In our search for the best smart lamps, we consulted with Marlon Buchanan, a smart home expert who wrote “The Smart Home Manual” and founded HomeTechHacker.com. “Smart lamps let you customize the lighting in your rooms to your preferences,” Buchanan told The Spruce. “They offer the unique benefits of portability and flexible placement in a room. For example, you can put smart lamps on a counter, a nightstand, a coffee table, or even a fireplace mantel.” Our favorite smart lamp is the Philips Hue Iris, which is bright, with an attractive design, excellent color range, and a wealth of extra functions when integrated into a Philips Hue ecosystem. We looked at a number of other options—considering different uses, lighting control options, smart home integrations, and features—and have other recommendations that may fit your home even better. Here are the best smart lamps for your home. According to Buchanan, connecting to the hub and additional smart lighting in the Hue line can be worthwhile for smart home aficionados. “I like the Philips Hue Iris because it can easily integrate with Philips’ other lights to make impressive displays,” says Buchanan. “Like other Philips Hue smart lighting products, the quality and brightness of the lights are top notch.” Price at time of publish: $100 You can certainly find brighter non-smart lamps for lower prices, but you’d miss out on the fine-tuning this smart LED lamp offers: dimmable brightness from 1 to 100 percent, white light temperature tunable between 2000 Kelvin to 5700 Kelvin, and 16 million adjustable colors—in addition to the timer, scheduling, and sunrise/sunset settings. Price at time of publish: $37 Price at time of publish: $30 By adding an independent control (IC) chip to its RGB LED lights, the Lyra can shine different colors at the same time from its various segments, opening up a wide selection of preset effects and possibilities for customized patterns. It also includes a built-in microphone that can listen to your music and sync its lights to the beat. While the Govee Lyra is excellent for entertaining, it may not be worth the extra cost if you’re not interested in the color-control capabilities. The design could also be a sticking point for some who prefer more traditionally aesthetic models. Price at time of publish: $150 This all-in-one bedside gadget combines an alarm clock with a uniquely styled LED light that simulates a gentle sunrise or sunset, accompanied by soothing natural sounds—completely customizable to your preferences. It also has a USB charging port, a built-in FM radio, and an auxiliary port for piping in your own music, though there’s no Bluetooth or voice commands like a true smart speaker. The most high-end sleep features come via sensors that monitor the surrounding temperature, humidity, light, and noise levels, and you can track that data through the SleepMapper app to help improve your sleep environment. These extras come at a pretty steep cost, so if a more basic sunrise alarm clock will meet your needs, you can save with a simpler device. The Philips SmartSleep Wake Up Light, for example, is a model we’ve tested from the same product line that features a similar core light and alarm functionality for about half the price. Price at time of publish: $200 Beyond the sleep benefits, the device also includes a number of design touches that are both clever and functional. Unlike most smart lamps that plug into the wall, the Glow runs on a rechargeable battery, so you can pick it up off its wireless charging base and walk around the house with it. Flipping the lamp over turns it on, or you can push buttons on either end. Twisting it one way makes the light brighter while the other dims it, and a gentle wiggle activates a soft night light. These are cool tactile options, but for those who like touch-free controls, it would’ve been nice if the device supported voice commands or other smart platform compatibility as well. You can, however, easily sync multiple Glow units to work in tandem with each other. Price at time of publish: $129 For the functional side of its design, the lamp serves as a Bluetooth speaker that can pair wirelessly with an audio source, with smooth touch-sensitive playback controls built into the lamp’s base. The base also delivers Qi wireless charging to supported devices, including most modern smartphones, so you can rest your phone down on the base under the shade of the “tree” to power it up while it plays your music. Price at time of publish: $149 In addition to a built-in USB-C port, this lamp has a few physical buttons to control brightness and color temperature and turn it on/off, but detailed controls come through the Dyson app when paired over Bluetooth. Options for Wi-Fi connectivity and voice commands would have added more convenience, but its focus stays on lighting your work or task at hand. The light itself is of the highest quality, with heat management to help the LED hold up for an estimated 60 years. It uses data from sensors and your input to constantly tweak the brightness and color temperature based on your age, work and sleep schedule, surrounding light, and the natural daylight at your location at every point in the day. The adjustments aim to help avoid eye strain and improve your sleep by reducing blue light at the end of the day. Price at time of publish: $600 This smart bulb can also drop to a very dim 30 lumens and adjust between a wide range of color temperatures. The multicolor options include several preset scenes, though not the same color-changing effects and animations some smart lamps feature. Price at time of publish: $16 Potential integration with a broader smart home setup is also important to consider, as Buchanan points out. “Good options to look for are whether or not the lamp needs a hub for full functionality, because this may add to your cost and setup complexity. You may also be interested in whether or not the light can function as part of a larger ecosystem of lights, which can help create some very impressive light scenes.”
Lighting Options
Lighting control is a core function of smart lamps, and most allow you to at least adjust the brightness through dimming. Many smart lamps have limited maximum brightness, though, serving more for ambiance and mood lighting than to fully light a room. Some let you change the light’s color temperature between warm or cool light, and others offer full color-changing control and effects. The ideal lighting features will depend on where you plan to place the lamp and how you will use it. “A bedroom is a wonderful place for a smart lamp because you can program the light to dim and brighten with stages of your day,” Buchanan says. “Have it slowly dim and turn off at night, and program it to slowly brighten when it is time to wake up. A family or entertainment room can be a great place, too, as you can set the mood with various colors and effects to match what’s going on in the room.”
Extra Features
Smart lamps often include extra features depending on their primary intended usage, particularly if they are bedside lamps. Since these devices become part of your sleep and wake-up process, some will include a USB port to plug in your gadgets at night and possibly a speaker to play the radio or alarm sounds to wake you up in the morning.
Why Trust The Spruce?
Anton Galang is a freelance writer and reviewer who covers smart home gadgets and a variety of consumer tech for The Spruce and Lifewire. He studied journalism with a focus on magazine editing and began working in the tech field as part of PC Magazine in 2007. He uses a variety of smart home products on a daily basis in his own home, including smart lighting, thermostats, displays, and more. “One advantage of smart lamps over smart bulbs is that you don’t have to worry about someone disabling the light using a light switch or the lamp’s power toggle switch,” Buchanan notes. “When this happens, you can’t control your smart bulb with a voice assistant or an app until you turn the lamp or light switch back on. Smart lamps are always connected and controllable remotely. Another advantage is that many smart lamps can be powered via USB, increasing your options for placement and making them portable.” To inform his research on smart lamps, Anton spoke with IT director and smart home expert Marlon Buchanan, founder of the HomeTechHacker.com website and author of several home technology books, including “The Smart Home Manual.” Anton then narrowed his smart lamp selection based on their color and brightness controls, voice and platform compatibility, and lamp type and style, consulting manufacturer specs and previous reviews from The Spruce, third parties, and consumers.
