Anyone looking to get into smart lighting has probably heard of Signify Philips Lighting or Philips Hue, which is currently one of the most popular custom led light kits on the market for cleverly kitting out your home!
While Philips Hue lights are the go-to for many people, there are Philips Hue alternatives like Gledopto, which work with the Philips Hue bridge hub, letting you accomplish the same thing without breaking the bank.
When they were first released back in 2012, Philips Hue were exclusive to Apple Stores before becoming the holy grail of color changing wireless LED bulbs. The popularity of Philips Hue lights is warranted because they work across multiple platforms, including voice control speakers.
If you own any of the popular smart speakers, namely Google Home Mini, Alexa Echo or Apple Home you can pair them with the Philips Hue so, you can turn lights on/off with your voice, as well as voice control the dimness and brightness for each light (individually or all at once).
The Philips Hue ecosystem consists of led bulbs, sensors and switches, as well as the Philips Hue bridge, which is required in order for Gledopto LEDs to work.
For some people, the Philips Hue setup is very much an expensive proposition although prices have dropped a little and you can now get Bluetooth Philips Hue bulbs that work directly with your wireless router.
Philips Hue does cost a bit more money at front than smart bulbs that don't require a bridge hub but Philips Hue lights don't depend on third party servers and come with physical smart switches to wirelessly control the lights.
Even if you don't have a lot of disposable income, the Philips Hue bridge hub is easily worth the initial one-off cost because you can potentially add up to 255 devices, which is plenty of bulbs for kitting out the house, inside and out.
Gledopto, just like Philips Hue, uses the ZigBee wireless standard, which is an ultra low-powered mesh based network that has more capabilities than Zwave and WiFi.
The beauty of the ZigBee mesh networking is that if range becomes a slight issue, you can either add a smart switch or other device to act as a repeater and voila, problem solved!
The Gledopto LEDs have the same LED configuration as the Philips Hue bulbs, which is red, green, blue, white and warm white (RGB+W+WW). This means, the Gledopto LED lights are able to produce the same quality of full color mixing you get with the Hue light bulbs.
You are able to dim the Gledopto bulbs down to a decent full darkness and control the brightness via the color channel and color temperature picker pallette.
Because of the RGB+W+WW LED configuration, the Gledopto LEDs can produce proper bright light, good color saturation and a fantastic white light temperature range. When you power off the Gledopto lights, the last color you set is remembered.
With that said, the Gledopto led bulbs don't seem to use the RGB LEDs and white LEDs simultaneously like the Philips Hue bulbs do.
Fortunately, you can get proper bright white light by switching to the Philips Hue app white light mode to increase the brightness of the white LEDs. In white light mode, the brightness of the Gledopto bulbs is comparable to the Philips Hue bulbs plus, you are able to adjust the white color temperature as well.
Speaking of color temperature, the Gledopto bulbs have a wide color temperature range between 2700K and 6500K.
You are able to go from 2700K soft white to 6500K daylight, which is the highest degree Kelvin that gives you the whitest color temperature.
Once connected to the Philips Hue app, the Gledopto LEDs work exactly like a Philips Hue bulb connected to the Philips Hue bridge; hence you can use the Gledopto LEDs also with smart voice speakers (i.e. Google Home, Apple HomeKit and Home Assistant).
The color rendering index (CRI) of the Gledopto led bulbs is the same as Philips Hue, which is more than 80.
Natural daylight has a CRI of 100 so, the higher the value and closer to 100 the better. This is especially true if you plan to use led bulbs in a color suite room for color grading in post-production.
Being able to dial in to a specific color temperature is nice and so it's being able to adjust the brightness at the slide of a button.
The Gledopto 12W edison screw (GL-B-008Z) is the largest bulb you can buy, measuring 15cm long and 7cm wide, and delivering also the highest lumen output, which can be adjusted between 900 lumens and 1100 lumens.
The Gledopto 6W edison screw (ES27/ES26) (GL-B-007Z) can output between 500 lumens and 550 lumens, while the Gledopto 5W GU10 bulb (GL-S-007Z) can output between 300 and 350 lumens.
The Gledopto bulb with the lowest lumen output is the Gledopto 4W candle light bulb, which uses a small edison screw and can output 200 lumens.
While cheaper in price than the Philips Hue bulbs, the Gledopto bulbs are quality made too. They feature an anti-glare top section made of polycarbonate (PC) and pmma plastic and a lower section made of aluminium with a matt white finish.
The materials used for the outer construction of the Gledopto bulbs are heat resistant to high temperatures.
Powering the Gledopto bulbs are Taiwan epistar chip leds, which have a lifespan rating of 50,000+ hours lifespan. Gledopto bulbs have a much longer life expectancy than the Philips Hue bulbs, which are rated for 15,000 hours (or 625 days if left on continuously).
With a lifespan of 50,000 hours, the Gledopto led bubs could potentially last 30 years if only used for 4 hours a day. Gledopto bulbs use both SMD 5050 and SMD 3030 leds, which use three types of LED chips in one housing, making them a lot brighter than individual LED chips.
A couple other neat  Philips Hue app features are Routine and Zones, which lets you group bulbs according to zones so you can easily change the look and feel by changing the scene of all rooms or one specific room with just one tap.
With the Gledopto bulbs, you are also able to take advantage of the Philips Hue app Routines feature, which lets you schedule specific times when you want your bulbs to turn on and off throughout the day. Buy on Amazon