Ring made a name for itself with its video doorbells and then expanded into security cameras, whole-home alarm systems, and even landscape lighting. Ring is starting with two very basic LED bulbs that require the same bridge to connect to your Wi-Fi network that the company’s landscape lighting uses. The Ring A19 bulb boasts some of the same functionality we’ve seen in smart lights from the likes of Philips Hue, WiZ, LIFX, and others, including light grouping and scheduling, and it also works well with motion-sensing devices in the ever-growing Ring ecosystem.
But this dimmable and Alexa-enabled bulb lacks such standard smart lighting features as scenes and a vacation mode.
(I tested the bulb in my wife’s bedside lamp and she immediately spotted the difference.) The Ring A19 will probably look best in a desk lamp or an enclosed outdoor fixture, although it could also work in a living area with an earthy color scheme.
Getting the Ring A19 Smart LED Bulb up and running is a simple process, but remember that you’ll need a Ring Bridge to take advantage of its smart features, such as dimming, scheduling, light grouping, and so on. The Ring A19 bulb two-pack starter kit, which inclues the bridge, was selling for $60 as of this writing. Given that Ring is owned by Amazon, the Ring A19 bulb boasts tight integration with Alexa, which means you can create Alexa routines using the bulb, including routines with morning and night schedules that ramp the brightness up and down.
Customer Reviews: Ring A19 Wi-Fi Smart LED Bulb White 5AT1S3-WEN0
A great upgrade for this device is if it would come on when the motion floods detect movement.
Ring’s A19 and PAR38 smart bulbs impress with easy pairing and simple controls
This, of course, expanded Ring’s product line from just security alarms, cameras and video doorbells into a whole new category. We’re pretty big fans of the Smart Lighting line, and really like how well it integrated with the broader Ring system.
Now, Ring is shipping some new outdoor lights and two smart bulbs: a standard A19, which is your typical lightbulb, and a PAR38, which is quite a bit larger. These two bulbs represent the true launch of indoor smart lighting and lower the entry-level cost into the line.
We’ll touch on this a bit more in a minute, but while there’s an upfront cost with the bridge, it sets you up for connecting as many as 50 Ring smart lighting devices. We’ve spent a week testing these bulbs to the max, so let’s dive into what we found.
It’s great for spreading light out farther from a top-down design, versus the A19, which can shine in a 180-degree range. We’ve been using it in a light above the front door that’s open on the bottom (the bulb faces down), and it’s been working great.
You’ll start by opening up the Ring app on your Android or iOS device, selecting that you want to pair a new product, and then choosing smart lighting. Once that’s scanned, the app will instruct you to screw your lightbulb into the fixture and then give it power. The bulb will cast a network that consists of Bluetooth and a proprietary long-range signal, and the Ring Bridge will pick it up. In our testing, we kept it centrally located in the house, and it reaches out to the street for path lights and into the backyard for other connected fixtures.
We’re also really digging the schedule feature, especially for the PAR38 bulbs, which we have housed in a classic outdoor spotlight fixture. Rather than using a traditional mechanical timer hooked up to power, we can now just keep the switch on, and the Ring app intelligently turns the PAR38 lights on at dusk and off at dawn.
It has the potential to lower the electric bill and also gives us an easy way to check if the lights are actually on.
Ring Smart Light & Bridge Review
Now, one thing that I was noticing on the box is that it requires the Ring Bridge. While shopping on Amazon, you’ll be happy to see that they’re priced at $15, but be aware that they do require a Bridge.
Ring Smart Lighting System Review
The Ring Smart Lighting System joins the company’s impressive roster of security devices and is designed to help keep your home safe and well lit. You Can Trust Our Reviews Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. It measures 2.3 by 2.4 by 0.7 inches (HWD) and has a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi radio to connect to your home network and Wi-Fi-enabled Ring cameras. There are two signal strength LED indicators on the front and a mini USB power port on the bottom. It uses a dimmable 400-lumen LED bulb with a 3,500K white color temperature and its motion sensor has a 120-degree field of view and a 30-foot range. A dimmable 80-lumen LED bulb with a 3,500K white color temperature sits inside a 4.1-by-4.1-inch fixture and is affixed to a pole that holds the four D-cell batteries needed to power the light.
The Pathlight has a motion sensor with a 140-degree field of view and a 15-foot range and has a dusk-to-dawn glow setting that will keep the light on at reduced brightness at night. It uses two LED bulbs to provide 2,000 lumens of 3,500K white light and its motion sensor has a 180-degree field of view and a 70-foot range.
The small Steplight Battery is designed to light up stairways, walkways, and decks when it detects motion.
The Motion Sensor doesn’t illuminate anything but it provides an early trigger mechanism for smart lights and other Ring devices. The sensor is powered by three AAA batteries and comes with installation tools and screws, a user manual, and a security sticker. I plugged in the Bridge and waited a few seconds for the LED to blink blue, then selected my home Wi-Fi SSID when prompted.
I attached the Spotlight to the side of my house using the included mounting screws and repeated the setup process for the Pathlight and the motion sensor. Whether you want to illuminate driveways, stairways, or patio areas, there’s an option designed to light your way, and with most of these DIY devices, you don’t have to run any wires.
You can also link these lights to Ring doorbells and cameras to trigger video recordings when motion is detected. It would be nice if Ring added support for IFTTT applets so you can do things like have lights turn on when a lock is opened or when an alarm is sounded, and rechargeable battery packs would be a welcome upgrade, but neither gripe prevents the Smart Lighting System from earning our Editors’ Choice. Ring Smart Lighting System 4.0 Editors’ Choice See It $24.99 at Amazon MSRP $24.99 Pros Easy to install.
I Didn’t Think I Needed Smart Light Bulbs Until I Tried These
Yes, they help optimize the fully automated homes of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs — allowing you to, say, set the mood lighting in your living room to mimic the natural cycle of the sun. While some of them require a hub in order to operate, meaning they need an extra piece of nearby hardware to translate your commands, many of them screw into your fixtures just the same as any standard bulb; then they connect to your Wi-Fi network via phone app and allow you to turn them on or off from wherever you are, whether that’s on another floor of the house or in an entirely different Zip Code for work (if we ever return to our nonhome offices).
And although they can initially cost anywhere from four to eight times more than a traditional bulb, they can also deliver big energy savings, sometimes cutting 10 to 50 percent off your electric bill. Or, as Strategist writer Jordan Bowman says he does with his Philips bar light as part of his Friday routine: “While watching The Mandalorian, I’ll use my phone to change the lights to a dark-green hue, setting the mood for all the bizarre Baby Yoda, space-cowboy-inspired adventures.” So whether you want to turn your space into a dance club or simply reduce your monthly power output, read on for a list of options that can illuminate every room of your house (along with the front porch).
Once you activate it, with the Sengled app or voice assistant like Alexa, it offers the full range of 16 million potential colors that LEDs can generate, including shades of white. While to some that may seem like an unnecessarily vast spectrum, it has more uses than you may think: For example, you can set the light to very gradually get brighter in the morning and darker in the evening to simulate sunrise and sunset (which has purported benefits for your circadian rhythms). And I must say I have taken real pleasure in freaking out the kids by slowly turning the bulbs a crimson red during a Halloween movie marathon. One caveat: The latest generation of these bulbs requires a separate hub to operate, and while this isn’t a very complicated process (much of the setup is automated, other than entering your Wi-Fi password and some other information about your home network), it will cost you another $27. And if you’re someone who’s into photography, like me, you may well have an extra appreciation for this feature, as changing the shade of white can greatly affect the look of photographs and video, and it’s nice to be able to dial in the desired effect. The same goes for those Zoom meetings: Finding just the right shade of white light can flatter your appearance onscreen and fool your colleagues into thinking you actually put on makeup and/or showered that day. Ring is a well-known brand in the world of smart video doorbells, and it knows how to make its products extremely user friendly. This is certainly true of its outdoor Smart Security Light — add it anywhere you need a bit of extra illumination (porch, back steps, etc.
I especially like having smart features in these outdoor security lights, as I can receive motion-activated alerts and decide when to turn them on, all from my smartphone. It fully illuminates your sidewalk or driveway when activated by motion; the light turns on, and you receive a notification on the Ring app, letting you know when someone is approaching your door. And yes, you will pay quite a bit more for these fixtures versus, say, a solar-powered sidewalk light (maybe five to ten times more), but as far as I’m concerned, the smart features are worth the extra cost.
And the look of the thing is just a great outdoor design element — it’s like a tiny streetlight, a lantern on top of a small post. Nanoleaf Canvas Expansion Pack $80 When it comes to smart light bulbs, it’s rare that I’ve come across those with a truly innovative design. The set consists of four (or as many as nine) square smart light panels you can connect and hang on the wall to provide illumination anywhere in any of 16 million colors and several shades of white.
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