LIFX Color 1000 review – smart colourful light bulb

Service Integration

Things get more exciting when you integrate LIFX bulbs into other services and platforms. Along with Google Now and Cortana, LIFX will happily co-operate with IFTTT, Nest, Samsung SmartThings and Logitech’s Harmony remote controls. At home, I used the Color 1000 with both IFTTT and a Logitech Harmony Elite remote to great effect.

Using IFTTT’s ‘recipes’, you can set up easy triggers such as having the lights fade on when you enter a certain area or fade off when you leave. Setting up Schedules is also easier from IFTTT, and you can even use IFTTT to make the lights flash a certain colour whenever you get an e-mail. The only issue is the speed of the IFTTT triggers can be hit and miss. For instance, sometimes the e-mail trigger would happen 10 minutes after I got an e-mail notification on my phone or desktop, which rather negates its usefulness. Similarly, geolocation-based IFTTT triggers can also be inconsistent due to the small distances you travel round your home.

Another annoyance was that I couldn’t find an easy way to set a sleep timer. I had IFTTT set to automatically begin fading my bedroom light from 10.15pm onwards, taking an hour to eventually turn off. This was designed to try and lull me to go to sleep earlier, which in part worked. Obviously a bulb can’t undo years of terrible sleep patterns, but it did help. However, if I wanted to keep the bulb on beyond 11.15pm, I would have to turn it back on again to override the trigger. This then left me with no easy way to begin dimming the bulb again unless I set up a new Schedule. Instead, a simple ‘Sleep’ option with set periods might have made things a bit easier for those more ad hoc occasions. 

That’s partly one of the main limitations of using smart light bulbs, as you need to leave the switch turned on at all times and manage turning them on or off through their companion apps or integration. They can also be confusing for visitors or children, as they might start using the physical switch to turn them on or off, which makes the bulbs lose their network connection and therefore cease to be smart. At times I did wish for the simple option of just hitting a light switch rather than trying to find my phone, but at least there are devices such as the Logitech remote, or Flic smart switches, which make this a little bit easier. 

Conclusion

As an alternative to Philips Hue, the LIFX Color 1000 makes a compelling case. It’s bright, has a wide array of colour options and integrates well with other services. Aside from its unwieldy size, which might make it impossible to use in every fitting, not to mention a few software annoyances with the app and IFTTT integration, the Color 1000 gets a lot of things right. Compared to the equivalent Philips HUE LED Light Bulb, the Color 1000 is more expensive, but once you factor in the need for a separate Philips Hue Bridge, the cost here becomes a lot more palatable. 

However, as a direct replacement for your entire lighting system, I’d still recommend investing in Philips’ Hue system, as the LIFX’s lack of physical controls just isn’t well-suited for use throughout your entire home. It’s a great introduction to smart lighting if you’re just starting out, but when you currently have to rely on apps to turn them on and off, they’re much more appropriate for use with secondary lighting, such as lamps, than your main light fittings.