LIFX Mini 800-Lumen LED Light Bulb (L3A19MC08E26) Multi Colored - 1 Pack, 120 volts, 9W - New

purchased two of these last night to fit them into sconces for my front door, and side door lights. this makes my 40th lifx bulb purchased. yep, 40. i did have a tiny bit of trouble setting these up as opposed to the BR30 and A19 variants, but i love these bulbs too much to dock a star.i was an early adopter and tried out the hue bulbs when they first came out, and though i read that the issue has now been resolved for the most part, the early generation philips hue bulbs were ATROCIOUS at color reproduction. because of their choice of going with unconventional color combinations to achieve a brighter white light, they abandoned the traditional RGB (red/green/blue) and went with a more CMY approach, (actually magenta/violet/lime in hue's case), they could not reproduce any sort of true green, blue or any of the spectrum in between (cyan/aqua/teal etc were all out of the question).so i remembered that i backed LIFX bulbs on kickstarter before, and they seemed really promising. full disclosure: i pulled out of my backing for that project because near the end the project creator started answering questions less and less, used computer renderings of bulbs as "prototypes" etc and basically to me, seemed to be kinda shady so i lost faith in it. thought LIFX was another overblown kickstarter vaporware.SO WRONG.i bought 4 LIFX bulbs as a test a few years ago and immediately fell in love, and having purchased my own home more than a year ago i instantly replaced all of my living room, kitchen and sitting room (common areas) lights with LIFX BR30 bulbs (replacing the dull recess cans, it's pretty easy to find trims here on amazon that fit them perfectly). i loved it so much i also ended up buying more of their A19 bulbs to outfit my bedroom light, and random floating/floor fixtures. the two minis that i bought last night were the last LIFX purchases i made but definitely not the final ones.they've worked consistently, respond to google assistant and android app control flawlessly. i see people reviewing that the bulbs aren't operating consistently, or syncing correctly etc. might want to check out your network. i had spotty performance too before i swapped my router out for google wifi. with 180mbps+ speed throughout my entire house, lifx has been smooth as silk. some samples of how i use them:- with IFTTT, i set my outdoor lights to automatically fade on at 6PM and off at 8AM to keep my exterior lit.- with IFTTT i fade my decor fixtures on as i get within 100yd of my home and off once i'm 100yd away.- with google home i just say "hey google, set living room lights to 80% brightness (or desired %) and i instantly create the right atmosphere.- with google home i just say "hey google, set bedroom lights to warm/incandescent/cool white or sky blue depending on my mood.- with abode (home security) i set the bulb directly over my bed to blink at max brightness if someone opens my front door when i'm sleeping.- there are a lot more things that i really don't have the time to list. but LIFX bulbs are now an integral part of my life.my boyfriend was at first hesitant and found smart devices annoying and complicated to learn. now neither of us ever touch a light switch, or even really use the app...voice control is that much better (and easier)

UPDATE: When I first purchased these bulbs in the Fall of 2028, the installation and set up was a pain, but since LIFX has continued to update and improve the process, I feel comfortable up-ing my review from 4 stars to 5.All-in-all, I would definitely purchase these bulbs again based on the research I’ve done on comparing them to Philip’s Hue and similar bulbs.These smart bulbs are great! They are BRIGHT and have s slew of features that make them fun to use and versatile (color cycle, music visualizer, “spooky,” etc...). And they work with Apple’s HomeKit (at least mine do… you may have to have newish ones).BUT they were difficult and frustrating to set up. I had to contact LIFX support to get help several times. (BTW, LIFX support was absolutely fantastic to deal with: prompt, generous, easy to work with and understand. They even sent me 2 bulbs to replace ones that I couldn’t get to work at all. Everyone I corresponded with was great, however Taber Dullea went above and beyond the expected. Kudos to you!)The bulbs will work fine for a while, then inexplicably loose their connectivity to the LIFX cloud and HomeKit. One piece of advice that I found helped a lot: set up the lights one at a time and when you’re located near your router. I happened to have a light bulb tester (basically a socket and a plug) and an on/off switch already, so I used those to set up each bulb one at s time. That helped a LOT! Putting the bulbs up in ceiling fixtures and then trying to set them up was a challenge.! You also CAN NOT use them with a dimmer! I had to take out the Lutron Caseta switches I had put in, which now i have no use for… so my LIFX installation was doubly expensive: new bulbs and switches AND my investment in the Caseta equipment is now sitting unused in the closet.Another disappointing revelation that didn’t dawn in me until I had them installed was you basically loose the convenience of walking into a room and flicking s switch to turn on your lights. The switch has to be left ON for the LIFX bulb to remain connected to the LIFX Cloud; if the switch is OFF there’s no way for the app to talk to the bulb. There are many workarounds to this (check out flic) and there's always the “Hey, Siri” voice control, but it’s just a little annoyance that I hadn’t included in my decision to buy these bulbs.LIFX releases updates to their iOS app as well as firmware upgrades regularly, and with each new firmware update, the lights work better.