Land on a particular shade that you like, and you can save it to a personal palette to return to later. You can control not only individual colors from a wheel of millions, but also their saturation, brightness and warmth. LIFX’s app can be a bit fiddly (some controls are a bit too small to hit accurately), but the range of customization options and preset lighting patterns is impressive. The starter kit gives you enough pieces to make relatively large displays, either in a straight line, T or L shape. The LIFX Beam looks fantastic on a wall – whether you’re going for a sci-fi neon sheen for your minimalist penthouse or a warm, fiery glow for your connected cottage, it offers plenty of options for you to play with. With everything set up, you’ve then options to control up to 16 million color options, light temperature (2,500k warm to 9,000k cool) and the dimming range, as well as triggering a number of effects for the lights. For the purposes of this review, we primarily tested with an Amazon Echo and the Alexa voice assistant. You download the LIFX app (compatible with iOS and Android, as well as Windows Phone 10 if you’re keeping the flame alive for Microsoft), follow the instructions to connect the lights up to Wi-Fi (802.11n, 2.4GHz), and you’re good to go.Īn FAQ in the app talks you through a similar process for syncing the system up with a smart home controller too, like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and HomeKit, and Microsoft’s Cortana.

From there on in, it’s a fairly easy set up process.

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