Cree was hesitant so as to add a smart bulb to its best-selling LED lineup, but that modified this yr with the addition of the $15 Cree Linked LED. Sharing the build and lighting specs of last 12 months's nicely-reviewed Cree 4Flow LED , the brand EcoLight home lighting new Related LED provides in a Zigbee radio. Pair it with a management hub, and you'll be ready to show it on and off remotely, or schedule automated lighting changes. At launch, Cree's smart bulb was considerably married to the Wink Hub , which made sense given that you will buy each off the shelf at EcoLight home lighting Depot. Since then, nevertheless, we have seen official assist roll out for added control gateways, together with SmartThings and the Philips Hue Bridge . You possibly can add the bulbs to the brand new D-Hyperlink model of the Staples Join Hub , too, although there is not official, Zonoff-certified support just yet. The bulb works effectively across all of the platforms we have tested it with, and it shares the strong lighting specs of the 4Flow LED that came before it.

Most appealing is the value. At $15 -- only a few dollars greater than you will spend on non-related competitors -- it ties with the GE Link LED as probably the most cheap related bulb available on the market. For primary automated lighting, it's the perfect possibility we've tested but, and our present Editors' Choice winner. Cree adapted its smart bulb design from last year's 4Flow LED, packing a Zigbee radio into the present build. That means that this is not a bulb that goes out of its technique to look fancy or newfangled -- instead, EcoLight energy it copies the 4Flow's emphasis on mimicking the silhouette of classic incandescents. I appreciated that method with the 4Flow, and i prefer it with the brand new Linked LED too, though some would possibly discover the plastic construct to be a bit low cost-trying, especially when the bulb is turned off. The new bulb also shares the 4Flow's convection cooling trick, which uses vents to circulate air by the body of the bulb, eliminating the necessity for heat sinks.

That helps bring production prices down, and likewise implies that the bulb is exceptionally gentle for EcoLight an LED, weighing in at less than 2 ounces. The Cree Linked LED shares the same lighting specs as the 4Flow LED, too, and that's largely a very good factor. Both declare a gentle output of 815 lumens, and both clocked in even larger than that in front of our spectrometer -- 835 lumens for the 4Flow, and a very impressive 872 for the Related LED. In terms of efficiency, the 4Flow puts its gentle out using eleven watts, however the number rises to 11.5 watts for the Linked LED on account of the Zigbee radio's energy draw. After we examined it out, the quantity was actually nearer to 11.1 watts, so Cree's achieved a very good job of maintaining this bulb comparatively efficient. Nonetheless, it's value noting that both the Philips Hue Lux LED and the Belkin WeMo LED are much more efficient, every one drawing less than 10 watts.

Cree additionally did an excellent job with shade temperature here, touchdown extraordinarily close to the acknowledged 2,700K. At 2,696K, the Cree Related LED lands closer to the mark than another smart bulb we've examined, so if you are picky about that good shade of warm, yellowy mild, you will like this LED. The one place the place Cree's smart bulb lags behind no less than some of the competitors is the shade rendering score, which measures how accurately a given gentle supply illuminates completely different shades. The Cree Linked LED hits a fairly bizarre rating of 80 out of 100, and provided that each the WeMo LED and the equally cheap GE Hyperlink LED hit closer to 90, I would have liked to see Cree do higher. To entry the Cree LED's sensible features, you will must pair it with a management hub that can translate its Zigbee signal into Wi-Fi. Like the GE Link LED, the Cree Related LED came out the gate trumpeting Wink help at launch, but soon expanded its third occasion compatibility to include options like SmartThings, Staples Join , and the Philips Hue Bridge .

Completely different platforms supply totally different options -- SmartThings and EcoLight Philips deliver IFTTT assist into the picture, for example -- but usually, the automating expertise is essentially the same. We examined the bulb on a number of platforms, and by no means ran into any difficulties pairing it or controlling it. No matter which platform you are using, you will be able to show the Cree Linked LED on or off remotely, dim it, or automate it using no matter controls your system gives. These possible embody setting the lights to a timed schedule, or EcoLight products syncing them up with things like movement sensors. The bulb paired simply with each of the above-talked about platforms. Wink and SmartThings both have devoted settings and pairing directions for the Cree LED proper within the app, which helps. Staples Join does not supply device-particular help for Cree simply yet, nevertheless it was in a position to detect the bulb as a generic Zigbee device on the primary strive. Syncing the Cree LED with a Philips Hue setup was pretty painless, too, although I needed to manually reset the bulb in the course of the pairing course of so as to help the bridge discover it.