Major Smart Lighting Brands Ranked Worst To Best

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Adding smart lights is one of the easiest ways to start building a smart home. They're generally easy to set up and incorporate into your daily routines. There are plenty of things you should know about smart bulbs before buying them, but one of the biggest is choosing your brand. 

Of course, many people have multiple smart lighting brands in their homes, but it's easier if everything is the same brand. Then, if you want to use that brand's proprietary app, everything you need is in one place for easy control. Plus, once you pick a reliable brand, choosing your smart lighting products becomes immensely easier. Within a single brand, your options are more limited, which cuts down on your decision-making time. 

This article ranks major smart lighting brands from worst to best, but that doesn't mean that the first couple of entries on our list are necessarily bad smart lighting brands. Many of the lower-ranking smart lighting brands are still excellent options — just not the best for most people.

The Ring brand is most well-known for its video doorbell and security camera options. The company started in 2012 with three engineers, one intern, and another team member, and its first product was the Doorbot, which was a Wi-Fi-enabled video doorbell. Among its smart lighting options, you'll find path lights, floodlights, spotlights, step lights, solar-powered wall lights, and smart bulbs.

One of Ring's most popular smart bulbs is the A19 Smart LED Bulb, which was first introduced in the new smart home gear Ring launched in 2020. It can shine up to 800 lumens of white light that's equivalent to a 60W incandescent bulb. You can connect the bulb to the Ring Bridge, Echo Show 10, or Echo to enable customizable smart controls within the Ring mobile app, available on both Android devices and iPhones.

Ring falls lower on the list of major smart lighting brands because its smart lights require the Ring Bridge to make them smart. Without the Bridge, they only function as standard motion-sensing lights. Plus, although you can use Ring smart bulbs with Google Assistant, there's much more of a focus on Alexa because Ring was bought by Amazon in February 2018. There are also pretty limited smart lighting options right now. Ring offers no smart LED strips and only one smart bulb that's dimmable, but can't do color or variations of white.

Cree Lighting is a US-based manufacturer that consists of two companies merged together, including RUUD Lighting, founded in 1982, and Cree, Inc., founded in 1987. The company has always had a focus on lighting products, launching the first mass-market LED exterior and interior commercial fixtures in 2007, the first mass-market LED light bulbs in 2013, and proprietary ConnectedMax smart LED bulbs in 2020.

The company continues to sell a mix of traditional incandescent lighting and smart lighting. You can find a ton of options for traditional indoor and outdoor lighting, like floodlights, path lights, downlights, candelabras, and general-purpose bulbs. All of Cree Lighting's smart options are in its ConnectedMax line, which includes LED strip lighting, full-color smart bulbs, and neat-looking filament smart bulbs.

The smart bulb people would most likely invest in would be Cree Lighting's full-color A19 bulb. It's a 60-watt equivalent bulb with 800 lumens of brightness. It works with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri Shortcuts, and you don't need a hub to set it up — only Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. You can control individual bulbs, create groups of multiple bulbs, and set up scenes, routines, and schedules to make your life easier.

Nanoleaf was formed by three University of Toronto graduates in 2012, with the goal of becoming a pioneer in the smart lighting industry. With how popular Nanoleaf products are today, it's safe to say they succeeded! Today, Nanoleaf has five offices across the world in Toronto, Shenzhen, Paris, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. There are over 150 employees, 13 unique products and counting sold in over 100 countries, and over one million Nanoleaf app users on Android and iOS devices.

Among Nanoleaf's smart lighting options, you'll see smart bulbs, but they don't look like traditional smart bulbs. Instead, they're geometric, with little hexagons scattered all over the bulb surface. Then, you'll also find smart light strips and uniquely titled product categories, including Lines, Shapes, Elements, Canvas, and Skylight, though Skylight products aren't released just yet.

The product titles are indicative of what they are, with Nanoleaf Lines consisting of multiple lined lights, Shapes including square, triangle, or mini triangle smart lights, and Elements looking like an element of nature: wood. Nanoleaf Canvas lights look like a piece of artwork on the wall, with smoothed edges like an actual painted canvas. The Skylight product isn't released yet, but it'll be an advanced smart ceiling light fixture that resembles modular squares. The company takes the convenience of traditional smart lighting and puts an aesthetically pleasing twist on it so that you don't have a "boring" smart home.

Sengled is a global leader in smart lighting that's currently headquartered in Alpharetta, GA. The company released its first smart speaker bulb in 2012 and Sengled's smart lighting products can connect through Bluetooth Mesh, Wi-Fi, or Zigbee, and can be controlled with voice commands through Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple HomeKit. There's quite a variety of smart bulbs through Sengled, including soft white bulbs, multicolor bulbs, tunable white bulbs, daylight bulbs, and extra bright options for daylight and soft white bulbs. Then, Sengled offers light strips with just LED lights, with audio sync, or with video sync technology.

You can also buy accessories that enhance the smart lighting experience, including a smart hub, smart light switches, motion sensors, and smart plugs. Or, you can opt for one of Sengled's starter kits, which includes a Zigbee smart hub and lights. Any of these starter kits will deck your home out with smart lighting.

In 2020, Sengled introduced the Smart LED Edison Filament Bulb, which combines a very old-school design with modern smart lighting technology. It's a clear bulb with a visible filament at a 2100K color temperature. Or, you could try out a more modern-looking option with Sengled's Multicolor A19 bulb, which can change between soft white, bright daylight, or 16 million different colors. Some Sengled bulbs may require a hub to take advantage of all the available smart features, but it's nice to have the hub when your entire home is equipped with smart lights.

TP-Link was founded in 1996 and has provided countless networking devices and accessories that help people live more efficient everyday lives. In terms of modern smart lighting, TP-Link has two well-known brands: Kasa Smart and Tapo. Kasa is the first smart brand from TP-Link and it's well-established, with multicolor bulbs, dimmable white bulbs, and light strips. You can practically build an entire smart home ecosystem just from Kasa products. Then, Tapo is the newest smart brand from TP-Link, and it currently features both multicolor and white smart bulbs and light strips.

The biggest difference between Kasa Smart and Tapo is that Kasa devices connect solely over Wi-Fi, whereas Tapo devices can connect over Wi-Fi or over a different frequency that helps users free up Wi-Fi space. TP-Link didn't engineer Kasa Smart and Tapo devices to communicate with each other, but the company says that it doesn't plan to discontinue either line of products.

A 4-pack of Tapo multicolor smart bulbs is only $29.99, making these pretty accessible products. They work with Google Assistant and Alexa, and allow you to create schedules with them, control dimness, and customize the color — all without requiring a hub. Meanwhile, a 2-pack of Kasa Smart bulbs retails for $24.99 and functions pretty similarly to the Tapo bulbs.

Philips has been around since 1891, and the company has created a wide range of products, with the Philips Hue line covering everything related to smart lighting. The Philips brand is currently licensed to Signify, a world leader in lighting that also acquired WiZ smart lighting products. In the Philips Hue line, you can find lamps, luminaires, bulbs, and light strips for both professional and personal use.

There are also Philips Hue starter kits, which come with a Hue bridge and either two or four bulbs, depending on your needs. The pack of two or four bulbs can be either color ambiance bulbs or tunable white bulbs. You can also find bundled products to help you save money, as Philips Hue smart lighting products can get a bit expensive. In the most recent 2022 range, Philips Hue added dramatic light guide bulbs and light strips for PC gamers. The light strips are flexible and affixed to the back of your monitor. They can show different zones of color along the strip and sync the ambient glow of the strip to whatever's on your screen at any given moment.

Philips Hue is by far the best major smart lighting brand you can invest in today. It's more expensive than other options but for good reason. Philips Hue smart lights are friendly with other platforms, and most users never have any issues with connectivity, customer service, or functionality.