Xiaomi Mi LED Smart Bulb Review: Is it better than Phillips Hue?

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Xiaomi Mi LED Smart Bulb (10W) is now available on open sale across multiple platforms for a price of Rs. 1299 in India. At this price, the Mi LED Smart bulb undercuts most of its renowned rivals, and besides, you won’t need a dedicated hub to make it work. (Xiaomi Mi LED Smart Bulb हिंदी में पढ़िए)

So, is this the smart bulb that you should buy? Is it better than the Phillips hue? Based on our 4 weeks of usage, we will be answering all such MI LED smart bulb related questions in this review.

Page Contents:

Mi LED Smart Bulb Price and Specs

Product Mi Smart LED Bulb
Luminescence 10W, 800 lumens
Colors 16 million
Base Socket E27 (Threaded)
Dimensions and weight 5.5 x 5.5 x 12 cm; 172 grams
Wi-Fi 2.4GHz
Platform Android/ iOS
Price 1299 INR (Flipkart, Amazon, Mi.com)

Mi LED Smart Bulb Review: Design

The Mi LED smart bulb is about the same size as any other 10W Smart bulb and it is solidly built. In India, it comes only in one color option with a grey color stem that looks a bit odd, but not as much as to be disconcerting. Xiaomi is selling only the E27 holder model in India, and not the 2-pin B22 Holder that’s more common in the country.

Phillips Hue and Mi LED Smart Bulb with B22 Connectors

If you don’t have an E27 holder at home, you can buy a B22 connector online or from any local electrical shop. These are fairly cheap but add to the length of the Mi LED bulb. Even with the connector attached, we could easily fit our Mi LED smart bulb in a few different lamps we had lying around and other holders we had at our home without any issue.

As stated earlier, Xiaomi’s Mi LED Smart bulb doesn’t feel cheap at all, the build seems pretty reliable. Xiaomi assures of an 11-year life span, but only the first 6 months are covered under warranty.

Also Read: 10+ Best Amazon Alexa skills To Try On Echo Devices In India

Mi LED Smart Bulb Review: How to set up

Setting up the Mi LED light bulb is very simple. Just download the Mi Home app on your phone and log in to or Sign up for your Mi Account. Once the bulb is connected to a power source, the app will discover the bulb and guide you through the basic set-up process where you name the bulb and mark it in a particular room.

You can set a different name for the same bulb on Google Assistant and Alexa, and we’d advise you to keep it simple (For instance, names like “light bulb”, “night light” and “spotlight” would work better than “Deepak’s living room bulb 1” for voice commands).

During the setup, and later, you will also come across an option to share the bulb with friends, family or flatmates. Everyone you share it with will be able to control it via his/her respective Google assistant or Alexa accounts as well. For obvious reasons, only the account used for set-up has the authority to share it.

In case you want to start over again, just quickly turn on and turn off Mi LED Smart Bulb (2-seconds interval each) for five times successively. Your Mi LED Smart Bulb will then glow in multiple colors and reset to factory settings.

You can connect the Mi Home Smart Bulb to Google Assistant by linking your Mi Home account in Google Home app or to Amazon Alexa by enabling Mi Home Skill in the Alexa app. We have detailed the process to do so in a separate guide.

Also Check: How to connect Mi LED smart bulb to Google Home or Alexa

Mi LED Smart Bulb Review: Performance

Now let’s talk about all that you can do with the Mi LED bulb.

 

Xiaomi’s Smart LED bulb can glow in multiple colors. Xiaomi’s Mi App gives you a more extensive palette. U can just drag your finger through different shades of any color and your Mi LED Bulb would respond. If you like a particular color, you can save it to favorites and visit again later. There is also a fun ‘flow’ option that makes the bulb cycle through random colors.

And then there are some awesome ‘Scenes’ (they are not as highlighted as in Phillips Hue app). These are some intelligent presets like candle flicker, romantic, etc. that presents a combination of colors apt for certain scenes and presets like Sunset and Sunrise that gradually dim or brighten the lamp over 15 minutes.  We just wish there were more of these or there was an option to add custom scenes.

When controlled through Alexa or Google Assistant, the color options are comparatively limited, but the color reproduction accuracy is better than what we got from the Mi Home app.

The option to control the brightness of the LED bulb is really useful. It really feels like nitpicking but we noticed that a few colors didn’t scale down faithfully when we dimmed brightness. This isn’t a problem on our more expensive Phillips Hue bulb.

Mi LED Bulb also has the option for basic If-then automation and also to schedule the bulb on and off times.

Mi LED smart Bulb Review: Should you buy it?

For a price of 1299 INR, Xiaomi’s MI Smart LED bulb is a great buy. It doesn’t outperform the Phillips Hue, but it isn’t far behind, isn’t missing any functions or features, and gets the job done. Considering the cost difference, and the fact that Hue requires you to invest in a separate hub, we’d say the Mi Smart LED bulb offers significantly better value with hardly any compromises.

Pros

  • Feature rich app
  • No hub required
  • Works with Google Assistant and Alexa

Cons 

  • B22 Holder option not available
  • only 6 months warranty
Deepak SinghDeepak Singh
Deepak has more than 8 years of experience in covering technology for several eminent publications in India. He currently leads an enthusiastic team of young writers at Smartprix and tries to uphold the highest quality standards.

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4 years ago

I was curious if you ever thought of changing the page layout of your website? Its very well written; I love what youve got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only having 1 or 2 images. Maybe you could space it out better?

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