Smart lights are a useful and creative piece of tech, as they easily transform a room’s look and make life easier. LIFX’s wide array of smart LED lighting options works perfectly in every room in your house. Plus, they are easy to set up, customize, and even add on to if you want to expand into multiple rooms of your home.
Whether you want a new bulb for your bedside lamp, colorful strip lighting to mount behind your TV or gaming monitor, or a durable weatherproof bulb to boost visibility for your home security cameras, LIFX’s easy-to-use smart LED bulbs and strips are a no-brainer. Here are AP’s top recommendations.
The easiest place to start with LIFX is its excellent Color E26 bulb, as it replaces any “standard” light bulb you already have in your house. It offers 550 billion colors and a wide temperature range, making it a cinch to choose a color that matches the mood, whether it’s something bold for a dinner party or a more subdued hue while you read a book. If you have a second LIFX bulb in the room, tap into any of LIFX’s colorful scene pairings to create an even more colorful vibe — perfect for movie nights or holiday get-togethers.
The bulb’s gorgeous and unique flat-top design ensures wide, and even light distribution and a stylish look should you place it in an exposed fixture. With a maximum brightness of 1100 lumens, rest assured the bulb will easily fill any room; likewise, it is dimmable down to one percent if desired.
The Color E26 integrates seamlessly with Google Assistant and Alexa smart home ecosystems. It works over Wi-Fi without a hub or bridge and is controlled via the companion app or your voice through your preferred smart assistant. The app has a scheduling feature, which is great for morning routines and making it look like you’re home when you’re away on vacation. You can also schedule the lights to slowly brighten in the morning, mimicking a sunrise, and dim at night. Between its fun design, bright array of color options, and powerful app, the LIFX Color E26 bulb is our favorite pick overall.
- Color Range: 1500-9000K
- Environment: Indoor
- Wattage: 11.5 watts
- Brightness: 1100 lumens
LIFX Color E26 1100 Smart Bulb
Looking for a powerful light strip instead of a bulb? The LIFX Lightstrip 120-inch Kit is a great choice and is long enough to wrap around even the largest TVs and computer monitors. Its modular design allows you to cut it to length quickly and add additional strips later, perfect for larger lighting projects in your home office or living room. Its flexible design is easy to maneuver, comprised of three 40-inch strip segments that bend around corners to fit cabinets, TV stands, stairways, bed frames, or anything else.
What makes this smart LED lightstrip truly brilliant is its polychrome technology, allowing multiple colors to display simultaneously instead of just one boring color at a time. The strip sports 24 individual addressable zones, customizable with effects, animations, and colors in the companion mobile app. Control the strip through the app or voice commands via Google or Alexa.
With a 2100-lumen capacity, the strip easily brightens a room, although it’s also fully dimmable. And all you gamers out there are also in luck, as the lightstrip supports integration with Razer Chroma; this allows you to connect the lights to your Razer peripherals for an even more immersive gaming environment beyond your screen.
If you don’t need as much length (or need to add on more), LIFX also offers the lightstrip in shorter kit variations — either 80 inches or just 40 inches. The flexible segmented strip offers rich colors, brightness where you need it, easy installation and customization, and even some extra integration, making it the perfect premium splurge.
- Color Range: 1500-9000K
- Environment: Indoor
- Wattage: 25 watts
- Brightness: 2100 lumens
If you’re looking for a more basic LIFX smart bulb or want a great option that won’t bust your budget, it’s hard to go wrong with the LIFX White E26 bulb. This bulb is straightforward in design and offers a perfect warm white hue ideal for any lamp in your home for a fraction of the cost of the other bulb options.
Instead of billions of color options and tons of effects, LIFX’s wonderful White E26 bulb keeps things simple with just one option: a warm 2700K white. Despite this smart bulb’s simplicity, you can still dim it and set it up to run on a customized schedule. Use simple voice commands through Google Assistant or Alexa to control it or toggle settings in its companion app.
The only downside to the bulb is that it doesn’t get quite as bright as the others, maxing out at just 650 lumens, although that’s perfect for a bedside lamp. Although it skips many of the frills and sticks to the basics, the LIFX White E26 bulb is a great value and an affordable way to enter the world of smart lighting.
- Color Range: 2700K
- Environment: Indoor
- Wattage: 8.5 watts
- Brightness: 650 lumens
LIFX White E26 Smart Bulb
The LIFX Color A19 bulb is an interesting pick, as it’s essentially the same as the White E26 but with color options. It is visually identical, with its rounded top, allowing it to match the White version of the bulb if you have one of each in a room. However, it adds in the company’s full-color array of 550 billion possible color steps, making it a slightly more affordable version of our Best Overall pick, the LIFX Color E26.
The only noticeable difference is the difference in lumens. While the Color E26 maxes out at 1100 lumens and the White E26 hits just 650 lumens, this bulb hits a comfortable compromise with a respectable 800-lumen maximum capacity. That’s still plenty bright for offices, bedrooms, or any other room of your house while saving you a few bucks.
This smart LED bulb is compatible with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa and responds to voice commands. The LIFX companion mobile app also gives you full control and lets you set up schedules and toggle lighting effects.
- Color Range: 1500-9000K
- Environment: Indoor
- Wattage: 9 watts
- Brightness: 800 lumens
LIFX Color 800 Smart Bulb
LIFX bulbs aren’t limited to indoor lamps and living rooms — quite the contrary! The LIFX Color BR30 Nightvision bulb works both indoors and outdoors. It doubles as a regular smart light and sports an infrared light feature for boosting visibility on your home’s security cameras. Its flat-top design also makes it a great pick for recessed lights.
The addition of infrared allows your security cameras to see further and more clearly through windows and especially in dark scenarios. The BR30 has a solid IP65 rating for dust and rain intrusion, and it can withstand cold temperatures down to -22 degrees Fahrenheit for year-round visibility in your backyard, porch, or garage. It also works inside with a baby nursery camera or pet camera.
This smart bulb gets super bright, hitting 1100 lumens, and its lighting effects, scenes, and 550 billion color steps are accessible from the companion app. And like any other LIFX light, this bulb works in a group, allows for scheduling, and supports controls via voice commands through Google or Alexa. It’s a powerful bulb for any environment and the perfect boost to any home security setup.
- Color Range: 1500-9000K
- Environment: Indoor/Outdoor
- Wattage: 11.5 watts
- Brightness: 1100 lumens
LIFX Color BR30 Nightvision with Infrared
If you have a small lamp or fixture that needs an equally small bulb, don’t fret – LIFX has you covered with its Mini White bulb. The pint-sized smart bulb is dimmable and offers a single natural warm white 2700K temperature option.
Controlling the light is as simple as opening up the companion mobile app or using voice commands through either Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. Set up the bulb to run on a schedule through the LIFX app, and have it turn on when you get home or slowly brighten each morning as you wake up. While the Mini White bulb isn’t the most luminous option, topping out at 800 lumens, and it lacks the color and effects features of the more premium bulbs, it’s a solid choice for anyone wanting a smart bulb in a small form factor.
- Color Range: 2700K
- Environment: Indoor
- Wattage: 9 watts
- Brightness: 800 lumens
While LIFX is mostly known for its lightstrips and traditional-looking bulbs, it also offers the uniquely-designed Color Candle E12 bulb. This smart LED light mimics the light of a candle both in its visual design and its built-in flickering effect! The flame-like bulb offers a wide range of color temperatures, from 1500-9000K, making it easy to display a cozy warm white light.
Polychrome technology gives this single bulb multi-zone multicolor abilities. So if you don’t want a single boring color, pick four or five of your favorites in the app, and enjoy them. However, remember that this small bulb doesn’t put out a ton of light; it maxes out at just 480 lumens, making it best suited for a bedside table or desk. It works with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa and is also available in a white-only model if you don’t want a rainbow effect.
- Color Range: 1500-9000K
- Environment: Indoor
- Wattage: 5 watts
- Brightness: 480 lumens
LIFX Candle Color E14 Smart Bulb
If you’ve ever wanted a smart LED bulb to do more than light up your room, the LIFX Clean Antibacterial HEV bulb might be just what you’re looking for. Its built-in High Energy Visible LEDs (HEV) mode kills select bacteria on most surfaces it hits without damaging your skin or pets. When you’re not using the bulb for light, it switches into HEV mode and can run on a cleaning cycle each night. HEV mode does not use UV light, making it safe, plus it even works on common objects like keys, headphones, and gaming controllers.
The standard light mode works like any other LIFX bulb and effortlessly displays any of the available 550 billion color options in the mobile app. It reaches 1100 lumens, making it capable of lighting up any room in your house, and it has a hefty color temperature range from 1500 to 9000K. The Clean bulb supports running on a schedule, works with effects and scenes, and is the perfect addition to the desk in your home office.
- Color Range: 1500-9000K
- Environment: Indoor
- Wattage: 11.5 watts
- Brightness: 1100 lumens
LIFX Clean Antibacterial HEV Smart Bulb
Other important smart light features
LIFX’s smart LED bulbs and lightstrips are fun and easy to install and use, but there are a few things worth knowing before you buy one. Most notably, these lights require a Wi-Fi connection, a compatible smart home ecosystem (either Google or Alexa), and the LIFX mobile app to work.
One of the best features of LIFX bulbs is that they don’t require a separate hub, unlike Philips Hue lights, like the Gradient Lightstrip. Each LIFX bulb connects to your Wi-Fi network with its own IP address, making your router responsible for that internet connection. With Philips Hue, bulbs connect to a hub. The hub connects to the internet, ensuring a more stable connection as it’s just one device rather than multiple. While there’s a slight chance that LIFX bulbs might have occasional connection issues, their hub-less operation is a big plus for those who already have other hubs in their home or want a frill-free smart light setup. Each brand has fans for these reasons, but it’s up to you to decide which is best for your home.
Installing and setting up LIFX bulbs is a cinch! All you need to do is screw in the bulb, download the app, and follow the prompts. The LIFX app makes it easy to control power for individual bulbs, put them into groups, change color, apply effects and scenes, dim them, or put it on a daily schedule. Who could ask for more from a smart light?
The best LIFX light for you
LIFX offers a solid variety of smart LED bulbs and lightstrips that work for all rooms and scenarios. The LIFX Color E26 is an excellent pick if you’re just entering the smart light world, as it easily replaces standard light bulbs. It’s super bright, offers a full array of cool and warm white temperatures, and has billions of color options.
The LIFX Lightstrip 120-inch Kit is a fun alternative to bulbs. It offers a bold and rich glow under your TV, under your kitchen cabinets, behind your giant gaming monitor, or anywhere else. The modular design of the strip allows you to add additional strips or trim them to size as needed. Plus, it’s super bright, supports multi-zone and multi-color customization, and even integrates with Razer Chroma for the ultimate pro gamer setup.
And if you’re looking to stick to a budget, LIFX’s simple White E26 bulb offers up warm white light without the other frills for a fraction of the price of the other bulbs and strips. Despite its stripped-down vibe, it still offers a few nice features, like the ability to dim it down to one percent and easy automatic scheduling setup.
