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The $69.99 Mipow Playbulb Comet is not exactly a smart bulb, but a Bluetooth-connected plastic strip of LEDS you can adhere to a bookshelf, cabinet, desk, or anywhere else you want to add colorful accent lighting. It’s more affordable than the Philips Hue LightStrip Plus ($59.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , and it’s bright, water-resistant, and fun to use. But you can’t extend the Comet with additional strips, and it doesn’t integrate it with third-party apps or services.
Design and Features
The Playbulb Comet ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) is a flexible 6.6-foot strip of plastic, coated with rubber and filled with 120 LEDs. Unlike the LightStrip Plus, you cannot extend its length by adding expansion strips, which limits where you can use it. The Comet is capable of emitting warm white light with a color temperature of 3,000K and a brightness output of up to 1,200 lumens. That’s less than the 1,600 lumens the LightStrip Plus is capable of, but the Comet is still very bright.
Like the LightStrip Plus, the Comet doesn’t use a battery. You have to plug an AC power adapter into a wall outlet and connect a jack to a thin, flat plastic receiver box at one end of the Comet. On the back of the strip is 3M adhesive tape that you can use to securely stick the light to any surface you want. Beware, however, the strip’s adhesive side will collect dust and debris if you move it around.
The Comet is rated IP67, so it’s resistant to splashes and can withstand humidity. Mipow says you can use it outdoors thanks to its rubber coating, something you can’t do with the LightStrip Plus. The company also says it will last for 20,000 hours of light, which is equal to just over two years of continue use, or 20 years of use based on three hours per day, seven days a week. As for energy efficiency, the Comet uses just 5 watts.
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Setup and Performance
To get started, all you need to do is plug the Comet in, download the free Mipow Playbulb X app from the Apple App Store or Google Play, and connect to the strip via Bluetooth. I paired the Comet with a Samsung Galaxy S6 in a few seconds, although I had to refresh a few times before it appeared on the app’s list of available devices. Unlike the LightStrip Plus, you don’t need a hub to connect via Wi-Fi, which is convenient. The downside is that you need to be within Bluetooth range for app control.
Once connected, you can remotely control the Comet with the Playbulb X app, which is the exact same one used with the Playbulb Rainbow and the Playbulb Color ($80.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) . The home screen contains a color wheel that sits in the center. Simply drag your finger around it to select a variety of colors. Below the color wheel you’ll see a color saturation slider, and four color swatches below that so you can immediately select blue, green, red, or white. The Effects button sits next to the swatches, with tabs for Music Player and Scenes at the bottom of the screen, and toggles for Color and Shake up top. Color returns the strip back to warm white, while Shake lets you choose a random color by shaking your connected device. The Music Player is useless in this instance because, unlike the Playbulb Color, the strip has no speakers.
A Candle Effect is supposed to make the Comet flicker, but like previous Mipow lights I’ve tested, it doesn’t actually work. The Rainbow Effect causes the strip to quickly shift from one color to color, while the Rainbow Fade slows things down so colors gradually change in a more relaxed manner. Other effects, like Flashing, are pretty fast even when set to the slowest speed.
The Scenes section of the app is laggy. To set a scene, you drag an eyedropper icon across a picture to select a color, but the Comet is slow to respond to your selection. There are three preset scenes available, including Rainbow, Reading, and Sunset. You can also choose colors from a personal image stored on your device.
Unlike Philips, Mipow doesn’t offer anything in the way of third-party integration with services like If This Then That (IFTTT). IFTTT integration would allow the strip to automatically respond to certain triggers, like email notifications or weather changes. For that, you’ll want the LightStrip Plus.
Conclusions
The Mipow Playbulb Comet is a neat way to add smart mood lighting to your home for $20 less than the Philips Hue LightStrip Plus, plus it doesn’t require a hub. That said, you don’t get the benefits of the Philips Hue ecosystem, like the ability to control light away from home or IFTTT integration, and the strip isn’t expnadable. If you’re already a Philips Hue user, it’s worth the extra $20 for the added control and functionality. But if you’re new to smart lighting and just want to mess around with a cool, color-changing light strip, the Playbulb Comet is a good place to start.
3.5
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The Mipow Playbulb Comet is a bright, fun, and relatively affordable color-changing smart light strip.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/mipow-playbulb-comet
