Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am a lighting designer. I purchased these after a disappointing Philips Hue experience. These bulbs are not as fully featured as much more costly Hue bulbs, but surpass in other important aspects. Unlike the Hue, they have a green and more vibrant blue LED's, which means many more colors you are able to achieve. They also recall their last color or function after a power cut, so you can use them on a switch or external timer without the bulbs resetting themselves. They have two modes, color mixing and white that each use a separate set of LED's. The white LED's have a pleasing slightly warn color temperature and are reasonably bright. You can also replicate a variety of white color temperatures with the color mixing mode, though they will not be as bright as the white LED's. You are not able to mix the white and RGB LED's, likely due to additional power requirements. If you are clever, the fairly basic app will permit you to create both subtle and dynamic animation effects with some limitations. The music function will pull tracks from your iPhone and does a better-than-decent job of animating your lights to the music, understanding that any automated lights-to-music effect is not something easily done by even professional equipment. This is most effective with multiple bulbs and can be quite fun to play with. It's not a very subtle effect if that is of interest. A BONUS feature due to the bulbs natural ability to recall their last running state or program: You can select or create a looping program effect that will remain in the on-board memory without a controller or wifi network. There is a lot of fun potential for this sort of scenario. Additionally, I have these suggestions for BASIC improvements to the app: -Ability to select SAVED colors within CUSTOMS mode. -Ability to save SCENES (unique settings for MULTIPLE lights). -Save MORE than 5 favorite colors? It would be helpful if you were able to save CURRENT color, rather than having to select the color once again in order to save it. -FAST speed options for JUMP. This would be helpful for creating custom strobe effects where the light does not turn off in between strobe light. (see below) -Ability to alternately select the warm white LED's in the CUSTOMS mode. Perhaps, a more complex CUSTOMS feature: -A STROBE mode that keeps the bulb illuminated with one color, and STROBES with another color. -A Random mode that staggers the CUSTOMS mode across all your bulbs. (This effect can currently be created manually, but is more labor intensive) These bulbs are really a phenomenal value, that would only increase with greater control options. Update: I've been working with them now for many months. They perform flawlessly so far, but the app, even their new Magic Light app, suffer from some functionality issues. Some of this may be due to limitations with the bulbs. I've discovered that when creating a CUSTOM program, that the fade timing from one color to the next- within the 16 available steps, appears to be based on how far numerically the RGB values are from one step to the next. This can result in widely inconsistent fade speeds which can be very frustrating. Maybe I'm asking too much from the technology. The new MagicLight WF app's NIGHT-LIGHT function is a great idea in theory, except that the cool and warm color temperatures are not as nearly as accurate as you can create using the COLORS function. They appear to have programmed the warm and cool white color temperatures mathematically, not visually. The good news is that you can actually get a pretty great range of neutral whites, just not with the mode that is intended for creating them. If there was the ability to add IFTTT accessibility, that would open up these lamps to a world of applications. I'm not sure if that could be done within the bulbs or if a separate device would have to act as a hub accessory. That would be of great interest. I've also purchased the 10 watt version. It has 3 additional RGB LED's and 9 more white LED's. It's a marginal upgrade in brightness that may not be noticed in some applications.