When I last reviewed the company's lights, they were a welcome novelty, but a pain to use. I recently decided to take another look at LIFX bulbs, so in this review I'll talk about my experience with them today, how the installation process goes, if any improvements have been made, and how these bulbs integrate into my smart home.

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I recently ordered a larger size LIFX 1100 lumen bulb and the LIFX 800 lumen color bulbs which are the size of a traditional bulb and both have the standard E26 screw base), so those are the bulbs I'm focusing on today.

In my first review of LIFX lights, they were difficult to set up, often requiring multiple attempts to connect, and over weeks and months they would often randomly disconnect or become inaccessible for no reason, requiring a complicated reset process. Additionally, during the six or so years I had LIFX lights, several simply stopped functioning altogether, meaning I had to throw them away; an expensive prospect at their price of approximately $40-60 CAD each. I would say that of the eight LIFX lights I have owned, four have already reached the end of their life. And while I can't judge longevity in this short review period, I'll see how the newer generation of bulbs hold up.

I'm disappointed that LIFX lights are not easier to install than when I previously reviewed them. They remain buggy, difficult or simply broken.

Enter the setup code or use the camera to scan the QR code on the back of the paper. The LIFX app gets you connected.
If you don't have that HomeKit code, it is possible to get that code from the serial number found on the bulb, but it is a bit difficult to read. I waited several minutes for HOMEKit's installation to complete, but all I got was a spinning wheel.
Suddenly the light went off and I couldn't get it back on. So that was a complete dud.
I took another lamp out of the box and tried again.
This time it seemed to connect correctly, even with HomeKit, but during setup it forced me not only to add it to a room, but also to create a group within it. Despite the fact that I didn't want it to be grouped.
This brings me to the LIFX app. While it's nicely designed and laid out, it's not very intuitive or easy to navigate in my opinion, and I say this as someone who has used hundreds of smart home apps. The way the app wants to group your lights and devices doesn't make much sense. And it is extremely difficult to figure out how to recreate the groupings or rearrange your home.

The lamps have a wide range of colors and brightness. For the standard 'white' light that most of us use every day, there are numerous variations; There is a dial on your smartphone that allows you to determine whether you want a cool bluish light or a warmer pinkish-yellow light. You also have the option to brighten or darken the lamp from your smartphone. It's very easy to operate, and the color wheel setting in the app makes it easy to see what you're getting or what else is available to change it.
You can also set schedules so that your lights behave a certain way every day. I can say that this worked really well in my testing.
One last little twist of the knife. While I was working on this video, one of my LIFX lights died; I've had to reset this light strip to factory settings several times when it stopped working in the two years I've had it. . Today it stopped completely and wouldn't turn on again, so it went into the trash.

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