Performance:

The Sengled Smart LED Light Strip works really well. The local control is nice and it allows for quick and easy actuation of the light strip on and off. It also allows you to cycle through the colors, though it is difficult to get the exact color you want, but you can get in the ballpark by simply holding the button down. The supplied cord is plenty long, so you should be able to mount the light strip where you want and easily reach an outlet.



While I didn't actually check all 16 million colors, it does have incredible range to reproduce colors. Though I suspect if I was using a Sengled hub it would be much easier to adjust the color vs controls in Hubitat. But the advantage to connecting this to Hubitat means you can set automations based on other platform devices. In my case I set this up to be a visual indicator for my son. In the past we have had the house alarm go off for a water leak. My wife and I thought he slept through the siren since we shut it off fairly quick. But it turned out he was hiding since he thought someone broke into the house. So this was configured to go off with SHM activation of the siren. If it is a water leak the LED strip will light up blue. If it is an intrusion alert the LED strip will light up red for stay and for fire it will be green for go. Triggering several alarms of each type proved the functionality.

Conclusion:

While I was impressed with the sheer number of colors this reproduces, I was not as impressed with how bright it is. The box claims a 1400 lumen output which should be significantly brighter than a typical A19 bulb. But in actual use it appears to be dimmer than a typical bulb. Part of this could be due to the fact the luminous flux is spread out over 2 meters, but as you can see below, even at several different colors this lumen output seems over stated. If it weren't for the wattage questions mentioned early on I would have just chalked this up to a perception issue, but I just question all of the specs at this point.



Overall I am very impressed with the color rendering. At a price of $50 (at places like Amazon.com), without a hub, this might be a tough one to recommend especially when there are so many questions about the specifications and what it would take to actually upgrade this to additional strips in the future. But, if you have a home automation hub and a specific need for just one strip as I do, there is a valid use case.

In the end, the Sengled E1G-G8EW Smart LED Light Strip earns the Bigbruin.com "Great Idea" award.



Pros:

» Incredible color reproduction
» Manual control
» 3 year warranty

Cons:

» Questionable specifications

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