When comparing Nyrius smart LED bulbs vs GE Link, the Slant community recommends Nyrius smart LED bulbs for most people. In the question“What are the best smart bulbs?” Nyrius smart LED bulbs is ranked 5th while GE Link is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Nyrius smart LED bulbs is:
'Rhythm' is the feature which lets your Nyrius bulbs react to music - changing color with the beat. It works fairly well, although it uses your phone's microphone to do so which means that voices or other loud noises can affect it.
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Pros
Pro Music synchronization
'Rhythm' is the feature which lets your Nyrius bulbs react to music - changing color with the beat. It works fairly well, although it uses your phone's microphone to do so which means that voices or other loud noises can affect it.
Pro Doesn't require a centralized hub
Nyrius smart LED bulbs connect directly to your phone without the need for a centralized hub. This reduces the cost of the system.
Pro Easy lighting management
Once you get the Wink App working, controls for the bulbs are simple. Whether you are modifying one bulb at a time, or grouping them to adjust many all at once, the controls are simple and work fairly well. Automating bulbs is just as easy - from basic scheduling (turn on in the morning, off when you go to bed for example) to recognizing when your phone is near and turn on by themselves.
If you want to go deeper, you can use the Robots feature, which allows you to craft your own automation recipe and dip into external triggers.
Pro Great color range
These bulbs can manage to display 90% of the color index - more than any current RGB LED bulb. It scores very well in all colors, expect pure red (about 60%) and pure blue (about 74%). Different shades of these colors all perform well.
Pro Compatible with many products
The GE Link is part of Wink's smart home platform standard, and are compatible with other products that utilize Wink (Honeywell, Dropcam, Philips Hue and more).
Cons
Con Dim lights
These bulbs only produce 490 lumens - equivalent to 40-watt bulbs. They aren't bright enough to light up a room on their own, and unless you have multiple in one room they will only effectively be used as accent lighting
Con 8 bulb limit
While other systems can handle up to 50 bulbs, the Nyrius app can only manage 8 bulbs. The bulbs aren't too bright either, so you will be limited to 2...maybe 3 rooms before you'll have to look for another smart bulb option.
Con Limited to bluetooth range
The Nyrius bulbs use bluetooth, which is limited to around 100 feet. This means that you can't change the lights over WiFi when you are away from the house.
Con Buggy software
Between installing, registering, and connecting, the setup process is very slow and buggy. Even once connected, changing the colors or settings takes longer and appears more choppy than competing bulbs.
Updates can fail to install properly multiple times in a row (even with restarting your phone and unscrewing the bulbs).
Con Hub required
To access any smart features, you will require a hub. There are different hubs available, with more to come. Currently there is the Link Hub ($30) which will handle lighting, or the Wink Hub ($50) will be able to work the lights as well as other smart home systems. There's also the coming-soon Wink Relay ($300) which will have a touchscreen and act as a wall mounted smart hub.
Con Inefficient compared to other RGB bulbs
The GE Link requires 12 watts to produce 800 lumens - the TCP LEDs and Belkin WeMo provide the same lumens at 11 watts and 9.5 watts, respectively, and the Philips Hue provides 750 lumens using only 9 watts.
The GE Link is one of the most inefficient RGB LEDs available, however it is still many times more efficient than incandescent bulbs.
Con Limited dimming
While other Smart LED bulbs can dim right down to 0.5% of their total brightness, the GE Link will only go down to 10.2% brightness before it turns off. While this is still fairly dim, it would be nice to have an even larger range to make transitioning to bedtime more effective.