So I just Unboxed Lumiman Smart Wi-Fi Light Bulb and I am going to share my user experience in this article. I will talk about some of its pros and cons, where it stands as compared to its competitors, how to set it up and what are the things to watch for. Stay tuned.
First of all I am surprised at its wide usability. It’s smart, it’s versatile.
You can utilize its different settings for different environments say kitchen, living room, drawing room etc. Different lighting modes for every setting. They are Café, party etc.
You need PlusMinus app to adjust these modes.
Then it’s bright as well. Let’s get straight to its pros and cons.
Pros:
- Alexa Echo compatibility
- Dimmable Brightness
- Group Control
- Extra Bright
Cons:
- 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi must for setup
- No Sunrise Feature
- No Energy Saving
- Strobe Effects might hurt you
How to use Lumiman Smart Wi-Fi Light Bulb
First of all, connect your bulb with a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi band, download “PlusMinus” app from Google Play or Apple App store and register there.
Power on your smart bulb and then turn it off for more than 5 seconds.
Now swiftly turn on-off-on-off the bulb (don’t keep the time interval too short, take help from the manual)
Now your bulb should be rapidly flashing. You can watch How-to videos available on PlusMinus Youtube channel where you will be guided about how to connect to smart apps, and further process.
Let’s discuss its pros: Lumiman Smart Bulb
Alexa Echo Compatibility:
Common voice controls pass very well through Alexa. I tried it as “Alexa, set bedroom to cool white” and it did just accordingly. I saw, Alexa can differentiate between “Daylight white” and “Warm white.”
I tried it as “change the white to cool” and it did just as instructed. So you can change temperature levels using Alexa.
It was so easy for me to recreate the older night-stand lamp with a warm white setting. Just a voice command did the job for me.
Default Brightness:
When you turn it on for the first time, it is defaulted at 50% brightness. So no need to panic! You can easily adjust its brightness and bring it to 100% using app or vice instructions.
Group Control:
Plus my experience has shown that you can control same and different brand bulbs from a single app Alexa or Google Home assistant. They all can be added together in scenes and complement each other. A single voice command will be enough for all to respond.
Brightness:
Let’s talk about its brightness. These bulbs are seriously bright. 4 of these are definitely heavier in impact as compared to even 8 local lights and I am really impressed.
Icing on the cake is their outstanding perseverance, we had a power break down in our locality. Transformer had blown but happily Bulbs were immune enough to keep themselves safe. In fact, when the power restored, they were on again just after a while. So as far as reliability is concerned, I give it a thumbs up!
Let’s discuss It’s Cons: Lumiman Smart Bulb
Older Wi-Fi Band is must:
What I have observed is, you cannot setup your Lumiman Smart Wi-Fi Light Bulb on 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network. Once the bulb is setup, it can then be controlled by a 5 GHz network as well. But the irony is you can’t initiate it using that 5 GHz network, you have to arrange some old 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network.
It can be a direct connection or some device of that voltage. For instance, when I came across this problem, I came to remember I had an old 2.4 GHz Samsung Tablet that I picked up, turned on and used its hotspot connection to initiate the bulb. After that, I switched it to my 5 GHz Home Wi-Fi network.
Strobe Effects:
As told you about its sharp colors, let me warn you against the powerful strobe effects these bulbs might have upon you. You need to be careful as they are outstandingly bright, any person prone to strobes might be right there on target if three to four lights flash at once.
No Energy Saving:
You don’t get energy saving feature with this bulb. We have seen even cheaper bulbs giving this feature but I can’t get why they haven’t included this feature.
No Sunrise Lighting:
The Aesthetic Sunrise feature is missing in this bulb. I can understand we should only expect limited features for this money.
Some of my colleagues have complained about misleading advertising and wrong information provided. Following are her words:
“The bulb is advertised as a screw fitting but the items delivered have a bayonet fitting and are therefore not compatible with my lights. Pretty fundamental issue when selecting a bulb.”
Let’s talk about resetting the bulb and setting up more than one lights.
I got entangled in a problem of having tons of randomly named devices showing up in my app. The mistake that I committed was to set up all the lights simultaneously and then I had to face the mind boggling confusion in my app?
So my advice to you is: set up your lights one by one and then name them sequentially. The technological behavior that I have seen is not that sophisticated. I mean you might see a blinking behavior or you might not. If it has to blink, it starts in a couple of seconds from the time it’s turned on. And that’s a clear message for you to program it with the app.
Conclusion:
Though they don’t provide Energy saving option, Dimmable Brightness and group control features are generally not available in such inexpensive lights. That’s why I reckon these bulbs very cool, require very low maintenance, and totally worth every penny. I’ve spent 5 times as much on other smart lights in the past that were pretty awesome, but for the money – this is a great deal!
Article is updated for July 2022