WiZ is an IoT platform for smart lighting and smart services. It was actually a startup back in 2017, and was acquired by Signify, a world leader in lighting which has the popular Philips Hue under its belt as well. And when it comes to smart lighting products, bulbs and lightstrips come to mind, which is why we will be checking out the WiZ LED Strip Starter Kit and E27 Smart Color Bulb. They retail for S$104.90 and S$31.90 respectively on Shopee.
Tech specs
LED Strip 2M Starter Kit
| Length | 2 meters |
| Light Colour | Tunable White (2700K – 6500K) + RGB (16 Million Colours) |
| Brightness | 1,600 lumens |
| Input | 100-240VAC – 50/60Hz, 20W |
| Maximum Extension | 10 meters |
| Lifetime | 15,000 hours |
| Warranty | 2 years |
E27 Smart Color Bulb
| Bulb Fitting | E27 |
| Power | 8W |
| Light Colour | Warm to Cool whites (2200K – 6500K) + RGB (16 Million Colours) |
| Brightness | 806 lumens |
| Lifetime | 25,000 hours |
| Warranty | 2 years |
Setup & installation
As with all IoT, you will need to download the WiZ Connected app in order to setup both the smart lights. The app will also offer more smart features which we’ll explore further below. Once you have the app installed, connect the lights to the power then follow the setup instructions in the app. Do ensure that your smartphone is connected to 2.4GHz network during the setup process. I like how there are alternative ways of connecting to the light if you somehow cannot setup via the default method.
LED Strip installation
WiZ LED Strip Starter Kit is 2 metres long, which is largely sufficient for most use cases (eg. at the back of your desk, or under your bed frame). If you want to extend the overall length of the LED Strip Starter Kit, you can simply purchase 1-metre extensions at S$27.90 each. On the other hand, if you don’t need the full 2 meters, you can simply cut off the excess strip at the copper points.
There are also 3M adhesive on the control hub so it doesn’t dangle awkwardly. Also, it is a separate piece on its own so you don’t have to replace the entire LED strip if it turns out the control hub is faulty.
Do you always need to be connected to the 2.4GHz network?
Thankfully the answer is no. 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 as long as the app is connected to the internet, so your 5GHz network or even mobile data will work.
Light customisation and quality
Customising the lights of both WiZ LED Strip Starter Kit and E27 Smart Color Bulb is deeply engrained in the WiZ Connected app. The first setup you’d have to do is to create a ‘Home’ and then select a ‘Room’ to place the lights in. For my setup, I placed both the E27 Smart Color Bulb and LED Strip Starter Kit in my ‘Bedroom’.
The app smartly organises each room in tabs, and you are able to control all the lights in the room at once through on/off, brightness, and change in light colour. You can control each light individually by tapping on the icon of the light.
Both the E27 Smart Color Bulb and LED Strip Starter Kit are bright, especially the LED Strip Starter Kit which is one of the brightest I have tested so far since it can go as bright as 1600 lumens. Both lights are not only able to emit warm white to cool white, they can also offer coloured lights of the whole RGB spectrum.
In the WiZ Connected app, tapping on the current colour of the light will bring up a list of colour presets that you can choose from quickly set a mood. Alternatively, you can tap on the ‘Custom Colour’ and select a colour from the RGB spectrum. The app even smartly suggests a name for that colour which you then can save it as preset for convenient selection in the future.
Another thing to note is that you can select up to four colours to be mapped as shortcuts for the WiZ remote, which doesn’t seem to be available yet in the Singapore market.
Smart features
There are 3 main features to discuss which are: (1) Scenes, (2) Rhythms, and (3) Schedules.
Scenes
After you’ve had your fun doing light customisations, you can then save it as a ‘Scene’ so you can quickly create a desired mood or atmosphere with just one tap. This feature will be more useful once you have more WiZ lights in your house.
The idea is that for a particular mood you wish to create, each light may be have different colour and brightness settings, which you’d be able to save as a preset. You can see a quick demo below:
Once you have the Scene setup, you can even add it to Siri Shortcuts and create a custom command for it. This is a good feature to have since WiZ lights does not support Apple’s Homekit so this is slight workaround for it.
Rhythms
Next, you have the ‘Rhythm’ tab, which automatically changes the lighting mode based on the time of day. There are two types of rhythms you can set in the app – (1) Circadian Rhythm, and (2) Custom Rhythm. Circadian Rhythm is more of the flagship app feature, which tries to replicate the natural changes of the sunlight throughout the day. The light will gradually transition from bright to dark as the day progresses. On the other hand, the Custom Rhythm doesn’t offer the gradual transition of light modes. So the light will simply change from one mode to another, much like setting up a schedule.
I’d recommend using the Circadian Rhythm and customising it, over setting up a custom one since it doesn’t offer the gradual transition. Stick to the scheduling featuring for more time based customisations.
Schedules
This brings us to the scheduling feature of the app, which is seemingly similar to the Custom Rhythm but this allows you to have more control over the days involved, brightness settings and room.
Do note that this scheduling is only available at a ‘Room’ level, and not applicable to individual light. So if say you just want the light strip along the TV console in your living room to light up at 7pm, you might need to allocate it to a dedicated room as a workaround.
Integrations with Smart Assistants and Apps
There are a bunch of smart apps and assistants that you can link your WiZ lights too in order to further the usability of the lights. WiZ Connected app supports commonly used smart home apps integration such as Google, Alexa, and IFTTT.
Once you have your linked the WiZ lights to Google Home, 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.
Having the ability to link your WiZ lights to Google Home means that you can take advantage of Google’s ‘Routines’ feature to add integration with all the other smart devices linked to your Google Home. This allows you to do individual light scheduling that the WiZ Connected app was unable to do.
Conclusion
At S$104.90 for the LED Strip Starter Kit and S$31.90 for the E27 Smart Color Bulb, WiZ smart lights are considered premium offering compared to other smart lighting brands. Having said that, being part by Signify means some of the innovation from Phillips Hue may one day creep into WiZ. SpaceSense which was announced a while back, looks to be a useful feature to have for your smart lights.
If you’re seeking top quality smart lights with good smart home integration, then both the E27 Smart Color Bulb and LED Strip Starter Kit are ideal choices. They are cheaper than Phillips Hue, and you need not buy a bridge to enable all the smart features to work. The app does a offer a fair bit of smart features and I believe there is also newer app coming soon called WiZ v2 to offer more functionalities.