Lifx is bringing its high-end smart bulb chops to Matter with two new bulbs that support the standard over Wi-Fi. The two bulbs are an A21 indoor bulb ($39.98) and a Par38 indoor / outdoor option ($34.98) and will be available only through The Home Depot, starting today.
The big advantage Lifx has over many smart light bulbs is their brightness, and it looks like that’s the case here — both are 1,600-lumen bulbs, making them brighter than even Lifx’s own previous bulbs, which maxed out at 1,100 lumens. The A21 indoor bulb will be a 100-watt equivalent, while the indoor / outdoor Par38 — that’s the bell-shaped kind you might see in a recessed fixture — is a 150-watt equivalent and is rated IP65, meaning it’s dust-tight and can withstand direct jets of water.
Using Matter means they don’t have any special requirements for connecting to your smart home platform of choice, and because they work over Wi-Fi, you won’t need a Thread border router that’s required for devices that use that open protocol. Lifx is a big competitor to Philips Hue (if those prices didn’t make that clear) but says that its bright bulbs offer a broader range of light. Matter support also means the lights can work with any of the major smart home platforms, including Apple, Google, and Amazon.
Lifx was purchased by Feit Electric in 2022 and is part of the lighting subgroup in the Connectivity Standards Alliance that is behind Matter. It launched a Matter-compatible line of outdoor lights in February, and at the time, CTO Mark Hollands told us the plan was that “in the next 18 months, we’ll be launching 11 to 12 new products and updating our line to support Matter.”
The comparable Hue 1,600-lumen A21, at $65, ranges in color temperature from 2,000K (warmer) to 6,500K (cooler), while Lifx’s A21 ranges from 1,500K to 9,000K. That makes it both significantly cheaper than Hue’s option and potentially able to appear dimmer and brighter. That’s not to mention that Hue’s bulbs only work with Matter if you connect them to a Hue Bridge (which you may not want to do, anyway).
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