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Feit Electric Color-Changing LED Smart Bulb (Apple HomeKit-enabled) review: Sync this smart bulb with Siri for $25

With plenty of brightness and no need for a hub, Feit's color-changing smart bulb is a decent budget pick for Apple HomeKit households.

Ry Crist Senior Editor / Reviews - Labs
Originally hailing from Troy, Ohio, Ry Crist is a writer, a text-based adventure connoisseur, a lover of terrible movies and an enthusiastic yet mediocre cook. A CNET editor since 2013, Ry's beats include smart home tech, lighting, appliances, broadband and home networking.
Expertise Smart home technology and wireless connectivity Credentials
  • 10 years product testing experience with the CNET Home team
Ry Crist
2 min read

Color-changing smart bulbs are a likable smart home novelty, and most of them pair extremely well with voice controls. The problem is that many of them are much too expensive, with popular options from names like Philips Hue and Lifx starting at about $40 per bulb. 

7.1

Feit Electric Color-Changing LED Smart Bulb (Apple HomeKit-enabled)

The Good

At just $25, Feit's Siri-friendly smart bulb is brighter than competitors that cost more. You don't need a hub to pair it with Apple's Home app on your iPhone or iPad.

The Bad

The bulb doesn't work with Alexa or Google Assistant, which leaves Siri as your only option for voice controls. You'll also need to use Apple's lackluster Home app to setup and control the bulbs, and you won't be able to control them from beyond Bluetooth range without an Apple TV, an Apple HomePod or a dedicated, always-on iPad. The bulb doesn't put out a good-looking version of orange, either.

The Bottom Line

This is an acceptable budget pick for a back room, but if you're looking to go all-in on smart, color-changing light in your home, keep shopping.

There's an emerging crop of lower-cost alternatives, though, including a new, color-changing LED from Feit Electric that costs $25. It uses Bluetooth to communicate directly with your phone, so it doesn't need a hub plugged into your router like with Philips Hue or with other budget-friendly options like Sengled. It doesn't have its own app, either. Instead, it's designed to work with Apple HomeKit, which means iOS users can set it up directly from Apple's Home app, then control it using Siri voice commands such as "make the smart bulb red," or "set the lamp to 10 percent brightness."

That's the same approach taken by the Sylvania Smart Plus LED, another HomeKit-compatible Bluetooth bulb that changes colors. The upside to leaning on HomeKit is that these companies don't need to spend time or money developing an app of their own. The downside is that the Home app's software and controls for color-changing bulbs are rather mediocre. 

Feit's bulb is plenty bright at just about every color setting -- but it struggles to put out the color orange.

Ry Crist/CNET

Now 5 years old, the Home app makes it easy to pair bulbs with your phone and assign them to a room or a group of devices, but it still suffers from an unintuitive interface for choosing colors and fewer features than Philips Hue or Lifx. The Siri commands still come with quirks of their own, too -- and neither Alexa nor Google Assistant are currently supported at all, so it's Siri and the Home app or bust.

Still, this isn't a bad bulb. With an energy draw of 10.5 watts and a measured 878 lumens at its default, soft white setting, it's about 10 percent brighter than advertised, and brighter than most of the competition, including the Philips Hue. Feit's bulb was brighter than the Hue at every color setting I tested, too, except for red. You might notice that weak red setting if you try dialing Feit's bulb to orange -- to my eye, it couldn't do much better than beige.

If you can tolerate trade-offs like that (and if you're committed to building your smart home upon a HomeKit foundation), then the Feit bulb isn't a bad budget pick for something like a kid's room. With such ample brightness, it's especially well-suited for a bedside reading lamp. But Philips Hue and Lifx boast better-looking colors, better apps and a much longer list of compatible products and platforms, including IFTTT, Alexa and Google Assistant. Both are expensive, but they're still the first names you should consider if you're serious about filling your home with smart, color-changing light.

7.1

Feit Electric Color-Changing LED Smart Bulb (Apple HomeKit-enabled)

Score Breakdown

Design 6Value 8.5Performance 7