LiFX Release New Indoor and Outdoor Lights With Matter

LiFX was considered pretty much moribund (yes, go look it up…) not so long ago, until US family lighting business Feit Electric came to the rescue. With this much needed boost for LiFX, new products are coming out just like the good ole days! Back in November of last year they released a range of outdoor lights to compete with the likes of Hue, and now they’re going a small step further with two new lighting products, which once again up the game slightly.

Both are smart bulbs, but with considerably more brightness than you generally get with smart bulbs, with both the E26/A21  bulb and the PAR38 Floodlight both offering up to 1600lm. This is in addition to the company’s reputation for producing lighting with nicely saturated colours. The 1600 lumen output makes the A21 bulb the equivalent of a standard 100 watt bulb, with the PAR38 being a 150-Watt equivalent.

One thing to note is that whilst the A21 is a standard indoor light, the PAR38 can be used for indoor or outdoor use.

One thing that LiFX has taken onboard for a while after its resurgence, is the Matter standard, which makes their products compatible with all the major smart home ecosystems, even though they were compatible before this. The major difference is that the Matter lighting products no longer rely on a cloud connection to work with platforms like Google Home and Amazon Alexa, making everything local. This has always been the case with their products in Apple Home, although you would still have needed a cloud connection if you used the LiFX app, so this is great step forward, even if the company has opted for Matter over WiFi as opposed to Matter over Thread, presumably for wider adoption.

Currently in the US these two new products are only available at Home Depot outlets, priced at US$39.98 for the A21, and US$34.98 for the PAR38.