iLumi's new smart bulb lets you take the color-changing light outdoors
Looking to add connected colors outside your home? Now, you can set the mood on your porch.
- 10 years product testing experience with the CNET Home team
The iLumi BR30 Outdoor Smart LED floodlight.
iLumi's color-changing bulbs are a fun mood-lighting novelty for the modern smart home -- but what if you want to bring the party outdoors?
iLumi brought the answer to this week's Consumer Electronics Show here in Las Vegas: a weather-rated version of its color-changing BR30 floodlight that you can use outdoors. They'll cost $70 each, and begin selling by this spring.
iLumi's bulbs rely on Bluetooth to communicate with your phone, so I'll be interested to see how the outdoor bulbs perform when you're trying to control them from inside. That's the sort of thing we'll test out at the CNET Smart Home when we review the bulbs later this year.
A new iLumi control switch due later this year will let you trigger lighting presets in your home with simple gestures.
In addition to the new outdoor bulb, iLumi offered a look at a new system control switch that the company hopes to introduce later in the year. The idea is that you'll be able to trigger various lighting presets simply by waving your hand over top of a small, rectangular puck.
That's a similar pitch to what we heard from Fibaro, a European company that introduced the Fibaro Swipe smart-home gesture controller earlier this week.
iLumi also promises to introduce more third-party integrations in 2016, with IFTTT and Amazon Echo sitting at the top of the list. That would help the bulbs catch up with the Lifx Color 1000, our current top pick in the color-changing light bulb category. We'll keep an eye on things and keep you posted as they develop.
