Thursday, April 18, 2024

The best smart lights that work with the Google Assistant

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Smart lights are a staple of any smart home, and the options are seemingly endless, even when looking for the best lights that support Google Assistant. They’re functional, energy-efficient, and can be a lot of fun to use, so why not hook it up to your favorite smart assistant? If you want some help narrowing down some of the top Google Assistant-equipped lights and smart LED light bulbs, these are our top recommendations.

Colorful starter kit

Philips Hue Multicolor A19 Starter Kit

Staff Pick

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This starter kit for Philips Hue is expensive, but it’s one of the best ones you can buy. Included here are the necessary hub and four A19 bulbs that all support over 16 million colors. You can have all the bulbs emit the same color or have each one do its own thing. Philips advertises 25,000 hours of use per bulb, and of course, they work beautifully with Google Assistant.

$180 at Amazon
$150 at Best Buy

Take it anywhere

Philips Hue Go White and Color Portable Dimmable LED

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Philips Hue lights go far beyond light bulbs, with one of the best ones being the Hue Go. The Hue Go works completely wirelessly and can be on for up to three hours at a time before needing to charge up. It can showcase many colors, connect to your existing Philips hub, and serves as a gorgeous piece of accent lighting for indoor and outdoor use.

$80 at Amazon
$80 at Best Buy
$112 at Walmart

Lovely light strip

Philips Hue LightStrip Kit

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The LightStrip is another excellent accent piece under the Philips Hue line, with this one being better-suited for permanent indoor use. You can attach the LightStrip to any solid surface and cut it to get the perfect length. If you buy extensions, you can make the LightStrip up to 10 meters long. It shows off various shades of white and all the colors you could ask for.

$80 at Amazon
$80 at Best Buy
$80 at B&H

Changes throughout the day

C by GE Full Color Direct Connect

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The C by GE Full Color Direct Connect stands out for a couple of good reasons. For one thing, it’s a smart A19 bulb that doesn’t require a hub of any kind. Just by the bulb, screw it in, connect it to the C by GE app, and you’re good to go. It’s available in color, tunable white, and soft white, and you can get one bulb or a few to get started.

$28 at Amazon
$45 at Best Buy
$28 at Walmart

Hue alternative

Sengled Smart Light Bulb Starter Kit

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Like the idea of Philips Hue bulbs but want something a little more affordable? With this Sengled kit, you get two A19 multicolor bulbs and the smart hub that enables voice control with Google Assistant. You can set the lights on schedules, control them manually, and create custom scenes. With one hub, you can have up to 64 bulbs connected at once.

$49 at Amazon $49 at Best Buy

No hub required

LIFX Clean, A19 1100 lumens

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We have a lot of love for LIFX bulbs here at AC, as many smart home enthusiasts do. The LIFX A19 Smart Bulb can display 16 million colors, warm and cool shades of white, and has an expected life span of around 22.8 years. The best part? It works with Google Assistant and can be controlled via your phone, all without any hub.

$70 at Amazon

Soft white

Philips Hue White A19 Starter Kit

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Colored smart bulbs are a lot of fun to have, but if you just want a traditional white bulb that you can control from your phone or with your voice, you’re best off saving some money and getting the Philips Hue White bulbs. This kit includes the hub and four A19 bulbs with the ability to set multiple shades of white. So if you don’t need extra colors, this is the way to go.

$70 at Amazon $120 at Best Buy $86 at Walmart

Something different

Nanoleaf Rhythm

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The Nanoleaf Rhythm is perhaps one of the coolest smart lights you can buy. It has panels that attach to your wall and can be placed in any pattern you’d like using a simple connection system. You can put the panels on any surface using mounting tape, they emit 16.7 million colors, and you can have up to 30 panels in one system. This pack gets you started with 9, and they can be set to pulse and change in sync with your music.

$197 at Amazon

Non-Hue strips

LIFX Z LED Strip Starter Kit

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If you’re not into the Philips Hue light strips or want something even brighter, you may want to give the LIFX version a try. You can control the light patterns from your phone or through Google Assistant, and the strip also works with Razer Chroma.

$105 at Amazon

Retro style

Philips Hue White Dimmable Filament ST19

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Smart light bulbs are incredibly functional, but they usually don’t bring much to the table design-wise. If you prefer your bulbs to look as good as they work, you’ll want to pick up this Philips Hue White Dimmable Filament ST19 Bulb. The old Edison design looks fantastic, as does the 2100K warm white light it emits. It can be installed through the Hue app, integrated with your Hue hub if you one, and it’s fully controllable using the Assistant.

$28 at Amazon
$28 at Best Buy

For smaller lights

LOHAS E12 LED Candelabra light Bulbs

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A19 bulbs are among the most popular and most common, but what about those lights in your home that require smaller E12 bulbs? For those, one of our top recommendations goes to the LOHAS Candelabra Bulb. Along with the E12 threading, it comes equipped in shades of soft white or daylight, doesn’t require a hub, can be controlled from anywhere, and is set up with custom timers.

$13 at Amazon

Outdoor lantern

Philips Hue Econic Smart Outdoor White & Color Wall Lantern

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Want your outdoor lighting to look as good as what you’ve got inside? Philips has you covered with its Econic series of outdoor lighting fixtures. There are three designs to choose from: a square wall/ceiling one, a wall down lantern, and a wall up lantern (pictured). It connects to your Hue hub and offers impressive lighting, colors, and every smart feature you could ask for.

$150 at Amazon $170 at Best Buy

So many lights to choose from

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In the short few years since the Google Assistant’s big debut back in 2016, it’s quickly gathered a ton of support from smart home gadgets of all kinds — especially when it comes to smart lights.

One of our top picks for the best lights that support Google Assistant has to go to the Philips Hue Multicolor A19 Starter Kit. The upfront price is on the larger side of things, but it’s the best place to start if you want to dive into the Hue ecosystem. The four A19 bulbs you get can show any color you want, and since it also comes with the hub and smart button, you can then go on to buy accent lighting pieces such as the Philips Hue LightStrip.

If you’d like to keep things a bit more affordable, a great light kit to check out is the C by GE bulb. We love that it doesn’t require a hub of any kind to be used, and you can opt for this full-color version or cheaper soft white or tunable white versions. But if vintage is your flavor, then you can’t go wrong with the Philips Hue White Dimmable Filament ST19, which lets you create the perfect light setting.

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