Lightify Gateway Basics:

Without some means to control the Lightify bulb, you have spent way to much on what will now be a typical LED bulb. Considering the big box stores are selling some LED bulbs like this for under $2/each these days, you don't want to spend $30 on something that does the same thing. We will be testing out the bulb using Sylvania's Lightify Gateway, but in a subsequent review we will come back and see how it works using a Wink hub.



The box for the Lightify Gateway is about the same size as the bulb's, and the artistic approach is about the same, too. You get a good look at the product, as well as a simple pictorial that shows how the device will connect your bulb to your mobile device.



Just like the bulb, inside this box we find the gateway nestled in a cardboard tray with a quick install guide included. The installation and configuration of the gateway is more involved than the bulbs, but overall it should create too much trouble for anyone to get through it.



The gateway itself is fairly tiny, perhaps just a bit bigger than the wall adapter for a phone charger. Physically, the entire installation requires you to plug it in to a 120V outlet within range of your wireless network. From there, you are going to spend a little bit of time on your phone having the app (a free download from the app store) register you and the device online, and then associating with bulbs found within range.



Once you setup the gateway on your local wireless network you can connect to it over the Internet. So, you can reach the gateway from anywhere in the world. I found that the range from the gateway to the bulb was not quite so generous, and considering that Zigbee and things like the Wink hub have ranges of about 10 meters (@ 30 feet), I am guessing the Lightify system has a similar range. With the bulb in the same room as the gateway, things work very well and very quickly, but if I have them one floor apart, the distance and the wood floor between them seem to slow the response time and occasionally lead to a missed command. With a large home, or multiple floors that you want to include in your Lightify scheme, you may need to consider additional gateways.