Cree was hesitant so as to add a smart bulb to its greatest-promoting LED lineup, but that modified this year with the addition of the $15 Cree Connected LED. Sharing the build and lighting specs of last year's well-reviewed Cree 4Flow LED , the brand new Linked LED provides in a Zigbee radio. Pair it with a control hub, and you'll be in a position to show it on and EcoLight dimmable off remotely, or schedule automated lighting adjustments. At launch, Cree's smart bulb was considerably married to the Wink Hub , which made sense given that you'll purchase each off the shelf at House Depot. Since then, nonetheless, we've seen official help roll out for extra control gateways, including SmartThings and the Philips Hue Bridge . You may add the bulbs to the brand new D-Link version of the Staples Connect Hub , EcoLight dimmable too, though there is not official, Zonoff-certified help simply but. The bulb works well throughout all of the platforms we have tested it with, and it shares the robust lighting specs of the 4Flow LED that got here before it.

Most interesting is the value. At $15 -- only a few dollars greater than you may spend on non-connected competitors -- it ties with the GE Link LED as essentially the most inexpensive related bulb in the marketplace. For basic automated lighting, it's the perfect possibility we've examined but, and our present Editors' Selection winner. Cree adapted its good bulb design from final yr's 4Flow LED, packing a Zigbee radio into the existing construct. That means that this isn't a bulb that goes out of its strategy to look fancy or newfangled -- as a substitute, it copies the 4Flow's emphasis on mimicking the silhouette of basic incandescents. I liked that method with the 4Flow, energy-saving LED bulbs and i prefer it with the brand new Related LED too, although some might discover the plastic build to be a bit low-cost-trying, particularly when the bulb is turned off. The new bulb additionally shares the 4Flow's convection cooling trick, which makes use of vents to circulate air by the body of the bulb, eliminating the necessity for heat sinks.

That helps convey production prices down, and likewise means that the bulb is exceptionally light for an LED, weighing in at lower than 2 ounces. The Cree Related LED shares the same lighting specs because the 4Flow LED, too, and that is largely a very good thing. Both declare a mild output of 815 lumens, and each clocked in even higher than that in entrance of our spectrometer -- 835 lumens for the 4Flow, EcoLight smart bulbs and a really impressive 872 for the Connected LED. When it comes to efficiency, the 4Flow puts its gentle out utilizing 11 watts, but the number rises to 11.5 watts for the Linked LED on account of the Zigbee radio's energy draw. Once we examined it out, the number was really nearer to 11.1 watts, so Cree's completed a superb job of preserving this bulb relatively efficient. Nonetheless, it is price noting that both the Philips Hue Lux LED and the Belkin WeMo LED are much more environment friendly, every one drawing lower than 10 watts.

Cree also did a very good job with shade temperature here, landing extremely close to the acknowledged 2,700K. At 2,696K, the Cree Linked LED lands closer to the mark than another good bulb we've tested, EcoLight LED so if you are choosy about that good shade of heat, yellowy mild, you'll like this LED. The one place where Cree's sensible bulb lags behind at the least a number of the competitors is the colour rendering score, which measures how accurately a given light supply illuminates totally different shades. The Cree Connected LED hits a reasonably odd rating of 80 out of 100, and given that both the WeMo LED and the equally inexpensive GE Hyperlink LED hit closer to 90, I might have preferred to see Cree do better. To access the Cree LED's sensible features, you may must pair it with a management hub that may translate its Zigbee signal into Wi-Fi. Just like the GE Hyperlink LED, the Cree Related LED got here out the gate trumpeting Wink support at launch, but quickly expanded its third social gathering compatibility to include choices like SmartThings, Staples Join , and the Philips Hue Bridge .

Completely different platforms offer completely different features -- SmartThings and Philips bring IFTTT support into the image, for example -- but on the whole, the automating expertise is basically the identical. We tested the bulb on a number of platforms, and never ran into any difficulties pairing it or controlling it. Regardless of which platform you're using, you may be in a position to turn the Cree Related LED on or off remotely, dim it, or EcoLight reviews automate it utilizing no matter controls your system affords. These possible embrace setting the lights to a timed schedule, or syncing them up with issues like motion sensors. The bulb paired easily with every of the above-talked about platforms. Wink and SmartThings each have devoted settings and EcoLight dimmable pairing instructions for EcoLight lighting the Cree LED proper in the app, which helps. Staples Connect does not provide machine-specific assist for Cree just but, however it was in a position to detect the bulb as a generic Zigbee device on the first strive. Syncing the Cree LED with a Philips Hue setup was pretty painless, too, though I wanted to manually reset the bulb throughout the pairing process in order to assist the bridge find it.

Edit

Pub: 15 Aug 2025 22:21 UTC

Views: 4