Change the Mood with These Color Changing Smart Lights

If you often host guests or find yourself wishing you had more control of the mood lighting of the rooms in your house, smart lights are the right option for you. Smart lights not only allow you to control your home’s lighting with your voice, they also enable you to change the mood and color of the lighting on the fly. Notably, GE’s popular lighting solutions are going smart this year with the new C by GE line of smart lights. This year’s newest devices will be joining the C-Sleep and C-Life smart bulbs that GE has already released.

Smart Lights from GE Launching in 2019

What’s the Big Deal?

You might be asking what’s so special about smart lights. They’re just lights, after all. What could be so fancy or special about them? Well, quite a lot, actually. Smart lights like GE’s C line are known for their awesome ability to connect to one another via Bluetooth. Importantly, they also connect to smart home hubs like Amazon’s Echo Devices or Google’s Home devices. This allows for voice control and full integration with your smart-home infrastructure.

Whether you’re commanding the device with your voice or through a smartphone app, access to these kinds of lighting makes your home higher-end and safer. Walking into a room and commanding the virtual assistant to activate the lights makes it that much less likely you could trip or fall, and it also makes it easier to navigate when your hands are full.

Smart lights also make hosting a breeze. Simply call out what mood setting you want the lights in, or what color you’d like to switch the lights to, and they follow up immediately and easily. Getting the lights set up with your smart home hub is a breeze, and you need only set up your preferences and profiles once to get the system ready to go. It’s as easy as flipping a switch!

What Are They Compatible With?

As you may expect, these smart bulbs are compatible with most smart home hubs that are currently on the market. They currently work with all Amazon Alexa-enabled devices, including the Echo and Echo Show lines of products. Additionally, C by GE smart lights are compatible with Google Home out of the box, so whichever of the two main home hubs you have, you’re good to go. Google Home owners also get the added benefit of not requiring a C-Reach Plugin Hub to connect to their Home device.

GE has announced plans to update the device software, so they are compatible with Apple’s HomeKit software. This will allow the use of Apple’s HomePod ecosystem, including Siri commands. That means that by the end of the year, the entire C by GE line of smart lights will be available for all major types of smart home hub!

New Switches

The first line of new switches coming in 2019 for the GE smart product line is a robust showing. Namely, a smart dimmer (with or without motion and light sensors) and a smart on/off switch are both on the way. Both forms of the dimmer are coming in the first quarter of 2019, retailing for $50 and $75, respectively. The standard on/off switch is slated for the second quarter of 2019 and will retail for $40, making it the more budget-friendly option.

Smart switches are a clever and intuitive way to take standard lightbulbs and make them smart lights. Whether you prefer voice controls, Bluetooth controls or just using a smartphone app, these switches are the fastest way to make your lighting smart-enabled!

New Bulbs

In addition to this slate of new switches, GE is also introducing a line of new color-changing bulbs. These include the A19 color-changing smart bulb, the BR30 smart floodlight and color-changing ropes lights. The A19 will retail for $40, the BR30 will go for $45 and the rope lights are slated to sell for $75. All three of these lighting options are set for a Q2 2019 release.

Surprisingly, these are the first standalone color-changing bulbs that are being sold by GE. That means for the first time, GE will directly compete with other smart color-changing bulbs like Philips Hue and Sylvania. This makes these new smart bulbs worth watching, as competition breeds innovation and is always better for the consumer.

These bulbs look set to be comparable in many ways to the primary competition. Their pricing is quite similar to the Philips Hue brand, and early reports say the light and color quality are also on the same excellent level as the Hue line.