Vintage-style LED smart bulbs have been a thing for a while, but I haven’t seen one quite like this new one from Savant’s GE Lighting division.
The all-new Cync Clear Full Color Direct Connect A19 Smart Bulb—now there’s a mouthful—features a spiral LED filament in a clear glass globe. The Edison-style smart bulb can be programmed to glow from a palette of millions of colors as well as a variety of white color temperatures.
Don’t let this photo fool you. The Cync Clear Full Color Direct Connect A19 Smart Bulb is made of clear glass, but it can glow in your choice of millions of colors.
GE Lighting
The new bulb connects directly to your Wi-Fi network, and it supports Matter, rendering it compatible with Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, Google Assistant, and Samsung SmartThings. But as with several other smart lighting products we’ve tested lately, setting it up using anything other than the Cync app will limit the features that are exposed.
Set up the bulb using the Cync app, for example, and you’ll unlock its entire feature set. You can control the bulb with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, set schedules and operate the bulb while you’re away from home, change the color (and the color temperature of white light), activate preset light shows, and personalize the Cync app.
But if you set the bulb up to use Matter, you’ll only be able to make basic color changes, and you won’t be able to change the color temperature at all. The light-show presets in the Cync app will also be off limits. On the other hand, Matter enables you to control the bulb with either Apple Home or Samsung SmartThings in addition to the other two smart home ecosystems.
As you can see from the chart above, you’ll want to use the Cync app to expose all the features of the Cync Clear Full Color Direct Connect A19 Smart Bulb–unless you have a professionally installed Savant smart home system, that is.
GE Lighting
There is also a third option—integrating the bulb into a Savant smart home system—but that requires a professional installer. Savant’s smart home systems can access the full range of the bulb’s capabilities apart from Apple Home and Samsung SmartThings integration, which wouldn’t be relevant if you went the pro-install route anyway.
The Cync Clear Full Color Direct Connect A19 Smart Bulb is available for purchase now at Target for $16.99. The new bulb will be available at Amazon and at the GE Lighting online store in July.
This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart lighting.