Review: Wemo Bulbs Starter Kit

As far as crazy ideas go, connecting the various appliances in your home to the internet doesn’t rank that high. At least, not these days, but only a short time ago the notion that your lights would hook into your wireless network would have been novel. But there are plenty of lighting systems taking advantage of what this new age of connected everything has to offer.

The Philips Hue lighting kit offered users the chance to control their home lighting through an app, creating colour schemes to fit their moods or even just simply being able to turn lights on and off remotely. But not everyone wants or needs the ability to create a virtual light show in their livingroom; sometimes you just want the convenience of being able to switch lights off without getting out of bed. That’s where Belkin’s SMart bulb starter kit fits in.

Yes, it may seem like the ultimate in laziness. And there is that element to it. But there are also additional considerations such as security or safety, or even cutting down on your electricity bills. First of all, Belkin bulbs are low energy, because they are LED. They can also be scheduled to turn on and off at certain times of the day, for example the lights can be programmed to turn on gradually, and turn off at midnight. Imagine, no more arguments about lights being left on unnecessarily.

The starter kit incudes two bulbs and the brains of it all – the Wemo Link. The Link is a wireless device that plugs into a socket and acts as a bridge between your bulbs, your smartphone and home network. Without it, you can’t connect to the bulbs or control them.

The good

Setting up the Wemo bulbs is simple. Plug the Wemo Link into the wall, download the Wemo app and follow the instructions on the screen.

It’s important that you name the bulbs as you set them up. In the initial setup, I could only find one bulb, despite having two plugged in, so I had to run the scan again. The second one finally showed up, but it had the same generic name as the first bulb, which led to some confusion. If I’d name the initial bulb as I set it up, that wouldn’t have happened.

The scan only took a few moments. Once you have the bulbs set up on the system, you have full control. You can set rules for each bulb – perhaps you’d like a gradual wake-up 20 minutes after sunrise every day or you simply want to dim or brighten them at will.

The real power of the Wemo system though is that it’s modular. You can have up to 50 bulbs in one Link, so you are unlikely to need more than one per household.

But you can also add motion sensors and other extras that will turn your lighting system into a motion sensitive one. Setting a few rules on the app means the Wemo lights can be ordered to switch on when motion is detected in a room once you have the extra sensors.

The not so good

With the Wemo, you need a smartphone or tablet to get the most out of the lighting system. That may be true of most of the wifi-enabled bulbs but with others, such as the rival Philips Hue Lux bulbs, you can also control the bulbs through a web portal. The dependence on the smartphone can be a bit of a hindrance, mainly because you have to enable remote access of each device while you’re on your home network.

If your phone loses charge, you can’t just borrow a friend’s to switch on your lights. That would be solved by allowing access through a web browser.

The Wemo Link has no ethernet access so it needs good wifi network coverage.

If your home has wifi dead zones, you might want to look at where you are using the bulbs and plan accordingly.

The rest

LED lights can sometimes feel a little cold. That’s not the case with the Wemo bulbs, which are a warm white. And although you can use your smartphone to turn lights on and off, the light switch works just as well but obviously cutting power to the lights will render them invisible on the app.

Another plus point for the system is that it links in with the platform If This Then That. Using his can expand range of tasks your system will perform. For example, you can set your lights to blink if you get a new email, or if rain is forecast.

The verdict

HHHH On the whole, the Wemo bulbs are a great way to start your connected home, easing you in gently to the whole thing.