Kirk W.
30 de enero de 2024
Amazing alternative to expensive brands
Like most, our smart home setup is a bit of an ad-hoc combination of different brands. For this reason, I was hesitant to add yet another with these Linkind bulbs. That being said, I was looking to add color lighting to our finished basement for a kid's party, and the cost of the 6-pack from Linkind was close to what I'd have paid for one single HUE bulb.Cost savings aside, these bulbs perform close to, if not just as well as their HUE counterparts. At full brightness, I feel that the HUEs deliver slightly more luminance, however, there are a number of benefits (in addition to being a fraction of the price) that more than compensate for that!I was not thrilled when downloading the AiDot companion app, as I already have a collection of subpar "brand-specific" automation apps taking up space on my phone, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one. The UI is very well-designed and responsive - even more so than the native HUE app I tend to use at times in place of invoking Alexa. It also offers a great variety of pre-set color schemes, many of which feature interactivity with your music or television audio (a huge hit with the kids)! Aside from being "yet another" brand-specific automation app, my only gripe with the AiDot app is the prominence of its selling components. To be fair, these are not "ads", but rather a store function (which is found in many other manufacturer's apps); it just feels like it should be tucked away in a less "in-your-face" presentation.Integration with Alexa is essentially a non-issue. I installed all six of these bulbs in my basement, and by the time I was screwing the fourth one in, Alexa had already recognized the first two and was prompting me to assign their names and rooms. I'd like to say the process was intuitive, but in truth there really is no process at all - they really are plug-and-play as far as Alexa is concerned. My "configuration" really just consisted of creating Alexa routines so we can invoke the AiDot color scenes we liked using by voice.Apple homekit has been a different experience entirely, but I'm not prepared to fault Linkind in any way for that. My apple "automation" has never proven to be reliable in any way, and attempting to add these bulbs to homekit was no exception. To this day, I have not been able to have homekit recognize a single one of these bulbs using qr code, serial number, network address, mac IDs, back magic, or pleas to the gods of home automation. Again, I'm not blaming Linkind for this - these are really the first matter products I've owned, and I guess my hopes were that this feature would help with apple integration. This was not the case. The only comparative "con" I'll offer here is that apple integration is obviously a bit of a challenge, unlike my HUE bulbs which do appear in and can be controlled by homekit (presumably due to the presence of the latter's hub device).In summary, if your primary automation platform is apple-based, I'd recommend researching these before buying. If like me, Alexa is your go-to for smart home functionality, these bulbs are an exceptional value and perform amazingly well. If I could go back in time, I'd install these in place of the dozens of HUEs I have without hesitation!One thing I CAN say I've been happy with using HUE is their longevity, something for which I can't speak to with the Linkind product as I only installed them about a month ago. Hopefully, they offer an equally long lifespan, but considering that they are a fraction of the price, anything close can be considered a net win!Ver másVer menos
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