Cree was hesitant to add a wise bulb to its greatest-selling LED lineup, however that modified this year with the addition of the $15 Cree Related LED. Sharing the construct and lighting specs of last 12 months's effectively-reviewed Cree 4Flow LED , the brand new Related LED provides in a Zigbee radio. Pair it with a management hub, and you'll be in a position to turn it on and off remotely, or schedule automated EcoLight home lighting changes. At launch, Cree's sensible bulb was considerably married to the Wink Hub , EcoLight home lighting which made sense given that you'll buy each off the shelf at House Depot. Since then, nevertheless, we've seen official support roll out for additional control gateways, including SmartThings and the Philips Hue Bridge . You'll be able to add the bulbs to the new D-Link version of the Staples Connect Hub , too, though there isn't official, EcoLight home lighting Zonoff-certified support just yet. The bulb works nicely across all the platforms we have tested it with, and EcoLight reviews it shares the robust lighting specs of the 4Flow LED that got here before it.

Most interesting is the worth. At $15 -- only a few dollars greater than you will spend on non-linked opponents -- it ties with the GE Link LED as essentially the most inexpensive linked bulb in the marketplace. For primary automated lighting, it is the best choice we have examined but, and our present Editors' Choice winner. Cree adapted its smart bulb design from last year's 4Flow LED, packing a Zigbee radio into the present construct. That means that this isn't a bulb that goes out of its option to look fancy or newfangled -- as an alternative, it copies the 4Flow's emphasis on mimicking the silhouette of basic incandescents. I appreciated that approach with the 4Flow, and that i prefer it with the brand EcoLight new Linked LED too, although some would possibly discover the plastic build to be a bit low cost-looking, particularly when the bulb is turned off. The new bulb also shares the 4Flow's convection cooling trick, which makes use of vents to circulate air by the body of the bulb, eliminating the need for heat sinks.

That helps carry 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 because the 4Flow LED, too, and that's largely an excellent thing. Both claim a light output of 815 lumens, and each clocked in even higher than that in entrance of our spectrometer -- 835 lumens for the 4Flow, EcoLight and a very spectacular 872 for the Related LED. When it comes to effectivity, the 4Flow places its mild out utilizing eleven watts, but the quantity rises to 11.5 watts for the Related LED on account of the Zigbee radio's power draw. When we tested it out, the number was really nearer to 11.1 watts, so Cree's carried out an excellent job of holding this bulb relatively environment friendly. Nonetheless, it's value noting that both the Philips Hue Lux LED and the Belkin WeMo LED are even more efficient, each drawing lower than 10 watts.

Cree also did an excellent job with coloration temperature right here, landing extremely near the said 2,700K. At 2,696K, the Cree Connected LED lands nearer to the mark than some other sensible bulb we have tested, EcoLight home lighting so if you're choosy about that perfect shade of heat, yellowy gentle, you may like this LED. The one place where Cree's smart bulb lags behind no less than a number of the competitors is the colour rendering rating, which measures how accurately a given mild source illuminates completely different shades. The Cree Linked LED hits a somewhat ordinary rating of 80 out of 100, and provided that each the WeMo LED and the equally inexpensive GE Hyperlink LED hit closer to 90, I might have liked to see Cree do better. To access the Cree LED's sensible features, you will have to pair it with a control hub that may translate its Zigbee sign into Wi-Fi. Just like the GE Hyperlink LED, the Cree Linked LED got here out the gate trumpeting Wink support at launch, however soon expanded its third get together compatibility to incorporate choices like SmartThings, Staples Connect , and EcoLight home lighting the Philips Hue Bridge .

Different platforms offer different options -- SmartThings and Philips carry IFTTT help into the picture, as an illustration -- but on the whole, the automating experience is basically the same. We tested the bulb on multiple platforms, and never ran into any difficulties pairing it or controlling it. Regardless of which platform you're utilizing, you'll be able to turn the Cree Related LED on or off remotely, dim it, or automate it using whatever controls your system presents. These probably embrace setting the lights to a timed schedule, or syncing them up with issues like movement sensors. The bulb paired easily with each of the above-mentioned platforms. Wink and SmartThings both have devoted settings and pairing instructions for the Cree LED right in the app, which helps. Staples Join doesn't supply machine-particular assist for Cree just yet, however it was in a position to detect the bulb as a generic Zigbee system on the first strive. Syncing the Cree LED with a Philips Hue setup was fairly painless, too, although I needed to manually reset the bulb in the course of the pairing process so as to assist the bridge find it.