Smart ray fixtures are quickly becoming a thing, making it a small easier to adhd colorful, fun, and useful lighting effects to much areas of your location than you traditionally tin pinch smart ray bulbs. While these types of fixtures person been rather pricey, smart lighting institution Lifx conscionable announced its new Super Color Ceiling Light starting astatine conscionable $89.97.
The full-color smart LED ray fixture offers 2,500 lumens of dimmable light. It useful pinch move lighting effects done Lifx’s app, including a daytime entity pinch clouds floating by, a nighttime entity pinch meteors, an invigorating sunrise, and a relaxing sunset.
It besides has tunable achromatic ray ranging from 1,500K to 9,000K, allowing it to activity arsenic everything from a soft nightlight to a superb task light. The Wi-Fi-enabled fixture fits flush to nan ceiling and features some uplighting and downlighting, which tin beryllium controlled separately, and tin beryllium group connected schedules and dimmed utilizing nan Lifx app.
Image: Lifx
As a wired light, it needs to beryllium hardwired and person a changeless powerfulness proviso — meaning, if you ligament it to a modular switch, that move will request to enactment on. Lifx says it will connect to a modular junction container for easy installation. At 15 inches successful diameter, nan ceiling ray is rather mini — particularly compared to Aqara’s smart ceiling ray aliases Nanoleaf’s Skylight ceiling panels — truthful it’s astir apt champion suited to a chamber aliases hallway alternatively than a main surviving space.
The Aqara and Nanoleaf options, which commencement astatine $150 and $250 respectively, are importantly much costly than Lifx’s caller light. Lifx’s ceiling ray is besides a 3rd of nan value of nan new Philips Hue Datura ceiling light, which costs $300 for 15 inches. While some Aqara and Hue usage a hub pinch their lighting products, nan Lifx does not since it useful complete 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. However, successful my experience, lights that activity complete Wi-Fi tin beryllium little reliable than those that trust connected a hub.
Image: Lifx
Lifx has said it’s transitioning its full statement to support nan caller Matter smart location standard, and nan caller ceiling ray is Matter-enabled, truthful it useful pinch Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Samsung SmartThings (you’ll request a Matter controller from nan level you want to use). Smart location integration besides allows for sound power of nan light.
Lifx is 1 of nan original smart lighting companies. It was purchased by US-based Feit Electric successful 2022 and has since released a number of caller products including an outdoor lighting line. The marque has agelong been known for its rich | colors and precocious brightness arsenic good arsenic its expertise to activity complete Wi-Fi and not require a dedicated hub. But traditionally, it has been 1 of nan much costly brands. This displacement into much affordable offerings is simply a invited 1 and mightiness beryllium giving nan folks astatine Philips Hue immoderate sleepless nights.
The institution has besides developed a polychrome exertion that merges colors much people to springiness disconnected an ombre look from a azygous light. I’ve tested this connected its string lights, and it useful very well. The caller ceiling ray has nan aforesaid tech, and Mark Hollands, main exertion serviceman of Lifx, explains that “it uses a grid of lighting zones to push nan boundaries pinch soft area blending, elemental gradients, and move moving effects.”
The Lifx Super Color Ceiling ray is disposable now from The Home Depot starting astatine $89.97. It comes successful achromatic aliases achromatic trim, pinch nan achromatic trim offering a somewhat higher 2,850 lumens, compared to nan achromatic trim’s 2,500 lumens.
What is Matter?
Matter is simply a caller smart location interoperability standard designed to supply a communal connection for connected devices to pass locally successful your location without relying connected a unreality connection. It is built to beryllium secure and private, easy to group up, and wide compatible.
Developed by Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung (and others), Matter is an open-sourced, IP-based connectivity package furniture for smart location devices. It useful complete Wi-Fi, ethernet, and nan low-power mesh networking protocol Thread and presently supports complete 30 instrumentality types. These see lighting, thermostats, locks, refrigerators, dishwashers, dryers, ovens, fume alarms, aerial value monitors, EV chargers, and more.
A smart location gadget pinch nan Matter logo tin beryllium group up and utilized pinch immoderate Matter-compatible ecosystem via a Matter controller and controlled by them simultaneously, a characteristic called Multi-Admin.
Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, and Apple Home are immoderate awesome smart location platforms supporting Matter, on pinch hundreds of instrumentality manufacturers.