Cree was hesitant to add a wise bulb to its finest-selling LED lineup, but that changed this 12 months with the addition of the $15 Cree Connected LED. Sharing the build and EcoLight lighting specs of final year's nicely-reviewed Cree 4Flow LED , the new Connected LED provides in a Zigbee radio. Pair it with a management hub, and you'll be able to turn it on and off remotely, or schedule automated lighting modifications. At launch, Cree's good bulb was considerably married to the Wink Hub , which made sense given that you'll purchase both off the shelf at Dwelling Depot. Since then, nevertheless, we've seen official support roll out for extra control gateways, including SmartThings and the Philips Hue Bridge . You'll be able to add the bulbs to the new D-Link model of the Staples Join Hub , too, although there is not official, Zonoff-certified assist simply yet. The bulb works properly across the entire platforms we've tested it with, and it shares the strong lighting specs of the 4Flow LED that got here earlier than it.
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Most appealing is the price. At $15 -- just a few dollars greater than you'll spend on non-related competitors -- it ties with the GE Hyperlink LED as essentially the most inexpensive linked bulb in the marketplace. For basic automated lighting, it's the most effective option we have examined but, and our present Editors' Choice winner. Cree adapted its good bulb design from final yr's 4Flow LED, packing a Zigbee radio into the existing construct. That signifies that this isn't a bulb that goes out of its technique to look fancy or newfangled -- as an alternative, it copies the 4Flow's emphasis on mimicking the silhouette of basic incandescents. I liked that method with the 4Flow, and i like it with the new Related LED too, although some might find the plastic construct to be a bit low cost-looking, particularly when the bulb is turned off. The new bulb additionally shares the 4Flow's convection cooling trick, which uses vents to circulate air by way of the physique of the bulb, eliminating the need for heat sinks.
That helps deliver manufacturing costs down, and also implies that the bulb is exceptionally light for 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 is largely a good factor. Each declare a gentle output of 815 lumens, and both clocked in even larger than that in entrance of our spectrometer -- 835 lumens for the 4Flow, and a very spectacular 872 for the Linked LED. When it comes to efficiency, the 4Flow puts its light out utilizing 11 watts, however the number rises to 11.5 watts for the Related LED on account of the Zigbee radio's energy draw. After we tested it out, the number was truly closer to 11.1 watts, so Cree's completed a superb job of preserving this bulb relatively environment friendly. Nonetheless, it's price noting that each the Philips Hue Lux LED and the Belkin WeMo LED are much more efficient, every one drawing less than 10 watts.
Cree additionally did a very good job with colour temperature here, landing extremely close to the acknowledged 2,700K. At 2,696K, the Cree Related LED lands nearer to the mark than every other good bulb we have tested, so if you are choosy about that good shade of warm, yellowy gentle, you may like this LED. The one place the place Cree's smart bulb lags behind a minimum of a few of the competition is the shade rendering score, which measures how precisely a given gentle source illuminates completely different shades. The Cree Related LED hits a relatively unusual score of eighty out of 100, and on condition that each the WeMo LED and the equally cheap GE Hyperlink LED hit nearer to 90, I'd have appreciated to see Cree do better. To access the Cree LED's smart features, you will have to pair it with a management hub that may translate its Zigbee signal into Wi-Fi. Like the GE Hyperlink LED, the Cree Linked LED got here out the gate trumpeting Wink assist at launch, but soon expanded its third social gathering compatibility to include options like SmartThings, Staples Connect , and the Philips Hue Bridge .
Completely different platforms supply different options -- SmartThings and Philips deliver IFTTT assist into the image, for example -- but typically, the automating experience is largely the identical. We examined the bulb on multiple platforms, and by no means ran into any difficulties pairing it or controlling it. Regardless of which platform you are utilizing, you'll be in a position to show the Cree Related LED on or off remotely, dim it, or automate it using no matter controls your system presents. These possible include setting the lights to a timed schedule, or syncing them up with things like movement sensors. The bulb paired easily with each of the above-talked about platforms. Wink and SmartThings each have dedicated settings and pairing directions for the Cree LED right in the app, which helps. Staples Join doesn't supply gadget-particular support for Cree just yet, but it surely was in a position to detect the bulb as a generic Zigbee system on the first try. Syncing the Cree LED with a Philips Hue setup was pretty painless, EcoLight too, though I needed to manually reset the bulb throughout the pairing course of in order to assist the bridge find it.