Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Extremely easy installation
- A bevy of lighting features thanks to dual zones
- Very high quality light, with ample range
Cons
- Built-in wiring connectors aren’t the most secure and won’t work for all environments
- LIFX app remains a bit obtuse
- Draws quite a bit of power
Our Verdict
Upgrade your ceiling lighting with this flush mount smart light, a sleek and versatile device that installs with zero trouble.
Price When Reviewed
$89.97
Best Prices Today: LIFX SuperColor Ceiling
The revival of the LIFX brand continues with its latest product, an interior light fixture designed to mount flush against the ceiling. The LIFX SuperColor Ceiling light can replace an existing flush mount fixture, pendant, or chandelier. In my case, I used a third-party retrofit receptacle (this one was $25) to install the light where a canister light previously was.
Out of the box, the LIFX Ceiling isn’t much to look at: A flat-walled disc 15 inches across and less than 3 inches in height. The ceiling-side portion of the light features an insulated bundle of wiring with the usual three wires–hot, neutral, and ground–each with a push-in wire connector already attached.
The LIFX SuperColor Ceiling light has become a delightful part of my home office, all with a minimum of fuss to get it into place.
Installation and setup
Getting the light into place is incredibly easy–one of the easiest I’ve ever encountered doing hardwired residential electrical work.
A sturdy mounting bracket attaches to the receptacle in the ceiling with two included bolts. Once you connect the three wires to the LIFX Ceiling’s connectors, you’re ready to rotate it into place with no additional hardware required. This design is clever and similar to the way a smoke detector rotates into place on its mounting bracket.
This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart bulbs.
Even better, a handy clip holds the light a few inches below the ceiling, giving you enough room to work while you complete the wiring connections–a perennial problem when working overhead. Thanks to this clip system, one person can easily complete the job in just a few minutes.
The LIFX’s installation process stands in stark contrast with my recent experience with Aqara’s similar ceiling light, a product which looks great but which has none of this attention to detail when it comes to ease of installation. My Aqara install was an hour-long nightmare that required two people and a lot of agony along the way. In contrast, LIFX has made the physical setup almost idiot-proof.
There is one thing that I don’t love, and that’s the push-in style electrical connectors. These just aren’t as secure as regular wire nuts–and they don’t work well if you’re not connecting to traditional copper household wiring.
The LIFX Ceiling’s push-in style electrical connectors just aren’t as secure as regular wire nuts.
The LIFX Ceiling’s push-in style electrical connectors just aren’t as secure as regular wire nuts.
Christopher Null/Foundry
The LIFX Ceiling’s push-in style electrical connectors just aren’t as secure as regular wire nuts.
Christopher Null/Foundry
Christopher Null/Foundry
The retrofit receptacle I bought uses the thinner, braided wire that’s common with smart home gear, and it just doesn’t play well with those push-in connectors. I ended up cutting the connectors off, stripping the ends of the leads, and using regular wire nuts to better secure them in place.
I doubt most users will go to this kind of trouble, however, and I have no reason to expect the connectors would fail, especially if you are connecting to more rigid, household wiring.
Once in place, the Matter-compatible LIFX Ceiling light sets up quickly with a scan of a QR code printed on the included manual. (Don’t lose this, should you need to set things up again.)
The light connected quickly to my Wi-Fi network (2.4GHz only is supported), and management is identical to other LIFX products in LIFX’s app. It was automatically added to iOS Home and Alexa; Google Home, SmartThings, and Razer Chroma are all also supported.
Features and operation
The Ceiling Light has two zones which can be managed independently–a downlight, and an accent uplight–echoing the operation of the Aqara ceiling light.
Once you get the hang of the LIFX app, it’s easy to set a range of white (1500K to 9000K), full-color, or dynamic options for either side of the light fixture.
The new LIFX Ceiling light offers a powerful downlight and an accenting uplight, each individually tunable.
The new LIFX Ceiling light offers a powerful downlight and an accenting uplight, each individually tunable.
Christopher Null/Foundry
The new LIFX Ceiling light offers a powerful downlight and an accenting uplight, each individually tunable.
Christopher Null/Foundry
Christopher Null/Foundry
The downlight is divided into 56 individually configurable zones, which means that if you have enough time on your hands, you can set up some amazingly complicated designs. I’m using a pair of the lights in my office and have them both set with a very warm, understated downlight plus a bright green uplight that works nicely as an accent with the green walls in the room.
This lighting scheme looks great–both soothing and steady–but there are other options too, including a color-shifting fireworks display, clouds that float across the ceiling, or a bumping effect that pulses in time with ambient sound.
All those light effects are there in the app–though I found it far too easy to accidentally overwrite my saved scenes by accidentally tapping the disk icon that appears during configuration. As well, the app sometimes displays overall brightness as a percentage and the numerical color temperature of white light…but sometimes it doesn’t. As such, fine-tuning your setup can often be frustrating.
LIFX’s home page offers easy access to all devices, but individual device management remains a bit obtuse.
LIFX’s home page offers easy access to all devices, but individual device management remains a bit obtuse.
Christopher Null/Foundry
LIFX’s home page offers easy access to all devices, but individual device management remains a bit obtuse.
Christopher Null/Foundry
Christopher Null/Foundry
Performance
The LIFX Ceiling Light puts out a maximum of 2500 lumens of brightness (I have it dialed way down) and draws 47 watts, which is certainly a lot more than the 8 watts consumed by the LED bulb that was previously in the fixture. That’s a significant difference, and it’s understandable if the LIFX’s power draw is a turn-off considering today’s energy-conscious zeitgeist.
One more complaint: The light produced from the two fixtures I have installed doesn’t look exactly the same even with the same settings. I assigned both lights to a scene, then set the color for both simultaneously. They were visibly different in both uplight (color) and downlight (white) settings, and it took considerable tuning in the app to get things reasonably identical.
Should you buy the LIFX SuperColor Ceiling light?
At $90, the LIFX SuperColor Ceiling light is cheaper than I expected it would be given its overall quality and versatility (and LIFX’s generally high price point). It looks great even when it’s turned off, and it can alternately blend into the background or become something of a conversation piece.
In my weeks of using the product, it’s become a delightful part of my home office, all with a minimum of fuss to get it into place. The LIFX SuperColor Ceiling has also become our top overall pick for smart ceiling lights.
