I'm being blinded by the 8 dollar Wyze bulb sitting on my left so we better get
started with this review
hello Automators thanks for tuning in again i'm brian with automate your life
and today i'm going to take the frustration out of automation by telling
you whether or not you want to head down this lighting path with Wyze so let's
get into the review what is it well that's pretty easy do you answer it is
intended to be an 800 lumens Wi-Fi enabled voice controllable smart bulb
from Wyze here now what can it do well that's where things start to get
interesting with this little bulb it is temperature controlled so it can go from
a very very bright white color all the way down to those more yellow bulbs that
you were used to growing up with as a kid
now it's also dimmable all the way from 1% to a hundred percent although the
lumens don't quite match up with that but it does that very well as well now
again it's Wi-Fi controlled and it integrates with the Wyze application
which means you can control it by their shortcuts and you can just control it by
the app there it's also fully integrated with both Amazon's voice assistant and
Google's voice assistant and the if this than that application which gives you
access to control these bulbs with almost any platform out there today now
we should talk about what those Wyze shortcuts give you access to because
they do give you quite a bit that actually is harder to find than you
think with some of the smart bulbs out there the first thing I did right away
as soon as I got the bulbs installed in my bathroom here was to set up a
shortcut that just turned them off if any one of them had been on for 10
minutes I wanted them all to turn off in that
bathroom and so that means I don't have to worry about my child or anyone
leaving on those lights they will just turn off for me naturally so that was
the first thing I did but this also these shortcuts also gives you access to
the Wyze Sense system and the Wyze cameras to trigger automation for
lighting off of those different devices my likes range from
the fantastic colors of these bulbs and the high lumen output they are really
bright and they are brighter per lots of testing that has gone on then other 800
lumens bulbs so you know they're actually brighter and the colors make
them a very pretty bulb I know they're not a color bulb but the whites are
brilliant coming out of these bulbs the ability to control through Y sense
sensors it makes this a well thought out system when you're just talking about
automating your home within the Wyze application which is clearly what Wyze
would like you to do they've still given us the access for voice control and
through if this and that I really like that I can go ahead and create control
methods or elements through hubs like smart things and other devices that I
have in my smart home even after adding all of these bulbs I really like the
Wyze application still so the fact that I can group the bulbs into one group
when I've added multiple to the same room really helps the layout of the
application so overall the Wyze bulbs have been great when they've been
connected and working but speaking of connectivity we have to talk about some
of that here with these Wi-Fi ball during setup when I set up those three
bulbs and I've gone through this process multiple times now because of some of
these connectivity issues all three bulbs took a hundred and fifty seconds
so the timer therefore making a connection to the bulbs is 150 seconds
all three I had to wait 150 seconds and then hit the retry button and then they
paired instantly and went on my Wi-Fi network
now unfortunately what happened right after that is there's a delay when you
turn on these bulbs from the time you hit the switch or the time you ask them
to turn on they take a little delay so my child actually went into our bathroom
where normally we use a light switch and he started hitting the switch and they
wouldn't come on or they weren't coming on fast enough for his little mind and
click-click click-click factory reset and i
again a hundred and fifty seconds times three so starting to get a little bit
frustrated rate away now the next thing that happened is I had a power outage
and all three bulbs became disconnected and I had to set them up again so you
know each time I'm waiting this time and for an automated it's a lifetime so you
know other users as you go and you read what's happening on Wyze's forums and in
the Wyze communities people are struggling with these devices now after
setting up my shortcuts I kind of realized that there wasn't a lot of
external connectivity that I was going to use I feel a little bit constrained
inside using the shortcuts inside the Wyze application the voice control is
nice but the reason I started to feel constrained was what I consider to be
the biggest problem and it just kind of contributed to this the biggest problem
is and when you read the manual this becomes very apparent these bulbs have
to be in a very specific situation to be successful so I talked about your router
it has to be in BGN mode it can't just be an end mode only or they will not
connect and they will not work so you have to have that number one number two
you also have to make sure that they are in an open situation so you can't put
them in a fully enclosed fixture and they even state that you can't put them
into a narrow fixture or a mostly enclosed thick fixture because they will
overheat as essentially what's being said now that means that in a lot of
households you're going to have to put these into a lamp now I don't know about
how many lamps you have but I don't have twenty lamps in my house and so a whole
home lighting solution well no this can't be so do these eight dollar u.s.
smart bulbs get automate your life seal of approval well the answer is yes but
you have to be in a certain situation number one you're not going to want to
be a homekit person because there's no integration they're smart things has
connectivity or the other home automation hubs have
connectivity if they connect through if this than that your voice assistants here do
have full control of the bulb so that's very nice if you already have a Wyze cam
and the Wyze sense well you can trigger a lot of automation obviously with those
devices and I think that's the best way to utilize these devices or in the
simple automation way of turning those bulbs on and off automatically based off
of some kind of timing component so the other part of the situation is what I
talked about they have to be in an open-air environment essentially they
can't be enclosed and you also have to make sure that your router can do that
mixed mode so most routers can I don't think you really have to worry about
that before you go out and buy an eight dollar bulb and that's ultimately what
this comes down to this is an eight dollar smart Wi-Fi controllable bulb
that really beats everything else on the market in terms of pricing or most of
your main choices out on the market right now they look great they work
relatively well and I truly believe the connectivity issues will get resolved
here over time from Wyze so yes they get our seal of approval and if you'd like
some more ideas for how to utilize these bulbs with Wyze Sense well I have a whole
series of videos for using Wyze Sense you can see these other situations that
people are putting those devices into and therefore what situation you might
want to use your Wyze bulbs in so go watch a couple of those videos a
playlist is on screen right now otherwise guys don't hate automate