Review: Near Lightstrip Kit and Smart Bulb E27

Near‘s first few products were the Colour Lightstrips and Smart Bulb (now discontinued). Since then they have launched a variety of products and have gone on to refresh their lightstrip with the new Near Lightstrip Kit and Smart E27 Bulb.

Tech specs

With a quick side-by-side comparison, the updated Lightstrip Kit is S$10 more expensive but it comes with desired improvements such as being brighter and having tunable white colour. On the other hand, the Smart E27 Bulb is now S$2 cheaper but is in fact brighter and have a larger spectrum of white.

Do remember that with lightstrips from Near, you do not need to buy a separate control hub like with Philips in order to access the smart features. Generally, Near’s products are very affordable compared to their competitors.

Unboxing

The Near Smart Strip Light contains the below items:

• Near Lightstrip Kit (2m)
• Power adapter
• Smart controller
• Setup guide

Setup & installation

In order to get the most of both the Near Lightstrip Kit and Smart Bulb, it is highly recommended that you download the Near app and register as a user in order for you to access the smart features and controls.

Once you have the app installed, connect the lights to the power then follow the instructions provided or watch the installation video below. The installation and setup is rather straightforward. You just need to ensure that your smartphone is connected to 2.4GHz network during the setup process.

Near Lightstrip Kit is 2 metres long, the length is generally enough for most pruposes but if you need to extend the lightstrip you can simply purchase 1-metre lightstrip extensions at S$14.90 each. If the strip is too long, you can cut off the excess strip at the copper points.

Do I need to be connected to 2.4GHz network in order to control the light?

Thankfully, you only need to be connected to the 2.4GHz network during the initial setup. Once you have successfully added the lights to your app, you can even control the lights with your mobile data.

Light customisation

Both the Near Lightstrip Kit and new Smart E27 Bulb is noticeably brighter than its previous generation. Not only are they brighter, both can also emit tunable white, allowing you to have the best of both worlds when it comes to setting a mood.

In the Near app, both the Near Lightstrip Kit and new Smart E27 Bulb uses the same UI to set customisations. The dashboard of both lights have 4 main categories. The ‘White’ and ‘Colour’ tab are straightforward – you have a colour wheel to choose a colour, and you can easily adjust the saturation and brightness on the sliders below.

Moving on, you have the ‘Mood’ tab which contains default light scenes/presets. You can also create you very own, where you can choose between white or colour mode and also play around with different lighting effects.

Smart features

Lastly, you have the ‘Routine’ tab, which technically falls under a smart feature rather than light customisation. This tab allows you set a quick timer for the lights to turn off. You can go one step further which allows you to set up schedules for the light to turn on/off and choose the light mode you want it to emit.

Scheduling

The above schedule described is more on the individual light. If let’s say you own more than one Near smart light, then global schedule feature would be more useful since a single schedule is able to control more than one light. And you can also programme them to change colour while doing so.

Tap-to-Run sequence

“Tap-to-Run” allows you to create macros and save them as a shortcut, where once you tap on that shortcut, the light will do whatever you specify in your instruction sequence. Despite both the Near Lightstrip Kit and Smart Bulb sharing similar UI in the app, the Tap-to-Run sequence UI for each light differs. This makes the app experience a little inconsistent.

For the Near Lightstrip Kit, you only have 3 options for the action that you wish to execute as shown below.

As for the Smart Bulb, you instead have 6 options to choose from. Also, you don’t same options of setting colours like you did with the Near Lightstrip Kit. Instead, white colours are decided by the brightness and colour temp options.

If you want to setup a Tap-to-Run action for a certain colour, it is a little complicated as you can only do so with the ‘Mode’ option. But even in that option, you can’t choose the exact colour. Instead, you can only pick between colour and scene. And the Tap-to-Run action will emit the colour that was last used by those modes. This is the same problem that the Gradient Lightstrip had, where the Tap-to-Run action will simply activate the last used ‘scene’. This means that even if you have created many different custom scenes, you cannot create a “Tap-to-Run” sequence for each and every one of them.

If you’re using an iPhone, you can add your “Tap-to-Run” sequence to Siri Shortcuts, meaning that you run these actions via Siri with your own customised phrase. This should still work will for simple actions such as the on/off, mode, brightness, and timer. But if you want to do that for switching between different customised scenes, you can’t do that.

It seems to be an ongoing issue that the “Tap-to-Run” app functionality isn’t updated to support the growing feature set of the newer products to produce a UX that is more coherent across the board. It is a slight letdown in terms of user experience of going smart. But if you don’t see yourself fiddling much between custom scenes, then this shouldn’t be much of an impact to you.

Automation

The setup of an automation action is the similar to a “Tap-to-Run” setup, but instead of selecting a “Click to execute” condition, you choose another condition from the list the app gives you.

The Automation setup is simply an “If this happens, then do that” setup. You can tell the light to switch on if the weather is raining, temperature is lower than 30°C, or when the sun sets. The condition can also be based on a device, such as, “if the Smart Bulb is turned on, then carry out this task”. You can also set the automated action to only run during a specified period of time, for example only during weekdays.

Again, while having the ability to setup automated actions is great, the value of doing so depends on the type of task that the app allows you to do. As aforementioned, if you wish to set tasks to toggle between your customised scenes, the app currently does not support it. But if your tasks are more simple such as on/off and brightness change, then the app should do fine.

Smart Assistant capable (ie. Google Assistant)

You can link your Near lights such as the Near Smart Bulb to your Google Home so you can use Google Assistant make changes to the light such as changing the colours and brightness. You can easily change the colour of the light by simply telling Google to “set it to purple” for example. The colours will be controlled by the palette within Google.

Another powerful feature of Google Home is the ability to organise the lights into a specified room. In my case, I have placed my Smart Bulb and Gradient Lightstrip in a room called ‘Study’. So, when I tell Google to change the light colour in ‘Study’ to red for example, it will turn all the lights in ‘Study’ to red. Google Assistant also seems to be able to activate your “Tap-to-Run” actions as long as you say “activate [name of action]”.

Conclusion

Despite some of the inconsistencies in the app making the smart experience a little less smart, I still feel that the updated Near Lightstrip Kit and Smart E27 Bulb still offers a great bang for your buck. With the updated models, you have the best of both worlds of colour and tunable white – easy to go from focus at work to a chill ambience at night. The support for Google Home and Assistant is also another plus point.

S$17.90 for the Smart Bulb and S$49.90 for the lightstrip kit is probably one of the best prices you can find for a smart lighting product.