New from Lifx: Night vision light bulbs for the smart home
Lighting
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LIFX Plus is the brands 3rd gen color changing smart bulb.
It's also the newest big name connected LED on the market.
Like the LIFX bulb that came before it, LIFX Plus bulb has a built in wi-fi radio You're connected directly to your home network without needing to plug in a hub or a bridge to your router.
From there, you'll be able to control the bulbs and change their color from your phone from anywhere with an internet connection.
It's more or less the same Smart Bulb that Lifx has put out before, but now there's a new night vision feather.
Each Lifx Plus Bulb packs a dedicated set of infrared diodes.
When you turn the bulb off in the app, those diodes come on and put out infrared light.
You can't see that light.
But your night vision cameras can.
The idea is that LifeX Plus will help those night vision cameras see in the dark.
And when I tested it out at the C Night Smart apartment, it worked out very well.
And this shot you can see that the LifeX Plus is basically lighting up that Back wall and extending the range of our night vision camera.
The one problem with that feature is that it makes this bulb less efficient than the last light bulb that came before it.
Like those bulbs it's an 11 watt LED that puts out about as much brightness as a 75 watt incandescent which is really good.
But those infrared diodes are drawing power even when the bulb is off on the app.
That will add at least a couple dollars to your yearly energy bill.
LIFX Plus bulbs cost 80 bucks a pop, which is $20 more than the standard lightbulb that don't include that night vision feature.
If you use night vision cameras, I think they're definitely worth considering, but it's not.
There's really no reason to spend the extra money.
The new 3rd Gen bulbs are a little bit brighter than [INAUDIBLE] Not dramatically so.
And you also don't need to upgrade to get compatibility with smart things [UNKNOWN] Logitech, Alexa, Nest.
All the old bulbs can do all of that.
Still, Kudos to [UNKNOWN] for coming up with a clever, unique feature, and for getting the patent on that feature.
That more than anything might help ensure a bright future for this bulb, if connected night vision cameras continue to grow in popularity.
