amazon Philips Dimmable A19 Smart Wi-Fi Wiz Light Bulb reviews

The Philips Smart Wi-Fi Wiz Dimmable A19 Bulb is an affordable, hub-free LED light that you can control from your phone, offering plenty of options for party customization and connectivity third-party.

Philips makes some of our favorite smart bulbs, but its Hue LEDs are also some of the most expensive we’ve tested. Starting at only $9.97, the Philips A19 Dimmable Smart Wi-Fi Bulb is a much more affordable option that you can control anywhere with the Wiz for phone app clever. It offers rich features for the price, including support for IFTTT integration and voice control via Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri Shortcuts. Its companion app lets you create Scenes to set the mood for different occasions with the press of a button, Rhythm to adjust lighting based on the time of day automatically, and Schedule to turn on your favorite lighting your preferences on certain days and times.

Price and features

You may not be familiar with the Wiz line, but you’ve certainly heard of Philips’ sister brand Hue. Wiz is essentially a lower-cost alternative to Hue, with the main difference being the back-end technology and protocol they use. Hue is based on Bluetooth and Zigbee, while Wiz uses Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

Several Philips bulbs to choose from (both in the Hue and Wiz series), but the one I tested here is called the Wi-Fi Wiz Connected Smart Wireless Dimmable Bulb. That is Soft White A19 LED 60W. It offers 800 lumens of brightness, roughly equivalent to a 60-watt incandescent bulb, and has a 2700K (warm) color temperature. It is intended for indoor use only; it stands 5.71 inches tall by 2.83 inches wide and features an E26 base that will fit into any standard light socket. Philips says it’s rated to last 25,000 hours or about 22 years when used for an average of three hours per day.

A single bulb costs $9.97, or you can buy a two-bulb for $19.94 or a four-bulb for $39.88. If the warm-toned Soft White isn’t your fault, the bulb also has a cooler Daylight color temperature for the same price, as well as Adjustable White and Color Shift options; available prices are $11.97 and $12.97 for a bulb, respectively.

The Wyze Bulb also has built-in Wi-Fi, plays well with Alexa and the Google Assistant, offers scheduling options, and lets you create Scenes. It doesn’t offer Siri voice control, dynamic lighting effects, or the Auto Rhythm you get with Philips Wiz (more on these in a bit), but it does have a 2700K to 6500K color temperature range. You can adjust it to warmer or cooler.

Philips Wiz bulb setup

To set up Philips Wiz bulbs, you need first to download the Wiz app (available for Android and iOS), grant it permission to discover and connect to devices on your Wi-Fi network, and accept the Terms of Use. From there, you can create a home, join a home, or log in with an existing Wiz account. It is not compatible with the Philips Hue app.

Since I am new to the Wiz ecosystem, I chose to create a home. In doing so, you name your house (I name it My Home default), give the app permission to find your new lights via Bluetooth, and tap the plus sign at the top of the app to add one new room on the Home page. After you set up the room, tap Add Device > Lights, then enter your Wi-Fi password.

Then you have the option to do smart or manual pairing. With the smart pairing option, you can set up multiple lights simultaneously; the manual pairing option only allows you to handle them one by one. Since I just set up one, I used the manual pairing option. The app instructs you to power off the lights, then quickly turn them on three times, after which the bulb pulses with a blue/cool light.

After doing this, my light didn’t pulse, so I went back and tried the smart pairing option. For this method, you turn the lights off, then on, the app shows a 60-second countdown while searching for them. Unfortunately, the app is still looking for my light bulb after the minute is up. I waited a little longer, and it didn’t seem to work, so I force closed the app, reopened it, and the light connected.

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Light bulb control

After syncing with the bulb, five tabs would be present at the bottom of the app: Home, Scenes, Rhythm, Schedule, and Settings.

In the Home interface, you would view your created rooms and all the lights that have been set up in each room. Upon clicking on a light bulb, you can read its name at the very top of the app. The Home tab tries to provide a level of convenience by including simple controls for your connected bulbs: On, Off, and Night Light. There is also a dimmer slider for brightness.

The light bulb supports various dynamic lighting effects: flashing light; pulse, fade in and out; and steampunk, flashing frequently for an antique feel. The last two allow you to set the effect speed from a slider marked with a tortoise on one side and a hare on the other. Plus, there are Wake-up and Bedtime modes that provide slow increase and decrease in light over 30 minutes, respectively.

In the Scenes section, you can save the current state of your lights to adjust them in the same way quickly in the future. To add a Scene, tap the plus sign in the upper-right corner, choose a room, give the Scene a name, and then snap a photo of the lights for visual reference. Afterward, just hit Create This Scene. Then if you want to tinker with the lights that way, just hit the play button for that Scene. Siri Shortcuts lets you create your custom phrase for that Scene too from within the iOS app.

Under the Rhythms tab, a “Ring Rhythm” can be turned on that provides the best lighting throughout the day based on your wake time and bedtime. You can also set up a Custom Rhythm that activates a selection of lighting modes at a specified time. When creating a Custom Rhythm, you can choose up to five highlights.

Once connected to Schedule, your lamps can be programmed to interact with your connected lamps by turning them on or off at a certain time and on certain days of the week. For example, you can use the morning schedule for Wake-up mode to start at 7:30 a.m. every day of the week. It also supports a Sleep mode that will give the impression of your presence at home in the morning and evening when you are away.

In Settings, you can create a new home, add rooms to your home, edit the lights in each room, invite others to join your home to control the lights, view your energy consumption, access video tutorials, and chat with someone from support for help. You can also enable and manage integrations with Amazon Alexa, Alice, Conrad Connect, Enki, IFTTT, ImperiHome, Google Assistant, and SmartThings. With IFTTT, you can program your light bulbs to react based on your location, weather, Facebook notifications, and more.

If you have the Alexa app on your phone, it only takes a few taps to link it to Wiz. After doing so, you can control the lights with voice commands like “Alexa, turn on the light,” “Alexa, turn the light to warm white,” or “Alexa, dim it.”

Performance

My office light was installed with the bulb, and I created within my Wiz app the Scene of Work that, with one button push, sets the light to its brightest setting. So I also created a Lights Out Scene, and both worked great without any issues. The next step was to create Siri shortcuts to activate the respective Scene when I say to the virtual assistant, “Turn on my work light,” or “Turn off my work light,” and it works perfectly. Once I connected the Wiz to Alexa, it was a breeze controlling the light bulb by voice commands through my Echo smart speaker.

That said, there are incidents of the bulb’s being difficult to control once you start using the Home menu of the app. I mean sometimes I can hit On or Off, or even move that brightness slider, and nothing happens; sometimes it takes forever to respond. When it comes to totally unresponsive situations, switching to another part of the app for a while works, or force closing the app and trying again.

Conclusion

The Philips Smart Wi-Fi Wiz dimmable A19 bulb tends to burp any porta for massive value and convenience at a cheap price. It acts on Wi-Fi for app control without needing a separate gateway; can acknowledge voice controls; and has a gazillion options, including Scenes and Lighting Schedules. We could do away with the Wi-Fi issues, which are a minor problem and can be fixed, and that’s about it with the little pros. Other than that, it is a great smart dimmable Wi-Fi LED bulb and a bit behind the price of the Wyze Bulb, our Editors’ Choice in the class. The cheaper micro costs only $7.99 per bulb and has an adjustable white temperature but lacks a bit in Siri controls and dynamic lighting effects.

Advantages

Inexpensive

Distributed architecture; no central hub required

Can be connected using Wi-Fi for remote app control.

Compatible with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, IFTTT, and Siri Shortcuts

Supports Light Rhythms, Scenes, and Schedules

Drawbacks

Wi-Fi connection and app control responsiveness tested adversely

Does not support HomeKit