Meross HomeKit Colour Bulbs Now Available

You could be forgiven for thinking that the folks at Meross don’t require sleep, as they seem to be churning out product after product, at an alarming pace. The latest product to come from the company is their smart colour bulb, currently selling on Amazon.com for US$25.99 for a 2-pack, making each bulb just shy of US$13 each – insanely cheap. When compared to the Hue equivalent, the price is US$89.99 for a 2-pack, so for the Meross, that’s a saving of US$32.00 per bulb!! That’s also based on the assumption that you’ve already got a Hue bridge of course, which is required for Hue bulbs.

The new bulbs certainly match Hue in terms of basic specs, with 810lm, 9 watts, 16 million colours as standard, covering 2700-6500k + RGB, and A19 in terms of the size. The only real difference on the surface is that Hue uses Zigbee, with the Meross bulbs using standard 2.4GHz WiFi.

As with almost all of Meross’ products to date, these bulbs were already available, sans HomeKit support, but as with previous products, HomeKit has been added, although the cheaper, non-HomeKit versions still exist, which can be confusing for some customers. This means there’s one version of most of their lineup with support for Amazon, Google, IFTTT, and SmartThings, then another identical product, with all the aforementioned platforms listed, but with HomeKit added.

The only other WiFi bulb in this price range that also uses WiFi is the Vocolinc L3 SmartGlow, which is capable of a slightly brighter 850lm but is slightly larger with an A21 size diffuser section, priced at US$38.99 for a 2-pack, or a 3-pack for $56.99, making each bulb $US19.00.

At present, it seems only the US has these bulbs available, but it’s almost certain, as with many of their products going forward, that there will be EU versions available in due course.

In other Meross-related news, the company have now finally released their plug compatible with Australia/New Zealand sockets. As first spotted by u/faisalthe01 from the r/HomeKit subReddit, the plug comes in much the same form factor as the UK variant, but with pins suitable for plugs and sockets found in Australiasia, that in fact is much the same as Chinese plugs, albeit upside down. In addition to HomeKit support, the plug supports Amazon, Google, and SmartThings.

• Input: 100-240V~, 50/60Hz, 10.0A
• Output: 100-240V~, 50/60Hz, 10.0A maximum load
• None Energy Monitor Function
• Wireless Security: Support 64/128 bit WEP, WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK *Does not support Enterprise WiFi.
• Wireless Standards: IEEE 802.11 b/g/n, 2.4GHz, 1T1R