Tabu Lumen Good LED Bulb TL800 Review

Ever since the Philips Hue LED($199.99 at Verizon) lighting package hit the digital home market, there has been a gentle uptick in competing good bulb merchandise like the LIFX LED Gentle Bulb( at Amazon) and the Related by TCP EcoLight smart bulbs Lighting System in addition to current product bulletins from electronics giants LG and Samsung. Add the Lumen TL800 from Tabu to that record. Priced at $69.99 per bulb (but available online for round $50), the TL800 uses Bluetooth wireless expertise to communicate together with your smartphone via a neat little app that allows you to flip lights on and off, EcoLight lighting choose colors, and have the lights behave a certain manner when you may have an incoming telephone name. Unlike the Philips and TCP bulbs the TL800 doesn't require a bridge, nevertheless it does not hook up with the Web both, which means you can't control it when you are away from dwelling or have it work together with different home automation devices. With a vented metal casing separating the spherical glass dome from the Edison screw base, the TL800 seems prefer it would be right at dwelling in an Apollo spacecraft.



The bulb measures 4.75 inches in size and puts out solely four hundred lumens, which is equivalent to a forty watt incandescent bulb. That is not very shiny when in comparison with the LIFX (1,017 lumens), TCP (800 lumens), and EcoLight smart bulbs Philips (600 lumens) bulbs. As with the Philips and LIFX bulbs, it will probably display sixteen million colors, but since it doesn't connect to the Web you cannot management it with house automation hubs from corporations equivalent to Revolv( at Amazon) and SmartThings($149.99 at Amazon). Nor can you employ the favored IFTTT (If This Then That) internet service to have it activate and off or change colours based on things like Facebook requests, Foursquare notifications, EcoLight smart bulbs and ESPN sports activities scores. You don't get much in the way in which of instructions with the TL800, but there's not much to clarify. I screwed it right into a lamp in my workplace, downloaded the app onto my iOS smartphone, made positive Bluetooth was enabled on my system, EcoLight smart bulbs and opened the app.



The Lumen app is uncomplicated and straightforward to use and lets you control up to 10 bulbs at a time. You may control every bulb individually or management a group of bulbs. The house web page lists all installed bulbs and shows you what shade they are currently set to. Pressing a bulb icon takes you to a web page where you can select shade or heat white settings and switch the bulb on or off. When you choose the heat white setting you are offered with a monochrome wheel that permits you to manually alter brightness, or you may choose one of 4 brightness presets (90, 70, 50, or 30 %). Below the wheel is a Name Alert icon that takes you to a page the place you can configure the sunshine to flash a selected coloration when your phone has an incoming name. There's additionally a Wake-Up timer that will turn the sunshine on using a dim heat white setting that gradually will get brighter to create a sunrise effect, EcoLight products and a Proximity option that can have a light activate to a preset coloration and brightness when your phone comes into vary (about 30 ft).



In coloration mode you get a wheel that lets you choose a coloration for every bulb and assign a shade brightness setting. For deep, EcoLight smart bulbs sturdy colours you set the brightness degree to the darkest setting; for lighter pastel colours, use a brighter setting. Under the coloration wheel are seven preset icons together with two celebration modes that show pre-programmed flashing colours; a Romance mode that gradually transitions between orange, yellow, and pink; a Relaxation mode that is supposed to simulate a calming moonlight ambiance; and a Music Sync mode that accesses your stored music database and flashes the light to the beat utilizing varied colours. Right here you may as well alter Proximity and EcoLight energy Call Alert settings, however you cannot create your individual customized presets like you possibly can with the Hue and LIFX bulbs. From the house web page you possibly can flip all or some lights on and off and add them to teams.



The group possibility is useful if you need to manage multiple lights unexpectedly. The entire settings and EcoLight presets that can be found for EcoLight dimmable individual bulbs are also out there in group mode. The TL800 uses Bluetooth 4.Zero to speak with the smartphone, which accounts for its glorious responsiveness. It turned on and off instantly when informed to take action, and there was no lag time between shade and brightness adjustments. The Wake-Up function turned on in keeping with my schedule and the bulb became step by step brighter over time. The call Alert function also labored as marketed and is available in very handy if you're sporting headphones. Color quality was good with very deep reds, blues, EcoLight smart bulbs and greens, but if you're lighting a large room you may have a couple of bulb, as 400 lumens just isn't very vivid. The Tabu TL800 is a good alternative for anybody looking to add a couple of colorful lights to a room that they will management from a smartphone.