You know those nights when it’s finally cold enough to shut the windows and a fire would be perfect? Most of us turn on the overhead light instead and get on with the evening. We spent a few weeks with a bulb that solves that, and it’s walking away with our Editor’s Choice award.
Fifty zones in one bulb
Most smart bulbs have one move: the whole bulb turns blue, or the whole bulb turns orange. The Linkind Smart Light Stick splits a single bulb into 50 individually controlled zones you set one at a time. Any smart bulb can turn blue. But a bulb that can hold a sunset, a color gradient or a moving flame? That’s award worthy.
Linkind packs 160 LEDs up the length of the stick and animates them in sequence, so you watch the light climb the way a flame climbs rather than watching one bulb fade from orange to red. You pick one color or two, then set the brightness, movement, intensity and speed.
Watch a flame dance on your walls
Linkind is big on the flame effect, but when we tested it the thing that mattered most to us was distance. From across the room you’d take the bulb’s light show for the real thing. One owner looked in at his through his front window from outside and said you’d take it for a real fire.
So make sure you give it an open or glass fixture so you can watch the magic. We moved ours around the house to find where the effects looked best, and without a doubt, you want a lamp that’s open and glass. Put it in a floor lamp by the couch or a sconce near the mantel and a whole room looks like it has a fire crackling away in it, with no heat, no smoke and nothing to put out before bed.
It goes in a lamp you already own
Mood lighting normally means buying more hardware. You stick an LED strip behind the TV, or you clear shelf space for a pair of light bars.
Screw this into any standard E26 socket instead and the lamp on your end table becomes the accent light, with nothing new to mount, plug in or hide. Linkind packed in an automatic upright sensor too, so the flame rises from the base whether the bulb points up in a table lamp or hangs down from a ceiling fixture.
It still works as a light too
An award for a party trick wouldn’t be worth much, but the Smart Light Stick is a great light source for more than just light shows.
It puts out 850 lumens (about what a 60-watt bulb gives you) across a white range that runs from 1000K to 6500K, so you can go as warm as a candle for dinner or as cool as daylight for chores. We kept ours plain white, and you probably will too, but the second you want warmer light for reading, you won’t need to move to another room.
There’s more in the app than the flame
The Presets tab holds more than 120 scenes, so you tap through until one fits the room and save it as a favorite. The Color tab gives you a Kelvin slider and a picker for any color you have in mind, and DIY hands you the controls to build an effect yourself. If you want to learn DIY quickly, start with two colors that clash, the way we used red and white, because then you can watch what each effect does as it moves across the LEDs.
Our favorite option is Vacation (but you’ll need multiple smart bulbs for it). Instead of leaving a light on for five days in a single room while you’re gone, the option makes it look like someone’s actually home. The living room comes on for a while, then the bedroom, then a light at the back of the house. You can group up to 16 bulbs, which is more than enough for a whole porch, a big living room or a line of sconces.
Setup takes nothing but your phone
You download the AiDot app, scan the barcode and connect the bulb to your Wi-Fi. That’s it.
Because it speaks Matter, you’ll find it in Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home or SmartThings without putting a bridge in between. Matter Alpha tested the connection in Apple Home and rated it 9 out of 10 for stability, with Apple’s Adaptive Lighting supported, so if you already own smart lights from another brand, you’ll see this one sitting in the same app next to them.
Why it gets our Editor’s Choice
We give this award to the gadget that does something nothing else in its category can, while still being an excellent light bulb.
Nothing else you can screw into a lamp socket will run a moving flame, and the 50 zones that make the flame possible also make it the most adjustable white and color bulb we’ve put in a lamp this year.
So: no new hardware, one app, and out of the box integration with every ecosystem you could hope for. That sounds like an easy Editor’s Choice pick to us.
