Not only are LED smart bulbs more energy-efficient than traditional incandescent bulbs, but you'll feel like Tony Stark walking through your home, controlling the lighting with just your voice. Google Home is one of the tentpole home assistant platforms, so of course, there are a plethora of smart bulb brands eager to get that "works with the Google Assistant" badge. The question you need to ask yourself as a consumer is how many bulbs you need for your home and how much are you willing to spend?
Full-feature smart lights
To experience the best that smart LED lights can offer, you'll want to start with ones that are entirely customizable with the full spectrum of colors available. Because these bulbs are way more expensive than any light bulb you've probably bought in your life — and often require a dedicated smart hub to relay between the bulbs and your home network — you're going to want to choose a brand that can satisfy all your smart lighting needs or piece together your house plan with bulbs that don't need a hub.
Light your home with color
Philips Hue Color Smart Bulb Starter Kit (4-pack w/ Hub)
Staff pick
Philips is the leading manufacturers of wireless LED smart bulbs and for good reason. Philips Hue bulbs are so easy to set up and work like magic with custom voice controls. A good starting point is the 4-pack of multi-color bulbs that come with the necessary Philips Hue Bridge for connecting all your bulbs. Once you get the Bridge set up, it acts as a hub for connecting more Philips Hue products and converting your whole home to smart lights.
No hub required
LIFX Wi-Fi Smart LED Light Bulb (4-pack)
LIFX now offers its third generation of fully functional smart bulbs that are available in A19 and BR30 bulb styles for indoor and outdoor usage. Each bulb provides up to 1100 lumens of brightness, with the ability to customize your spaces with 16 million colors and 1000 shades of warm to cool whites. No additional hardware is required to get things set up with Google Assistant as each bulb connects directly to your Wi-Fi network.
Budget bulbs that require a hub
Sengled Element Classic Smart LED bulbs (2-pack w/Hub)
Sengled offers the best value for budget-conscious consumers looking to invest in smart bulbs — but you're still going to need a dedicated hub. The good news is that once you have that hub, you're able to add up to 64 bulbs to your network, and Sengled has the best prices for buying bulbs in bulk.
Smart bulbs from China
Yeelight Smart LED Bulb
Xiaomi is a massive Chinese brand that offers smart bulbs through the Yeelight brand that don't require a hub to work with Google Home. These multi-color bulbs provide 800 lumens of brightness and can be synced to music or set in sync with your morning alarms. Xiaomi's bulbs are sold in four- or eight-pack bundles or individually. Dimmable white bulbs are also available.
Geek chic lighting
Nanoleaf Rhythm Edition Smarter Kit
Do the Nanoleaf light panels fit the description of a smart bulb? That's up for debate, but no doubt, these are the coolest smart lighting kit you can control with Google Assistant. This kit includes the Rhythm Module and nine panels so you can mount a customized light fixture on the wall of any room in your home that will dance along with pulsing color to the ambiance of the room.
LED magic
Govee WiFi LED Strip Lights
These 16ft LED light strips are amazingly cheap and easy to install anywhere in your home. Each strip includes a dedicated on/off switch that also lets you change colors without your phone or smart speaker, but you'll use the Govee Home app. There's lots of customization available, and you can link your Govee account to Google Home to control it all with your voice.
Dimmable white smart bulbs
Let's be real, not every smart bulb in your home needs to cycle through 16 million different colors; they just need to be dimmable and react to your voice commands. You can save some money buying white LED smart bulbs for the more mundane areas of your house like hallways and bathrooms and save the fancier color bulbs for the areas you entertain your guests. There are dimmable white smart bulbs available for each smart hub ecosystem along with many options that only require a Wi-Fi connection.
Ease into the Hue ecosystem
Philips Hue White Smart Bulb 4-Pack
As long as you already own a Philips Hue Bridge, you can start adding smart bulbs to any room in your house. With this four-pack of dimmable white bulbs, you're able to schedule and automate your lighting to fit your daily needs or make it appear that your home is lived-in while you're out by scheduling lights in different rooms to turn on and off throughout the evening.
Mini bulbs for lamps and light fixtures
LIFX Mini A19 Smart LED Bulb
LIFX bulbs don't require a hub, just a reliable connection to the Wi-Fi network. This bulb is comparable to a 60W bulb and is perfect for smaller lamps or lighting fixtures. The white variation offers the best value for your money, but there are mini color bulbs or day & dusk bulbs that will change the color and warmth of the lighting based on the time of day. These are sold individually and are perfect for lamps on bedside tables.
Buy'em in bulk
Sengled Element Classic Smart LED bulbs (8-pack)
If you've already got a Sengled hub — or even a SmartThings or Wink hub — you can add eight bulbs to your network for the best price per bulb that you will find. That's a heck of a deal and a great option if you desire to replace every bulb in your home with a voice-controlled smart bulb without spending hundreds of dollars.
For that retro Edison look
SEALIGHT Smart Bulb Glass Vintage LED Bulb (2-pack)
Check out this two-pack of SEALIGHT bulbs for the retro look of an incandescent bulb with all the convenience of a connected smart bulb. The per-bulb price is pretty good, and no hub is required. These are standard A19 bulbs that are controllable through your phone or with Google Assistant are easy to dim and can be set on scheduled timers.
Best Wi-Fi bulbs on a budget
TP-Link Kasa LED Bulbs (3-pack)
For those of you who are okay with standard white, dimmable smart bulbs, and don't want to spend a fortune, TP-Link's Kasa bulbs are a good pick that offers the added benefit of no hub — just a reliable connection to your home's Wi-Fi network is required. The starter kit, which includes three bulbs is a good starting point and connects easily with the Google Home app.
Anker's smart home brand
Eufy Lumos Smart Bulb
Last but not least, Eufy also offers a selection of smart bulbs that include soft white bulbs, tunable white bulbs that are capable of mimicking daylight, and a multi-color bulb that can groove along with your music. All bulbs include built-in Wi-Fi to get around needing a hub and can be easily added to your connected devices in the Google Home app.
Don't be afraid to mix and match
The best part about having so many smart lighting options available that all work with the Google Assistant is that you can have a hub set up and some individual Wi-Fi bulbs all running on your home network and still control everything using just your voice.
Our top recommendation is the Philips Hue Starter kit which gets you all you need to start building out your dream smart home. Once you get all set up, you'll want to start looking into other Hue products that are just as easy to set up and control. If you're going to splurge, you can create the perfect lighting ambiance for every room in your home using Hue smart lights.
Of course, the beautiful thing about using the Google Assistant is that it works with countless other brands, so you can save on LED light strips by getting a 16ft Minger Govee LED smart strip for half the price of the Philips Hue equivalent. And then there are just dope accent pieces like the Nanoleaf Rhythm Smarter Kit that would look cool in any media room or gamer's den.
Source: androidcentral