These bulbs are currently on sale for $16.99 for a 4 pack. Makes me wish I had waited a hair…
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Over 550 reviews and only averaging 3 stars. A number of early failure reports.
Fair enough, however, did you actually read the reviews.
Amazon notirously, if there are multiple styles / types under one listing, lumps the reviews together. The bad reviews / early failures for the most part, although not exclusively are for the full color models, many complaints of SmartThings integrations and again, those complaints are for the full color versions. I am linking to the soft white dimmable only models. And let’s be honest, we are SmartThings users, so poor to non existent customer service is kind of the status quo…
While I make no claim to have read ALL the reviews, TL:DR you know, but scanning through the first 3 pages or so for Verified Purchase, one and two star reviews are all for the full color models. The verified purchase 5 star reviews lean heavily to these cool white dimmables… There are some reviews priasing the full color, and some slamming the cool white…
My take away from the reviews is this. I have no intention of going with the Sylvania full color bulbs.
They have had what apears to be in early 2018 a run of REALLY bad full color bulbs that they should have pulled back. That seems to be the timeframe of the bad reviews. On the cool white bulbs, if they die early, they seem to die within the Amazon return window, so unless you plan on getting them and sitting on them for a while prior to installing them you should be fine, and if you do sit on them and get a dud, enjoy the customer service experience… Same can be said for other products…
And i am NOT saying they are perfect. I got one that was a dud out of the box. It happens.
Phillips Hue A19 white 4 pack. $49.96. More reviews, slightly higher rating, still plenty of reports of early failures. At $16.99 for 4 bulbs, they might be worth a risk for folks… I have had good luck with Sylvania LED bulbs, although I have recieved one bulb that was DOA… They (Amazon) are good with customer support / replacement. And when you consider that the cost is 1/3 that of the Hue bulbs, again, it might be worth a gamble to some folks…
At the cost of the Hue bulbs, I would much rather go with smart switches.
Down to $11.50…
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Wow… Seems like they are trying to give them away now… Wonder what the story is?
Just purchased. Worth a try at that price.
At that price it might be worth stocking up!
Just got mine which I purchased at the $12 price point, and it turns out they sent an entire extra box… 8 bulbs for $12.
Should I be concerned these are all uhh… Chinese spy wifi bulbs or something? 
By the way… if anyone has any luck finding a way to have flashing/other light commands to work more quickly, as a part of a series of actions (like a pulse mode or something?) I swear I read of success with custom device type handlers for this sort of stuff at some point.
Use Flasher II app. I will admit that I haven’t used it in a few years since it got stuck in a loop once & my kitchen looked like a dance hall & I couldn’t get it to stop lol.
Thanks. Tried Flasher (original) and still noticed inconsistent behavior… set it to flash 1500ms on, 1500ms off and it was sporatic and seems like it may have missed an entire flash.
I wonder if the zigbee nature of these bulbs is just ripe with delay or if maybe these commands are not executing locally?
When I trigger a light based off motion with a stock smartapp, it comes on nearly instantly. One would think I should be able to replicate that with a flasher!
Is there any way to tell if commands are executing locally? Or are there apps that are known to be able to do this? I haven’t really looked at that level of detail before, but with some quick actions like a flash it seems necessary.
If it is a custom app sending the commands to the bulb, then it is running in the ST cloud. Almost everything runs in the ST cloud, except for Smart Lighting (and then only if all of the devices are running locally on the hub.) Any custom code always runs in the cloud.
Hmm… If I could enhance the device type handler to add what smartthings thinks is a native “blink” command, could smart lighting execute that locally?
Custom code always runs in the ST cloud. No exceptions. If an App references any device that uses a custom DTH, that app will also run in the cloud. If you want local processing, SmartThings is not the platform for you. There are other systems that prioritize running locally, without cloud dependencies, except where needed for integration with systems like Alexa and Google Assistant.
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