 So when I sat down to review the script for this video with Jake, we debated the title for a while and finally I asked him point blank, are Philips Hue bulbs a ripoff? And he goes, well, I'd say they're making a pretty good profit. And isn't that pretty much the problem with all of this smart home stuff? By the time you got your brand name, Caseta switches, Nest thermostat, August lock, Hue bulbs, you're five, ten grand deep in this stuff. And every time I pull out a calculator and add it up, I basically end up with, yeah, screw it. I'm going to find another way. And find another way we did. No, not that way. In today's video, we're going to be looking at smart bulbs from a relatively unknown company called Yeelight that promise to be an affordable alternative to Philips Hue and Lifax. Memory Express is your go-to store for your electronic needs and services in Canada. They're opening a new store in Victoria, BC and they're hiring for all positions. Learn more at the link below. First, let's take a look at the incumbents, starting with the ultra popular Philips Hue. Philips was one of the first players in the consumer smart lighting space back in 2012 when they launched their system as an Apple Store exclusive. The entire product stack, including their 800 lumen bulb, makes use of the Zigbee wireless standard, a slow but ultra low power mesh based network that connects compatible devices together. Now it does require a hub to facilitate a connection to the outside internet. Ow. But the use of this tech allowed Philips to make the... Why? Why would you throw that? You should look on his face. No. The use of this tech allowed Philips to make devices like their tap wireless button that can control your lights while only being powered by the kinetic energy of pushing the buttons. That is pretty damn cool. Now a lot of people complain about the necessity of the hub, but even with the hub's pricing factored in, the bulbs are still cheaper than our next competitor and the added functionality seems like a worthwhile compromise. Now let's take a look at the Lifex ecosystem. These guys are an originally crowdfunded company, one that actually shipped their product. And they also started out in 2012 with support for both iOS and Android, unlike Hue at the time. Lifex bulbs are Wi-Fi based, meaning that no hub is required, but they do share some traits with the Hue as they operate as a sort of mesh with one master bulb connecting directly to your regular old Wi-Fi and the rest of them connecting to each other via an 802.15.4 mesh network. This technology makes Lifex's bulbs the most efficient and they also happen to be the brightest ones, but that comes at a cost. Even their minis will run you 45 bucks each and their standard A19 bulbs weigh in at a whopping $60 a piece. Finally, there's Yeelight, a company we actually don't know that much about and you might not have even heard of. What we do know is that they are affiliated in some way with Xiaomi and that they have a metric butt ton of different products, kind of like the Philips Hue ecosystem. But we're ignoring most of that because today's focus is on their smart bulbs and specifically the RGBW one. It's similar to the Hue at 800 lumens, but it costs just shy of $18 right now on AliExpress with no hub required. That is less than half the cost of a Hue bulb and less than a third of the full-size Lifex, a saving that is huge all on its own and that only increases as you purchase more and more bulbs. Spec-wise, it's a lot of the same with the only major differences being the higher light output and the efficiency of the Lifex and the much lower price of the Yeelight. Otherwise, they all have the same rated life expectancy, the same warranty and the same mount type. Let's talk setup then. Both the Yeelight and the Lifex require an account to control the lights at all. By contrast, Hue works fine without an account, but only on your local network. Overall, the setup process on all three ecosystems is really easy with Hue edging out a slight win here thanks to its ability to add multiple lights at once and with the kit lights coming pre-configured, that's pretty nice. As for the Yeelights, we did experience some weirdness where it would say setup failed almost every time, but then after backing out of that menu, the light shows up and is fully functional. It's kind of like the setup wizard was timing out or something. So if your lights still don't show, we'd recommend logging out and then back in. That should fix the issue. With the light setup, it's time to take a look at the apps. Hue features IMO, the most intuitive user experience of the bunch. Almost all of the features are easy to access with both power and brightness controls available on the main screen. And setting up scenes and schedules is a total breeze, which also brings us to one of the app's biggest shortcomings, the lack of global scenes as well as the inaccessibility of them. Scenes on the Hue system are on a room by room basis, meaning that if you wanted to set both your kitchen and your living room to a specific scene, you'd have to click through two separate menus or issue two separate voice commands to achieve that result. LIFX and Yeelight both have global scene lighting. Speaking of which, I guess let's move over to the LIFX app. Overall, it's also very easy to use, but I feel like they kind of tried too hard to make the app unique and ended up sacrificing some functionality in the process. For example, the color control wheel has a super annoying design where you can only control it on one axis at a time. Why are you trying to be special? Just use a regular color wheel that you can just click on like everybody else. I also don't like the lack of brightness control on the main page, but I suspect this won't bother most people once they have their scene set up. Bringing us to the underdog, Yeelight. Their app is a little less intuitive, with some menus that are buried too deep and several instances of unnecessary clicking. But the overall functionality is really solid, with easy access to scenes and power and brightness controls on the main pages. It's also worth noting that the Yeelight app has very powerful scene control with customization of scenes available on a light-by-light basis. It can be pretty time-consuming to set it up, but it does give you a lot of flexibility in return. So considering the major flaw of the Hue app and the weird design choices of the LIFX one, we're gonna give the win here to Yeelight for its powerful scene customization and no BS approach. Last but not least, we have to look at smart functionality. All three platforms have support for Alexa, Google Home, Yeti, and if this then that. But Apple users beware, as of shooting this video, only LIFX and Hue work with Apple HomeKit. Now there have been some rumblings of other Xiaomi brands looking into HomeKit, but at this time, the best you'll be able to find for your Yeelight is some third-party HomeBridge plugin. So if you're the hacky type, you could probably get it to work. But if you want something that just goes out of the box, you'll need to pay more for your lights, or you could switch to Android. If you're an Android user, any of these three are great choices with, if we had to pick a winner, I'd say for me, the low cost of the Yeelights is definitely gonna be what finally gets me on the smart bulb train. For my house, $700 to do everything, which I probably wouldn't do. It's still a lot of money, but it's a lot less than two grand or more. With that said, if you're looking for the most efficient or the brightest lights, LIFX is the way to go. And as for the Hue system, well, their saving grace is really the accessories, like motion sensors and fancy buttons. So if that kind of thing tickles your fancy, then Hue might be for you. Can you believe we made it all this way in this video without making like a joke, something about these lights having like dragon energy or something? Thermaltake's A500 aluminum mid-tower case features a minimalistic approach with a brushed aluminum surface for a clean uninterrupted look. It's got hinged tempered glass side panels on both sides of the case and fits radiators up to 420 millimeters at the front. It supports up to four, three and a half and two and a half inch hard drives inside the left side panel or on top of the PSU cover. And the IO panel includes a type C USB port. So get yours today at the link in the video description. So thanks for watching, guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit the like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum, which you should totally join. There we have it. There's a dragon energy reference. Dragon energy, oh wow, his ear fell off. That wasn't my fault. You drop everything. Let Cassada get the lights. Honey, did we get the lights downstairs? Alexa, turn on good night. Okay.