The Basics:

There isn't much to talk about when it comes to an A-19 light bulb. The Sengled Element looks about the same as any of the dozens of other ones I have used. Sengled has used the base to not only list their name, but also some of the specifications and the fact that this one has Zigbee built in.



The build quality feels pretty good, as there is no play in the interface between the bulb, the base, and the threads. Everything is solid, and the weight is more substantial than a typical bulb, which I always hope implies that it is well made.

In Use:

For this review, the Sengled Element Classic bulb was paired with a Samsung SmartThings hub. The process could not have been any easier - I put the bulb in a lamp, plugged it in, and clicked inside the SmartThings app that I wanted to add a device. In less than 10 seconds the light bulb was found and identified as "Sengled Element Classic A19". I didn't need a third party device handler or have to do anything extra to make this work.

The images below show the device's page inside of SmartThings. On the left we see it off, in the middle we see it on, and on the right we see the page that pops up for dimming. On both screenshots you will see a "100%" with a vertical bar next to it over on the right hand side. That is the button for dimming, and tapping on that leads to the page where you can adjust the brightness levels. The only oddity to me is that the dimming page is themed differently, with grey and yellow instead of blue and white. But, you can either use the arrows on the right side of the screen to increment the brightness up and down, or you can drag your finger along the yellow slider to do the same thing. The brightness adjusts in very fine increments, which is impressive. Other dimming LED bulbs have much more abrupt steps for dimming with maybe somewhere between 4 and 8 actual brightness levels.



The next two images are from the settings tab where you can only rename the bulb and update the icon. Since it installs without an icon, I gave it a light bulb from the list of available icons.



The bulb works great with SmartThings - It paired easily, it functions well, and the response time to on/off toggles is nearly immediate. The bulb itself seems to be on the mark for its specifications, at least for the ones you can measure in a somewhat subjective way. The maximum brightness is on par with other bulbs on hand so I would agree to the 800 lumen claim, the coloring matches other 2700K bulbs on hand, and a power meter confirms it draws about 9W while in use.