Mood lighting made
easy... and cheap.
If you are considering filling your house with smart home
technology but just can't quite manage the initial cost, relax. If you've ever
wanted to control your lighting with your phone, as with a gadget like Philips Hue, you might have to pay as much as £200 to get it going. That price barrier
is something that Chinese firm Yeelight are overcoming with their own range of
smart lighting.
Recently started trading in the UK, Yeelight produce smart
lighting that can be centrally controlled with an app, just like the Philips
system. However, for now anyway, Yeelight products use Bluetooth to directly
connect to your phone, as opposed to your home's WiFi network. What you might
be losing in versatility and range, you're sure as Hell making back on the
cost.
We were sent Yeelight's signature two products; the Yeelight
Smart Bulb, and the Yeelight Smart Light Strip. First up, the bulb...
Just like a normal energy-saving LED bulb, it screws (or
twists - bayonet version is also available) straight into the fitting and can
be switch on by simply flicking on the switch. However, pop on the Bluetooth on
your phone or tablet with the Yeelight Blue app downloaded, and you can very easily
connect to the bulb and let the fun start.
By way of an easy to use wheel, you can whip your thumb
around to cycle through millions of colours, with the bulb instantly changing
with you. You can also control the brightness, moving from very bright (as with
a convention light bulb) to dimming it all the way down to off. So any colour
you want, at any brightness you prefer - pretty good so far.
But the app also sets you play around with certain presets.
Flick to the favourites page and you can select the likes of 'Nature' (quite
dim and green), 'Reading' (clean and gentle white), and 'Romance' (a bit pink -
which much be a pretty sexy colour in China). You can also set your own
favourites by 'saving' your current colour and brightness, allowing you to
quickly set it whenever you want. Oh, and there is also a 'Party' mode, where
the colours quickly change. Without thumping music and any friends there to
enjoy it with us, it made us sad.
And the Strip Lights... Included in the box is around two
metres of very flexible rubbery lighting, with embedded LEDs set inside every
inch or so. This works just like the bulb in that millions of colours can be
cycled through, as well as having total control over the brightness. The Strip
Lighting works a little differently in that it must be plugged into an electrical
socket (nice long power lead included, fortunately) and then can be stuck,
using the self-adhesive backing, to wherever you want it.
The Strip Lights are great to install somewhere subtle like
under a kitchen cabinet or below a raised sofa. The combined power of all those
little LEDs adds up to make the light very bright on the fullest setting, and
we had fun playing around to illuminate interesting places in interesting ways.
We really like the Yeelight range and think that it certainly
gives more established (and more expensive) ranges a run for their money.
Bulb: around £40
Strip Lights: around £50
Visit www.yeelight.co.uk
