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The Nyrius Smart LED Multicolor Light Bulb is an interesting entryway into connected lighting. It’s a Bluetooth bulb that doesn’t require a hub, and at $39.99, it’s less expensive than a number of other color-changing options, like the Philips Hue Connected Bulb ($199.99 at Verizon)(Opens in a new window) and the LIFX LED ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) . In addition to multiple color choices, you can set timers, schedules, alarms, and have the light pulse to the beat of your favorite playlist. But you can only connect up to eight bulbs at one time, and low brightness means you won’t be using them for anything more than mood lighting.
Design and Setup
Measuring 5 inches tall and 2.7 inches wide, the Nyrius ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) is made of thick white plastic in a ridged, fan-like design at its base, while the bulb itself is translucent. It’s got some heft, weighing in at 7.2 ounces, but it survived an accidental fall off my desk, so it’s sturdy.
The Nyrius is a 40-watt-equivalent bulb capable of producing 490 lumens of brightness, which is much brighter than the 200-lumen MiPow Playbulb Color ($80.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , but significantly less bright than the 600-lumen Philips Hue Connected Bulb ($199.99 at Verizon)(Opens in a new window) . The bulb gives off a warm white light at 5,000K, and its colors look good, if rather dim. In testing, the bulb was not capable of illuminating a whole living room. It’s good for mood lighting, but to fill an entire room you’d need multiple bulbs, which can get pretty pricey.
Setting up the bulb is simple. Since no hub is required, you can connect it directly to your mobile device. First, you need to screw the bulb into any lamp with an E26 or E27 socket. Then download the free Nyrius app from the Apple App Store or Google Play. Any Bluetooth 4.0 device that runs iOS 6.0 or later, or Android 4.3 or later, should work. Follow the onscreen instructions, and the bulb will connect to the app via Bluetooth. I connected the Nyrius to a Samsung Galaxy S6 ($129.71 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) in no time.
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App and Features
The Nyrius app is nicely designed, with a clean, user-friendly interface. There aren’t many pages to flip through and the icons are all appealing.
In the app’s upper left corner, you’ll find a Groups icon. You can connect up to eight bulbs to the app at one time, and divvy them up in the Groups page to control them in sets, like all the all the bulbs in your living room, for instance. Unfortunately, you can’t connect more than eight bulbs, which means the Nyrius isn’t much of a whole-home solution unless you live in relatively small quarters.
In a row at the bottom of the app are the rest your options. Refresh searches for bulbs and updates the list of bulbs available. Connect establishes a connection with a bulb you select from the list. Disconnect, sure enough, disconnects any bulbs you have connected. There’s also an Info section in the upper right corner.
Once you’re connected to a bulb, you have access to a whole new set of options on another page. First, there’s a fairly standard color wheel from which you can select hundreds of colors. You just drag your finger around the wheel to choose the color you want; a circle in the upper left corner shows you exactly what color you’ve chosen. There are also preset Mood suggestions, like bright white for reading, yellow for dining, blue for relaxing, and flashing rainbow lights for a party. I’m not sure how all of those make sense, but they’re fun to play around with.
The Nyrius has a few other features. Under the app’s Timers tab, you can set up daily lighting schedules that tell the lights to turn on or off at specific times, which is great for when you’re away on vacation and want to make it look like someone is home. You can also use this feature to set waking alarms that make the light slowly turn on in the morning to gently stir you awake. However, since the bulbs don’t connect via Wi-Fi, you can’t adjust them when you’re out of Bluetooth range.
A not-so-common feature is a call alert setting. When you receive a phone call the bulb flashes green, which is pretty cool. Another unique feature is the ability to sync the bulb with any music playlist, which really means it uses the microphone on your connected device to detect sound, and the bulb responds by flashing in time to the beat. It reacts to any sound, though, including your voice, so it can be a little erratic.
Conclusions
For $39.99 apiece, the Nyrius Smart LED Multicolor Light Bulb is a decent introduction to the world of smart lighting. Nyrius also offers a two-pack of lights for $75 and a four-pack for $150, making it a good deal less expensive than our Editors’ Choice, the Philips Hue, which sell for $59.99 each. But the Hue bulbs are brighter, and allow for a much larger degree of control, including customized lighting scenes, If This Then That integration (IFTTT), and the ability to connect up to 50 bulbs. If you don’t need color-changing lighting, the white-only Philips Hue Lux ($49.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) bulbs will get you all the same features at a much lower price.
3.0
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The Nyrius Smart LED is a well-priced color-changing Bluetooth bulb with some fun features, but low brightness relegates it to mood lighting only.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/nyrius-smart-led-multicolor-light-bulb