IKEA smart lights offer excellent performance and they cost up to 80% less than Philips Hue

Smart lights make an excellent addition to Smart house Settings, whether you want to light your outdoor space for spring fun or upgrade your interior lighting. But the most popular option can be quite expensive. To say that I recently had a bulb moment while testing IKEA’s intelligent lights would be stupid – so I won’t. But he was revealed to learn that there were fully capable intelligent lights for significantly less than the price of Philips Hue. IKEA may not be known for smart lighting, but maybe it should be.

IKEA smart lighting covers all bases: accessibility, local control, excellent remote and tons of lighting products to create countless combinations. These options are certainly worth considering, especially if you are a beginner who is looking for a budget entry into the intelligent home world.

IKEA owns itself against other budget brands for intelligent home

My Smart Home philosophy has always been to buy cheap and reliable. There is almost no point in buying a $ 200 Smart Light Switch when you can get the same basic features for less than $ 30. The fantastic software tricks of a more price model are nothing when few people use them.

IKEA’s intelligent housing suggestions meet these requirements at prices that would make Philips Hue Blush, especially for remote and sensors:

I will not delve into many products for smart lighting from any brand. But I will note that IKEA has an advantage of prices, while the choice of HUE is greater. Thehe The smart hubs for IKEA ($ 70) and Philips Hue ($ 60) offer similar features, but the price difference is not almost as pronounced. IKEA sensors have even defeated most budget brands such as Aqara, Sonoff and Thirdreality.

IKEA outperforms local controls for an intelligent home

The secret ingredient of IKEA is that most of its smart lighting devices use the intelligent home home protocol, which means they can work without Wi-Fi. Zigbee also allows you to connect to 10 smart lights with one remote (or sensor) without a hub. It is ideal for beginners as you can always add a hub later to smart home controls such as planning, remote access and automation.

Local control also extends to IKEA’s intelligent center, Will directS It joins your router and allows anyone who registers with IKEA Home Smart App on your Wi-Fi network to have access to controls and without an internet connection. It is also possible to set remote access through the Internet, but this is nominal for the Smart Hub course.

IKEA Zigbee’s connections also help to extend the battery life of remote and sensors. Unlike the constant connection to Wi-Fi, Zigbee only communicates with a center when sending and receiving commands. In other words, Zigbee devices essentially sitting while needed. They will slowly not drain a battery like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

The other advantage of Zigbee is the compatibility of Smart Home. This means that the IKEA Zigbee devices work with most other intelligent hubs that support Zigbee: Amazon Echo, SmartThings, Philips Hue, etc.

My favorite remote smart home

I use IKEA Traffic Remote with my Samsung SmartThings Smart Hub, which controls various Zigbee and Wi-Fi devices. As a tenant, I don’t want to deal with my property manager by exchanging my Hardwired Light switches, so IKEA distances are the perfect setting for my smart home.

IKEA remote controls my intelligent bulbs and smart Kasa plug with frequent scenes and commands, so I don’t have to find my phone or ask a voice assistant. Plus, the remote is a great option to protect guests from inadvertently to reject my light switches – schedules and scenes do not work when the intelligent bulb is off. I love the magnetic mounting plates that I strategically put on my light switches. (This is not the most elegant solution, but at least it’s practical.)

This was said, IKEA remote remote controls are not perfect. Older Tradfri models in my smart home have a harmless battery life due to the use of a small coin battery. IKEA seems to have learned from this by moving on to larger AAA batteries in more new models such as Rodret and Styrbar. AAA is an excellent upgrade as you can find rechargeable versions and reduce electronic waste.

Note that My SmartThings Hub does not support the IKEA remote remote remote SmartThings Forum To fulfill. If you want a remote option with less programming, I recommend using HUB Dirigera.

Fortunately, the Hub Dirgerra maintains Amazon Alexa., Apple Home and Google Home – You can easily contact these smart home settings. There is also beta support for MatterS I successfully connected Dirigera to SmartThings via Matter – all my connected IKEA lights were ready to fit the rest of my system.

Tons of options for smart lighting

To this writing IKEA sells over 150 options for smart lighting online – most of them are intelligent lighting kits with different LED bulbs, bodies, remote and accessories. Yet there is a surprising number of options for an intelligent bulb for standard (E26), Candelabra (E12) and runway (GU10) gadgets. Similarly, many of the IKEA lighting fixtures, light panels and lighting strips can be connected to the Dirigera hub.

This said that there are not as many options for multicolored lights as Philips Hue and other competitive brands. IKEA sells many models with an adjustable color temperature, which is one of the characteristics I use again and again at home: soft white tones for relaxing and daytime tones while working.

IKEA sells several other types of smart devices for the home beyond intelligent lighting, but the only thing that stands out is the choice of motorized blindsS The biggest limit with IKEA Smart Shades is finding the right size for your window, so it is more difficult to recommend them.

In general, it’s worth considering IKEA Smart Lighting products, especially if you’re on a budget. This is not a perfect solution, but it is practical enough for most people.