LIFX

Since Feit Electric purchased Lifx, they have fixed many of the long-term, frustrating bugs; especially those related to onboarding with iOS devices. That process is far more stable and reliable than it has been in several years. The ability to reset individual bulbs, within the app is also a welcome addition, especially when trying to work with bulbs in high ceilings. The one, truly frustrating issue that remains is with bulbs intermittently falling offline in the Lifx app (Lifx Cloud). These are connected to a 2.4 GHz network and, more importantly, are still reachable via local network connection, when bypassing the Lifx Cloud. (I use the Home Assistant ecosystem for local smart home control. While I frequently see several Lifx bulbs offline in the Lifx app, I can immediately switch over to the Home Assistant app, which will show the bulbs online and will allow me to control the lights, without any problems. ) Home Assistant bypasses the cloud, and connects to all devices via local IP or other wireless protocol; unfortunately, it does not give me the full spectrum of color options, effects, and “painting” that the LIFX app provides. It would be nice if the Lifx division of Feit could focus on this connectivity issue for their next round of debugging.

I’ve had mine around my desk for about 4-5 years and and nothing has changed with the UI… nothing has been changed for the most part and nothing has been added. For premium lights and very expensive lights you’d think they’d at LEAST add more features to the app keeping it fresh for ex: adding more theme presets. Govee lights app has WAY more features and presets that they constantly update and add to with even a heavy emphasis on community integration. Govee is the cheap option and their app leaves this one in the dust and it doesn’t even come close… doesn't add up. Opinions aside that’s not good at all, if these lights were just as cheap as other options with betters apps then why care but these are pricey and consider premium. No complaints tho about the product… the product works great and I’ve had no issues with them and they’ve lasted me years… but so has my Govee… in conclusion, the app could use fresh new features with more innovative UI amongst other things… I mean if y’all are struggling to find new things just go look at what y’all’s competitors are doing just for a few seconds and that’s all it will take to give you a ton of inspiration.

I really do love the lights offered by LIFX, I switched from Phillips hue and fitted my whole apartment with them since I needed smaller bulbs than what hue offered. I have nothing bad to say about their products *after* the setup process. Trying to setup these lights was not fun, especially when you’re setting up 15+ at the same time, and it honestly made me miss the fact that Phillips hue uses a hub on Ethernet instead of connecting each individual bulb to WiFi and HomeKit. After around 8 bulbs were setup the process became extremely unreliable as if the network was saturated despite the fact I had the lights on a separate access point with a special IoT WiFi network. This might be my fault or my router but hey the app asked for a rating after hours of googling and resetting bulbs over and over because HomeKit is really good at having “unexpected errors occur” TL;DR these lights are great but be warned your experience may suffer with too many.