Ever because the Philips Hue LED($199.Ninety nine at Verizon) lighting package hit the digital home market, energy-efficient bulbs there was a gentle uptick in competing sensible bulb products like the LIFX LED Mild Bulb( at Amazon) and the Related by TCP Good Lighting System in addition to current product bulletins from electronics giants LG and Samsung. Add the Lumen TL800 from Tabu to that record. Priced at $69.99 per bulb (but out there online for round $50), the TL800 uses Bluetooth wireless expertise to speak with your smartphone through a neat little app that permits you to flip lights on and off, choose colors, EcoLight reviews and have the lights behave a certain approach when you could have an incoming phone call. In contrast to the Philips and TCP bulbs the TL800 would not require a bridge, energy-efficient bulbs but it surely does not connect to the Web either, which implies you can't control it when you're away from residence or have it interact with different house automation units. With a vented metal casing separating the round glass dome from the Edison screw base, energy-efficient bulbs the TL800 seems prefer it could be right at house in an Apollo spacecraft.
The bulb measures 4.Seventy five inches in size and puts out only four hundred lumens, which is equal to a 40 watt incandescent bulb. That is not very bright when in comparison with the LIFX (1,017 lumens), TCP (800 lumens), and Philips (600 lumens) bulbs. As with the Philips and LIFX bulbs, it could actually show 16 million colours, however because it does not connect with the Internet you cannot control it with dwelling automation hubs from companies resembling Revolv( at Amazon) and SmartThings($149.99 at Amazon). Nor can you utilize the popular IFTTT (If This Then That) web service to have it activate and off or change colors based mostly on things like Facebook requests, Foursquare notifications, and ESPN sports scores. You do not get a lot in the way of directions with the TL800, however there's not much to elucidate. I screwed it right into a lamp in my office, downloaded the app onto my iOS smartphone, made certain Bluetooth was enabled on my machine, and opened the app.
The Lumen app is uncomplicated and easy to make use of and lets you control up to 10 bulbs at a time. You'll be able to management each bulb individually or management a gaggle of bulbs. The house page lists all installed energy-efficient bulbs and shows you what color they're presently set to. Pressing a bulb icon takes you to a web page where you possibly can select color or heat white settings and switch the bulb on or off. When you select the heat white setting you are introduced with a monochrome wheel that permits you to manually modify brightness, or you may select one of four brightness presets (90, 70, 50, or 30 %). Under the wheel is a Call Alert icon that takes you to a page where you may configure the light to flash a specific colour when your cellphone has an incoming call. There's additionally a Wake-Up timer that will turn the sunshine on utilizing a dim heat white setting that progressively gets brighter to create a sunrise effect, and a Proximity possibility that may have a mild activate to a preset shade and brightness when your telephone comes into vary (about 30 toes).
In shade mode you get a wheel that lets you choose a shade for each bulb and assign a coloration brightness setting. For dimmable LED bulbs deep, robust colours you set the brightness degree to the darkest setting