Smart lighting prices have come a long way. At $34.99 for a pack of four (which works out to less than $9 each), the Wyze Bulb Color is the most affordable smart color bulb we’ve tested. You can control it from your phone without a hub, or with your voice via Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. It offers ample smart features for the price, including support for custom scenes, device-triggered automations, scheduling, and sleep routines that help you gradually wind down at night and wake up in the morning. You simply won’t find a better smart light bulb for a lower price than this, earning the Wyze Bulb Color our Editors’ Choice award.
Affordable Ambience
The Wyze Bulb Color starts shipping April 2021 in a pack of four for $34.99. Wyze says it will offer a two-pack in the future, but hasn’t indicated plans to sell the bulb individually (or provided a price for the pack of two). The original Wyze Bulb, which only produces shades of white, is available individually for $7.99, or in a pack of four for $29.99.
On a cost-per-bulb-basis, the Wyze Bulb Color is the most affordable model we’ve tested, though a four pack of Treatlife Smart Wi-Fi LED only costs $1 more. We haven’t tested it yet, but the new TP-Link Kasa Smart Light Bulb KL125 (also $34.99 for a pack of four) looks to be another strong option; check back for a full review soon.
While many other smart bulbs, including the original Wyze Bulb and the Kasa Smart KL125, top out at 800 lumens, the Bulb Color gets even brighter, with the ability to put out up to 1,100 lumens, or roughly the equivalent of a 75-watt incandescent bulb. It’s also brighter than the Treatlife bulb, which goes up to 810 lumens (equivalent to 60 watts).
When you want to set the mood (or simply use it as a night-light), you can tune the bulb to as low as 30 lumens. That’s dimmer than the original Wyze Bulb, which goes down to 80 lumens.
It also offers a wider white color temperature range than the original Wyze Bulb: 1,800K (warm) to 6,500K (cool). The original is tunable from 2,700K to 6,500K, so the Bulb Color offers even warmer light when set to its lowest temperature. That said, the Treatlife bulb offers the broadest white temperature range, from 1,200K to 9,600K.
Measuring 5.0 by 2.5 by 2.5 inches (HWD), the Wyze Bulb Color is slightly larger than the original (4.8 by 2.3 by 2.3 inches), but has the same classic A19 shape and standard E26 base. It’s rated to last up to 25,000 hours, up from the original’s 20,000-hour life expectancy.
Like the original, the Bulb Color has an embedded 2.4GHz Wi-Fi radio, so it doesn’t require a hub. It also features Bluetooth, so you can still control it with your phone in the event of an internet outage.
Wyze says the bulb is suitable for damp locations, but shouldn’t be directly exposed to the elements or used in totally enclosed luminaires. The company also cautions against installing the Bulb Color on a dimmer switch, and says you should only dim it from its companion app (available for Android and iOS) or via voice assistant.
The Bulb Color offers plenty of features for its affordable price, which I’ll go over in detail later in this review, but it lacks some you get with more expensive options, such as lighting effects and power usage reports. The $25.99 Yeelight Smart LED Bulb offers a flicker effect that mimics a candle and a Music Flow setting that changes colors based on the tunes you’re playing, while the $24.99 Sengled Smart Wi-Fi LED tells you how much power it’s using.
Setup and Control
The Wyze Bulb Color is simple to set up and use. First, download the Wyze app and create an account if you don’t already have one. Next, tap the plus sign in the top left corner of the app, select Add Device > Power & Lighting > Wyze Bulb Color, and follow the on-screen instructions. When the app asks for permission to use Bluetooth, select OK.
After screwing in your new bulb, it should automatically begin pulsing, indicating it’s in pairing mode. If it’s not, Wyze says to turn it off and on three times to manually enable pairing mode.
Once the app finds your bulb (in testing this only took a few seconds), you can give it a name based on where it’s plugged in (I went with “desk lamp”), and you’re all set.
After setting up a single bulb in my desk lamp, I decided to install the other three in my bedroom ceiling fan as a group. Wyze makes it easy to set up multiple bulbs at the same time, and lets you name them individually. Just plug them all in and follow the steps outlined above. When the app detects multiple bulbs, it will make them each light up in a different color. In the app, it then asks you to name them individually.
Then to group them, press the plus sign in the app again, but this time select Add Device Group > Color Bulb Group. Give the group a name (I went with “bedroom ceiling fan”), select the bulbs you want to include, and you should be good to go. Note that you can’t group the Bulb Color with the original Wyze Bulb, but you can set up a device trigger to control them together (more on this in the next section).
Since I already had the Wyze skill enabled in the Amazon Alexa app from when I tested the Wyze Band, the bulbs automatically connected to the virtual assistant without any extra steps on my part. After successfully connecting the bulbs to the Wyze app, a pop-up notification from Alexa informed me that I could control the Bulb Color with voice commands such as “Alexa, turn off desk lamp.” I also set them up to work with Google Assistant, and in testing, the Bulb Color quickly and reliably responded to voice commands on both platforms.
Customize Your Lighting
Wyze is known for offering affordable yet feature-rich yet affordable smart home devices, and the Bulb Color is no exception. It supports automations, custom scenes, sleep routines, and schedules.
The app offers a few preset color temperature scenes that let you tune your lights with a single tap, including Night Light, Cozy, Bright, and Energized. It also offers some fun preset color scenes, including Energy, Gaming, Movie, and Meditation. If you have multiple bulbs grouped together, tapping one of the preset color scenes will make them each shine a different but complementary color. When I run the Gaming scene on my bedroom ceiling fan group, one bulb shines purple, another is pink, and the third is orange. When I run the Movie scene, one bulb is blue, another is a darker shade of blue, and the third is purple.
If you want to take a more customized approach, you can manually select a white temperature or color, adjust the bulb’s brightness (1 to 100%), and save that as a custom scene. If you have several bulbs grouped together, you can have them all shine the same color/temperature and brightness, or make each one different. Playing around with the different color, temperature, and brightness settings, and saving your favorite combinations as custom scenes is a lot of fun.
Wyze also offers a few automated lighting options, including wake-up and bedtime sleep routines that gradually illuminate or dim to help you rise in the morning or wind down before bed. When setting up a sleep routine, you can select the start time, duration, and which days of the week you want it to run. For wake-up routines, you can also select the ending brightness and color temperature. You can, for instance, set your lights to start fading in at 6 a.m. on weekdays, gradually illuminating to a cool white color temperature at 100% brightness over 30 minutes.
In the app’s Schedules & Automations section (located within the Settings menu), Wyze lets you set up custom shortcuts, schedules, and device triggers. After you create a custom shortcut, it will appear at the top of the Wyze app, letting you quickly turn your lights off or on with one tap. You can also create custom shortcuts to tune your lights to your preferred brightness and/or color temperature.
The scheduling feature lets you automate when your lights turn on and off. If you’re scheduling them to turn on, you can specify the brightness and color temperature, and add an end time.
The device trigger feature lets you connect multiple Wyze devices so one can set off the other. I currently use an original Wyze Bulb in my living room lamp, so I set up a rule that turns off the Bulb Color in my desk lamp when the bulb in my living room lamp turns off, and it worked without a hitch. This rule is helpful because I sometimes forget to turn off my office lamp after work, and it stays on all night. Now, when I’m heading to bed in the evening, I can just tell Alexa to turn off my living room lamp, and if my desk lamp is still on, it will turn off too. The bulb also supports IFTTT applets so it can interact with third-party smart devices.
Finally, a feature called Vacation Mode in the Wyze app automatically turns your lights on and off at different times to make it appear as if you’re home to ward off would-be intruders. To enable Vacation Mode, just select your light in the app, tap the gear icon to access the Settings menu, then use the slider to toggle the feature on.
An Unbeatable Value
With the ability to produce virtually any color plus a range of warm to cool white tones, and shine bright or dim low, the Wyze Bulb Color can help set the mood, whether you’re working from home or hosting a game night. Featuring Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for hub-free app control, and Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant support so you can turn it on and off with your voice, it’s a lot smarter than your average light bulb, but affordable enough to put in every fixture in the house. It’s easy to install and supports custom scenes, device-triggered automations, schedules, and sleep routines. And you can group bulbs together to control them at the same time, or make each shine a different color. No other smart color bulb offers this much functionality at this low of a price, so if you’re looking to upgrade your home lighting, the Wyze Bulb Color is an excellent, highly customizable option, and our new Editors’ Choice winner.
