to day so in spite of the fact that this bulb has been in development for a pretty long time it still feels a little bit early to me the features that you want in a smart bulb just aren't quite there yet but I expect that they'll get there but if you really like the color-changing capabilities and you want a brighter bulb in that field this is about as good as it gets for seeing that I'm right crist