FEIT Smart WIFI Color bulb

I have been wanting to add some color smart lights to my home for the past couple years but I just can't justify the cost that some of the major manufacturers are charging for their bulbs.  Both Philips Hue and LIFX are upwards of $40 per bulb and with Philips Hue you also need to buy a hub.  I have well over 100 bulbs in my house which I recently upgraded to LED so the cost to replace them all would be astronomical.  So I decided to wait until the price comes down or until I find a real use case for the bulbs.  Then last month my electric utility, National Grid has a promotion where if I bought 8 led bulbs from them for $10, I would also get a FEIT Electric Smart WIFI color bulb.  This was a no brainer for me, I bought 2 of the promotional packages and got 16 regular LEDs and 2 color smart bulbs for $20!!  You can purchase one FEIT Smart WIFI color bulb on Amazon for under $20 which is half the price of the other color smart bulb manufacturers.

      

For basically free color smart lights I did not expect these light to have the functionality of Hue or LIFX but I have to say I am pretty impressed with these lights.   The lights are very bright and the colors are pretty close to what I would expect of reds greens and blues.  On the non color settings you change the temperature from warn to cool and they are dimmable as well.

The FEIT Electric app is just ok.  Again, I wasn't expecting much for the price of the bulbs but the basic functionality is there.  You can group the lights, change colors, temperature or dim the lights.  There is a basic on/off timer but unfortunately no dusk/dawn timer so if you plan to use them as outdoor lighting you will have to change the timer every few months to keep up with the changing sunset/sunrise.  I couldn't find any information from the manufacturer about using these bulbs outside but their Amazon page says they are damp rated and can be used in enclosed fixtures.

 I have both of my bulbs installed in outdoor covered fixtures.  I decided to use them as Christmas lights so one is red and one is green.  I truly expected them to die in a couple days outside in our cold New England climate but they have been faithfully been turning on and off using the timer for a couple weeks now.  I will probably switch them back to regular white lights after the holiday.

Setup was fairly straightforward.  Install the app, register and then discover the lights.  I had to go through discovery process twice with each light but eventually it worked for me.  I do consider myself to be pretty technically savvy and I don't mind tinkering with tech As I mentioned earlier the app has very basic functionality.  No synching with music or scenes like the other expensive manufacturers.  Also it does not work with IFTTT so no getting the bulbs to work with other smart devices, kind of a disappointment as this would add to the functionality, maybe sometime in the future.  My only other hope would be that they will add a dusk/dawn timer as that seems like it would be a pretty simple software update.

They also work with Amazon Alexa and Google assistant.  I have only tried using Alexa but it seems to work just fine.  Just tell Alexa to turn the lights on or off or to change the color and she does it.  My eleven year old daughter has already asked for one of these bulbs for her room and for under $20 I just may purchase a couple for her and my son's rooms.   Overall great smart color WIFI lights for the price.