Back in the day, we used to have lava lamps to give our rooms a bit of mood lighting. However, modern times call for modern solutions, and the Moonside Lamp One is one of those solutions. Thankfully, Moonside was kind enough to provide us with one for a review; it can be purchased for $65 on Amazon.
Design
The first thing I noticed about the Moonside Lamp One is how lightweight it is. I nearly thought the box was empty when I first picked it up because the lamp itself hardly weighs more than a lightbulb. The second thing I noticed, is that it uses a USB Type-C cable and Quick Charge power brick for power.
Unfortunately, the cable is quite short, and that’s my only complaint with the design. Luckily, USB Type A to C cables are quite common, and this could easily be replaced with a longer cable.
My favorite part of the design of the Moonside Lamp One is how it’s nearly 360-degrees of light. The bottom of the lamp where the power button and USB Type-C port are located are the only part of the lamp which is not lit up. Thanks to this, and the rounded corners, it provides a seamless lighting effect almost like that of a glowing orb.
User experience
The first thing to know about the Moonside Lamp One, is that it’s bright enough to use as a bedside reading lamp or mood light, but not much else. It’s not meant to light up your room, but instead, to act as an accent light. Fortunately, it does this job very well thanks to its dynamic multi-LED color zones and smartphone app.
The Moonside app allows you to power the Lamp One on or off, change the brightness level, set the color, create a custom color scheme, enable motion scenes, and more. By far, my favorite part was the selection of motion scenes. They range from mimicking a fire, to crazy blinking Christmas lights, and tranquil transitions between colors.
What impressed me the most is how smooth the transitions were between the colors as well as some of the more unique modes that I have trouble finding the words to describe. Truly, you just have to see the Moonside Lamp One in action. It’s like a lava lamp for the modern generation.
Despite all my praise, there were some areas that the Lamp One could use some improvement. The app is clean and a little too simplistic. It can be confusing at first to know what section of the app does what. Plus, it took me a few tries to realize you needed to long press on the lamp to access the options, because a tap only toggles it on or off.
Also, while there are many modes to choose from, I would have preferred if they were shown more compactly in the app to make it easier to browse, as well as providing more customization. I would love the option to open up the moving scenes and change the colors being used, or even a way to create custom ones and save them for later.
Finally, one of the most essential features for me is Google Assistant integration. While the Moonside Lamp One has this feature, it was not intuitive to set up. There are several complaints about the Wi-Fi features on the Amazon page, and I’m almost certain it is due to how convoluted it is to set up.
In my experience, I connected it to the Wi-Fi network and the lamp lit up green to confirm, yet I could not control it using Google Assistant or with the Google Home app. I went through the process five times before reaching out to Moonside where they provided me with these steps to fix it.
The solution was to toggle back to Bluetooth mode after connecting to Wi-Fi and then switch back to Wi-Fi. Afterward, the lamp will reboot and should show the green light again to confirm the connection with the Wi-Fi network. The process takes about 30 seconds to complete and finally fixed my issue. Having to swap back and forth after connecting to Wi-Fi is hardly intuitive, but at least it resolves the problem.
Final thoughts
There’s a lot to love about the Moonside Lamp One. It’s lightweight, has a clean design, and offers unique colorful moving scenes with seamless transitions. My only criticisms would be that the app could use some more features, Wi-Fi could be less frustrating to set up, and I wish it was a little cheaper given those first two complaints.
Regardless, it’s a fantastic mood lamp if you don’t mind only using the preset modes and don’t need it to light up your room.
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