Hesitant Handyman Reviews - C by GE Full-Color Smart Bulbs
The wonderful world of color…
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Smart Bulbs are fascinating tech–as I’ve previously discussed, I had a C by GE bulb that came with one of my Google Home Minis, it was just a C Life bulb. Soft white, capable of dimming, nice little bulb but at the end of the day it’s… well.. a light bulb you can turn off with your phone or your voice. Is it cool and futuristic that you can do that? Sure. But let’s be honest–white light is white light. There’s not a ton to get excited about.
Well, after my run of Smart Home September, I had GE Lighting reach out to me and ask if I was interested in trying out one of their other products, a LED + Speaker bulb
Disclosure – the product reviewed in this article was provided by GE Lighting for me to review. Aside from the product I’m reviewing, I’m not being compensated for my opinions, and my opinions remain my own. For more information, see my financial disclosures page.
So what is it?
If you’re not familiar with the C by GE smart home line, they offer bulbs, switches, and even dimmers as a part of their lineup, and they can be paired with Google Home, Alexa, or Apple Homekit for voice control. The bulbs have the option of being set up directly with Google Home without a hub, though I did note in trying that that there was not as many color options to select. Alternatively, I could set the bulbs up with the C by GE app directly, which gives me full access to the color options, but can’t connect to my Google Home or access the lights remotely. I asked GE Lighting support about this and they told me that if you have a hub device (which includes their smart switches/dimmers
An unexpected solution to a problem…
The only question was… What the heck should I do with them? While two color bulbs were awesome, my first idea for installing full-color bulbs in the house would be to replace the six can lights in our TV area to upgrade our home theater setup, which are the BR30 flood lights
Conveniently, these bulbs showed up during a time when our oldest child was having trouble sleeping. Or, more specifically, he would go to sleep, then come into our room at all hours of the night when he woke up because a three year old has literally no concept of time. At all. The other day he said “A long long time ago” about something that happened yesterday. Other than the fact that it’s dark out, it could be 1 am or 5 am and he wouldn’t know. And on the mornings where it was time to get up, he’d be… well… testy. (He’s really not a morning person).
After giving it some thought, I remembered my friend Adam from LazyGuyDiy.com had done a post talking about how he’d sleep trained his toddler with a Phillips Hue bulb, and I realized that’s absolutely something that could help. (And really? There was no sense in reinventing the wheel here, his parenting advice is surprisingly sound for as lazy as he is. =)
I installed the two bulbs into the fixture and we asked Alton what color he would want for sleeping at night. He picked blue, which I put in and realized it was almost too bright when it’s blue. But he wanted blue, so I started messing with the scene to find the best balance. We eventually settled on one light being completely off, the other one being at 5%. Just enough light for a nightlight. Then we asked what color he wanted to let him know that he could get up and come see us in the mornings.
“Red!” he requested. I’m not going to repeat Adam’s joke about it looking like Amsterdam, but I will say it feels like something you’d expect to see in a horror film when you walk in there, or maybe Jean Luc Picard has called for red alert, and a Klaxon should be going off somewhere. But that’s what he wanted: Blood red. (I eventually got smart and set an additional automation to change it back to white after about 20 minutes, so I walk in to a red room less frequently now).
Some additional fun
So one other thing that happened as a kind of ancillary benefit is it allows for us to insert some fun into the bedtime routine, because as it turns out when you have the app on your phone, you can just drag your finger around on the color wheel to have a dance party. This is especially fun to do while my wife is reading Beep! Beep! Go to Sleep! and I’m pretending to be “Clanker,” the robot from his book over the baby monitor, and he says the secret code to activate dance party mode.
So how do I like it?
They bulbs are great—the ability to dial up literally whatever color you want is pretty fantastic, and the ability to dim the bulbs is a bonus (some colors are way brighter than others). My only real gripe, if you can call it that, was having to choose between the full color options or having the ability to control the lights with my voice because I have no hub devices. This will soon be remedied, however—I bought a pair of dimmer switches
In other news…
On a somewhat related note, GE recently announced the sale of the GE Lighting division to Savant Systems, a premium home automation company based out of Hyannis, MA. The sale appears to include a long term licensing deal for the GE name, so it will be interesting to see how Savant integrates the brand under their umbrella.
But wait! There’s a contest!
If you watch the YouTube video, towards the end I dropped a pretty obscure (in my mind) reference to… something. It’s pretty clearly labeled as far as what the obscure reference is in the video, but bottom line the first person to recognize the reference and reach out to me via DM on Instagram to tell me what it is will win a $25.00 gift card. (Contest open to US only, sorry everyone else. Not affiliated with Instagram or YouTube. Winner will be posted below once we have one. 😁)
