What are your experiences with RGB LED lightbulbs?

I have decided to play around with some smart bulbs, and as a consequence I decided to try a Ledvance Smart+ RGB E27 LED light.

It paired fine, but I am unsure if I have misconfigured something, or if it is just a feature.
The light seems to shine with around 800 lumen in its normal “white light” configuration, however when I switch to the RGB mode the light drops to what seems to be around 100 lumen.

I was wondering if some of you fine gentlefolk have any experience with the LED RGB lightbulbs from for example Ledvance, Ikea or Philips, and can make some recommendations?

Have I just made a configuration error somewhere, have I maybe got a defective product or is this truly the intended behavior? It seems wierd to have a light that will only light up a very small room in RGB mode, but will need to be in a large room in normal mode, to not burn the retinas of anyone unfortunate enough to be in there?

I have managed to find a few youtube videos that demo the bulb but it is very hard to gauge the light intensity and they all (very unhelpfully for me) only talk about its ability to replicate colors, not the actual strength of the light coming from it.

As always, thank you very much for your help.

Same experience here with downlights. The RGB colour mode isn’t anywhere near as bright as the white mode. I don’t use the colour mode, but I do use the colour temp feature.

I can’t speak to these specific bulbs, but in my experience a multicolour bulb/lamp will be brighter in white than in RGB modes.

With limited space, I’m guessing that companies prioritize the paired white/yellow LEDs needed for tuning white light to ensure adequate illumination. That’s less important for RGB LEDs, which are typically used more for ambience.

I bought a pair of these Sunco brand bulbs because they were the only PAR38 size LEDs I could find. (existing down light fixture required the PAR38 bulbs) I assume they are Tuya bulbs rebranded. Anyhow… In white mode (warm or cool) they are as bright as a normal bulb. In color mode, at 100% dimmer, they are extremely dim, like you said, about 10% their brightness in white mode. It is totally lame but they were cheap.
By comparison, I own Hue and Lifx and both of those are just as bright in color mode then in white mode. They were however, not ‘cheap’, I guess you get what you pay for. :wink:

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That is correct. Usually the white leds will put out more light than the colored ones, I see the same behavior in Yeelight bulbs.

At least it means I dont have a faulty product i guess :slight_smile: Are you using generic zigbee with hue or are you using the hue bridge? I have run into a few hue products that doesn’t seem to connect with the ember controller so I am a bit wary of trying it. But if someone else has first hand experience it becomes a lot less scary :slight_smile:

I am using a Hue bridge. I have a Nortek HUSBZB-1 that does zwave and zigbee and at one time I had the Hue bulbs working off the stick without the Hue bridge. I think I just did it to prove it worked but it was quite a long time ago (OH2 days)

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