Onvis Release Updated Budget-Friendly Kameleon Light Strip

A little over a year ago, smart home product manufacturer Onvis – whom we’ve featured on the website a few times – released possibly one of the most customisable light strips on the market for HomeKit users, due to the option to colour individual sections of the strip to your liking, namely the Kameleon K1, which came in 2m/6.56ft and 5m/16.4ft options. Now the company has taken a step to bring this amazing light strip to even more users, with a very budget-friendly version of the Kameleon K1, called the Kameleon K1-5BS. The price for the original 5-metre K1 is currently listed on Amazon.com for US$59.99 (with a 15% discount coupon available), whereas the new 5-Metre K1-5BS is less than half that, at a mere US$27.99, and with a generous 20% off coupon, the price drops to just U$22.39! This is an insanely low price for any HomeKit-enabled light strip, but when combined with the Kameleon’s 50 individually controllable zones, this is by far the strip to beat.

Multicolour strips aren’t exactly new of course, and we’re now seeing more of them, but aside from LiFX‘s own offering, this is the only strip we’re aware of that allows you to control sections of the strip in different colours and brightness levels, and not create pretty animated effects.

One thing to be aware of is that both the K1 and K1-5BS are only compatible with HomeKit, not Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. Whether this will change with the advent of Matter is a question for another time perhaps. As with the original, the K1-5BS uses 2.4GHz WiFi for connectivity.

Currently, the K1-5BS (as the name would imply) only comes in a 5m/16.4ft length, so if you’re looking for just a 2m/6.56ft strip with multiple colour zones, the original Onvis K1 comes in this length as well. You can check out our video of the K1 below, to see just why we think it’s the best strip on the market right now.

What corners have been cut, is the question of course, and surprisingly, we’ve been told the only difference is that the K1-5BS doesn’t use the resin coating that you usually see with other strips. This means it’s not protected again any form of liquid of course, but then the original isn’t designed for any kind of outdoor use either, so in practice, there’s no real difference aside from the large price gap.

You can get the Kameleon K1-5BS from Amazon stores in the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, all with discounts available;

Thanks to Eric @ Moderndaytech for the headsup