Recommended Smart Tunable LED Light Bulbs

The Zigbee bulb by innr requires you to have a Zigbee hub, and Zigbee performance will have a lot to do with how many other Zigbee devices you have. But to me it’s a serious standout with high max brightness, almost zero flicker, great CRI, a huge CCT range from 2056 K to 6490 K, and a two year warranty. As far as I can tell, the only downsides to the innr bulb are that it isn’t rated for damp locations, it has slightly lower efficiency than others at 87.9 lm/watt, and its $15 price tag put it in the middle of the pack for affordability.

The Linkind Matter over WiFi bulb is half the price of the innr and doesn’t require a hub. Of the Matter bulbs I tested, it was one of the easiest to add to HomeKit and shared with Home Assistant almost instantly. The Linkind had even less flicker than the innr, not even registering on my flicker meter until it reached 1% brightness, and it had a higher cool white CRI, better efficiency, and it’s rated for damp install locations. The only downsides of the Linkind are the fact that it can’t go lower than 2682 K color temperature, the inability to change the power on behavior without the AiDot app, and the fact that Linkind doesn’t list any warranty information on the box or on Amazon.

The Matter over Thread Nanoleaf bulb also performed extremely well on paper with very low flicker, high efficiency, great CCT range, and great CRI, but on my Thread network using AppleTV, it just didn’t work. However, if you already have a strong Thread network or just want to invest in the Thread protocol, the Nanoleaf bulbs are worth considering at $10 each.

The best exposed filament bulb by far was the Orein Matter over WiFi bulb, which was just $8, had good CCT range, good CRI, great efficiency, and is rated for damp locations, but it did have almost 30% flicker at 100% brightness, which gradually decreased until 80% brightness and then remained under 1% for the rest of the dimming curve.