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Add to SafariWhen comparing Elgato Alvea vs Oort SmartLED bulb, the Slant community recommends Elgato Alvea for most people. In the question“What are the best smart bulbs?” Elgato Alvea is ranked 10th while Oort SmartLED bulb is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose Elgato Alvea is:
The app isn't confusing at all. It gives you 9 dynamic lighting options to choose from, such as magic hour (simulates a sunset), northern glow (simulates the northern lights), and cozy flames (simulates fire). Each of these has an option to adjust the intensity, although instead of just adjusting the time it takes to move from one color to the next it also changes the colors. For example, the Cozy Flames turn green-ish instead of the regular red with yellow and orange bursts.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy-to-use app
The app isn't confusing at all. It gives you 9 dynamic lighting options to choose from, such as magic hour (simulates a sunset), northern glow (simulates the northern lights), and cozy flames (simulates fire). Each of these has an option to adjust the intensity, although instead of just adjusting the time it takes to move from one color to the next it also changes the colors. For example, the Cozy Flames turn green-ish instead of the regular red with yellow and orange bursts.
Pro No hub needed
These bulbs hook up directly to your iPod/iPhone/iPad, with no need for a physical hub device.
Pro Lighting effects included
There are a number of preset modes, such as a sleep timer, a snore mode (breathing effect), and a flashing effect. Dimming is smooth as well, which is good to hear as some other bulbs seem to find this tricky sometimes.
Pro No hub required
While many smart bulbs require a hub to connect, the Oort bulbs connect directly with your phone which not only makes the initial setup easier, but also less costly (as you don't need to buy the hub).
Cons
Con Very dim light
The 430 lumens brightness of the Elgato Alvea is almost as bright as a 40-watt bulb, but not quite. These lights will be very expensive to use as primary light sources, as you'll need many of them to sufficiently light up a room. They are really only cost-effective as accent lighting.
Con Limited coloring options
While most smart bulbs let you pick from a color picker, for solid colors the Elgato Alvea has 7 to choose from (blue, green, orange, purple, red, white, yellow). Each shade is then adjustable in both brightness and shade, however it would have been much easier to just use a color palette like most other smart bulbs.
Also, while the nine dynamic lighting options are easy, they are the only dynamic lighting you can achieve. You can't set up your own dynamic color palette.
Con No Android support
Unfortunately, Elgato Alvea doesn't support any Android devices. It only works with iPhone (4S or later), iPod (5th gen) iPad (3rd gen or newer), or Apple Watch.
Con Very dim light
180 lumens won't do much good in terms of lighting (for comparison, regular bulbs produce about 800 lumens - the Oort bulb provides less brightness than the typical refrigerator light). This is really only effective as a supplement to an existing lighting solution as mood lighting, and not a regular bulb replacement.
Con Very short range
With a range of only 12m, don't expect to control your lights from far away. The good news is that the bulbs work together in a 'mesh' configuration, meaning that as long as you are within range of one bulb (and the other bulbs are in range of each other as well), you can control all the bulbs.
Con Poor color reproduction
The colors this bulb produces don't look saturated, and there isn't a very wide range of colors (about 20 noticeably different colors).
