Cree was hesitant so as to add a sensible bulb to its finest-promoting LED lineup, but that modified this yr with the addition of the $15 Cree Linked LED. Sharing the build and lighting specs of final year's nicely-reviewed Cree 4Flow LED , the new Related LED provides in a Zigbee radio. Pair it with a management hub, and you will be in a position to turn it on and off remotely, or schedule automated lighting adjustments. At launch, Cree's smart bulb was considerably married to the Wink Hub , EcoLight solar bulbs which made sense given that you will buy each off the shelf at House Depot. Since then, however, we have seen official assist roll out for extra management gateways, including SmartThings and the Philips Hue Bridge . You'll be able to add the EcoLight solar bulbs to the brand new D-Link model of the Staples Join Hub , too, although there is not official, Zonoff-certified help just yet. The bulb works nicely throughout all the platforms we have tested it with, EcoLight solar bulbs and it shares the sturdy lighting specs of the 4Flow LED that got here earlier than it.

Most interesting is the value. At $15 -- just some dollars greater than you will spend on non-connected opponents -- it ties with the GE Link LED as probably the most inexpensive related bulb available on the market. For fundamental automated lighting, it's the very best possibility we have examined yet, and our present Editors' Alternative winner. Cree tailored its good bulb design from last year's 4Flow LED, packing a Zigbee radio into the existing build. That signifies that this isn't a bulb that goes out of its solution to look fancy or newfangled -- instead, it copies the 4Flow's emphasis on mimicking the silhouette of classic incandescents. I liked that method with the 4Flow, and that i like it with the brand new Linked LED too, although some might find the plastic construct to be a bit low cost-wanting, especially when the bulb is turned off. The new bulb also shares the 4Flow's convection cooling trick, which makes use of vents to circulate air via the body of the bulb, eliminating the necessity for heat sinks.

That helps carry manufacturing costs down, and EcoLight in addition signifies that the bulb is exceptionally gentle for an LED, weighing in at lower than 2 ounces. The Cree Related LED shares the identical lighting specs as the 4Flow LED, too, and that is largely an excellent factor. Each claim a mild output of 815 lumens, and both clocked in even increased than that in entrance of our spectrometer -- 835 lumens for the 4Flow, and a very spectacular 872 for the Related LED. By way of effectivity, the 4Flow places its gentle out using 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 examined it out, the quantity was actually closer to 11.1 watts, so Cree's finished a very good job of maintaining this bulb relatively environment friendly. Still, it's price noting that each the Philips Hue Lux LED and the Belkin WeMo LED are much more environment friendly, each drawing less than 10 watts.

Cree additionally did an excellent job with color temperature right here, touchdown extremely close to the said 2,700K. At 2,696K, the Cree Related LED lands closer to the mark than every other good bulb we've tested, so if you're choosy about that good shade of heat, yellowy mild, you may like this LED. The one place the place Cree's sensible bulb lags behind at least a number of the competition is the colour rendering rating, which measures how accurately a given light supply illuminates different shades. The Cree Connected LED hits a slightly peculiar rating of 80 out of 100, and given that both the WeMo LED and the equally inexpensive GE Link LED hit closer to 90, I might have preferred to see Cree do higher. To entry the Cree LED's smart features, you'll need to pair it with a management hub that can 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, however quickly expanded its third get together compatibility to incorporate choices like SmartThings, Staples Connect , and the Philips Hue Bridge .

Completely different platforms offer different features -- SmartThings and Philips bring IFTTT help into the image, as an illustration -- however on the whole, the automating expertise is basically the same. We tested the bulb on a number of platforms, and never ran into any difficulties pairing it or controlling it. No matter which platform you are utilizing, you'll be in a position to turn the Cree Linked LED on or off remotely, dim it, or automate it using no matter controls your system provides. These likely include setting the lights to a timed schedule, or syncing them up with things like movement sensors. The bulb paired easily with every of the above-mentioned platforms. Wink and SmartThings both have devoted settings and pairing instructions for the Cree LED proper in the app, which helps. Staples Join doesn't supply machine-specific assist for Cree just but, but it was in a position to detect the bulb as a generic Zigbee machine on the first attempt. Syncing the Cree LED with a Philips Hue setup was fairly painless, too, although I needed to manually reset the bulb throughout the pairing process in order to help the bridge find it.