On the other hand, smart lights can be expensive. The Nanoleaf Aurora starter kit will run you just over $200, while the Philips Hue Color starter kit still regularly retails for $150. The light in the darkness is that you can buy smart bulbs without breaking the bank. For the price of one of these starter kits, you can outfit almost your entire home with smart lights. We’ve rounded up what we believe to be the best, low-cost smart lights for those on a budget. The Sengled Smart LED is one of the best, lowest-cost smart bulbs you can get, if not the cheapest. At just $7.99 per bulb, you can buy 25 of them for the price of a Nanoleaf starter kit. These bulbs have a set color temperature of 2700K and produce 800 lumens of light. You can use them to create specific scenes, set up schedules, and create a sleep or wake mode where the lights dim or brighten at whatever time you choose. Wyze, at $12 per bulb or $39 for a 4-pack, is the best all-around budget bulb out there. Wyze bulbs require no central hub, which means you can link as many as you want without taking up an extra Ethernet port on your router. Wyze bulbs have a temperature range from 2,700K to 6,500K and put out 800 lumens of light. Like other smart lights, you can set up schedules, turn the lights on and off remotely, and even set them up to simulate the presence of someone in the home. If you’re looking for one of the best, easy plug-and-play smart lights, Wyze is a good place to start. The Lumos can hold up to ten different lighting schedules. You can also enable Away Mode, which turns your lights on and off at random to simulate the presence of someone in the home. Eufy Lumos bulbs can be accessed from any internet connection through the app, which is available on Android and iOS devices. At $15.74 per bulb, the Lumos is slightly more expensive than the Wyze, but still a solid option for someone on a budget. The Philips Hue brand of smart lights are perhaps the most well-known of all, and at least partially responsible for pushing smart lighting to the heights it has reached today. Philips Hue is also known for being expensive, but theirs are some of the best smart lights on the market, and still reasonably affordable. A set of two will run you $29.99, or roughly $14.98 per bulb. In the past, all Philips Hue lights required a Hue Bridge (or Hub) to function, but you can connect ten of these A19 bulbs without a Hub. Philips Hue has a host of additional features like the Hue Sync app, a free PC or Mac download. You can also purchase extra accessories to expand their use. The Kasa White Smart Bulb earns its place on this list with the level of control it gives you. While not as feature-rich as the Philips Hue, the Kasa smart bulb has a dimming level of anywhere from 1% to 100%. The company claims the bulb is 80% more efficient than the competition. The Kasa White Smart Bulb is Energy Star certified, so it stacks even more efficiency on top of what LEDs already offer. At roughly $17 per bulb, it’s the priciest option on this list. But it’s a strong contender, especially if you already use Kasa devices and want to keep everything under a single app.
