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Smart lighting has become a prolific category in the smart home market, but when it comes to finding good quality options for outside the house the options have been much more limited. Many are the cheap string and flood light options that use proprietary apps and Bluetooth for remote control, but for the smart home enthusiast we’ve been left with very little options outside of Philips Hue and Govee, the latter of which is only available in a few markets.

Thankfully, high end brand LIFX has recently entered the market with a few outdoor options. As with other LIFX products, these new offerings have native support for all the major smart home platforms, ensuring that everyone get the option to use them. While these are on the higher end of the price range, good build quality is especially important for outdoor situations where the elements are going to challenge their longevity. I’ve been happy to pay the Philips Hue premium for their outdoor range as they’ve stood the test of time in harsh conditions, and I’m hoping LIFX will deliver the same.

I’ve been looking to upgrade the string lights in my outdoor area for a while, but the cheap options have either not delivered what I want or died within a year. LIFX’s new String Light product looked like a good fit, and my previous experience with LIFX products has been good. The compact modern design of the bulbs looks great, and I’ve been impressed so far with the ease of installation and the clear attention to build quality. Read on to see how these go together, and what you can do with them in the smart home.

There’s a lot to like with these string lights, starting with their build quality. This stood out to me as soon as I unpacked the box. The ‘bulbs’ have a heft to them that initially made me wonder if they were glass but turns out they’re actually a solid acrylic with three distinct layers. This means you won’t be seeing water and condensation inside like you often do with regular bulbs. The layers are to support the 3 different color zones in each bulb allowing for LIFX’s polychromatic color settings.

The power supply is a fully sealed, outdoor rated unit with an IP66 ingress protection rating. That certifies it to withstand strong water jets and should be more than sufficient for the worst rain conditions. Even the cables have a quality feel with a good thickness to the insulation, even more so than my Hue outdoor lights.

There are waterproof connectors between the power supply and the Wi-Fi module, the module and the string lights, and another one at the other end to support adding additional strings for greater length. The string itself is 7.3m in length (23 feet) with 12 individual bulbs. You can add up to three strings in line off the one power supply, for a total length of 21.9m (71 feet) and 36 bulbs. That gives a good amount of flexibility for installing in a variety of situations or increasing the density of the bulbs for extra light.

Mounting the string is aided by using the included screws, wall plugs and clips. These clips are specifically designed to firmly grip the cable at any point, so you’ll be able to attach them to any surface you can screw into. In my case I hung them from a steel pergola using cable ties for a similar effect without the need to drill. The only control on the whole setup is a button on the Wi-Fi module for manual pairing.

lifx string lights box contents — Unboxing the lights

Configuration Options

Once I had the lights strung up the way I wanted, it was time to power them up. Setup is normally done through the LIFX app, but if you have Apple Home you can also just scan the QR code in the setup guide to add them directly from the Home app or directly in Home Assistant using the HomeKit integration. This worked perfectly first time, and I had them up and running in both apps within a couple of minutes since the LIFX app will pick up your HomeKit devices directly from that system.

You’ll have a few different ways of configuring the light behavior in the LIFX app: Manual Painting, Themes, or FX.

Manual painting works like an enhanced version of setting the color of a typical smart light. You have the usual color wheel and brightness control, but you can opt to use the multiple color zones on each bulb by selecting either Radial or Gradient mode. You can then choose three colors to use, or let the app help by automatically selecting Complementary or Adjacent colors, or different tints of the same color. You can also adjust one of more specific bulbs on the string by using the Zones control, so you can get quite creative.

If you don’t want to get down in the weeds like that, you can choose from a library of Themes. These provide preset color and brightness combinations in a variety of categories like Music, Art, Moods, Sports teams and so on. These are my preferred way to quickly set the mood with a tap.

Finally, LIFX always provides a number of animated effects under their FX tab. Some of these, like Spooky, Twinkle, or Strobe are useful for specific situations, but I find I use the more ambient options like Morph, Colour Cycle, and Move to gradually alter the colors along the length of the string. Some of these can be used in conjunction with Themes as they use the preset colors in the animation. Others have the specific colors they use built in, like Christmas Tree and Flame.

These effects in particular require some playing around with as it’s not always obvious what you’ll get, but it can be a bit of fun experimenting until you find the ones you’ll likely want to use. Of course, there’s always the EQ Visualizer if you want to party. This feature uses the microphone on the phone running the app to send changes to the lights, so there can be a bit of a delay. Your mileage may vary.

Real World Performance

I’ve setup the LIFX string up on the pergola in our pool area. We have path lights around it but we’ve always found it still a bit dark and in need of some more ambient light, especially if we have food out. I had some dumb string lights up, but they didn’t really deliver what we wanted and felt cheap. The LIFX ones have proven superior in every way. Obviously having the smart control and the wide variety of themes is cool, but the brightness has also been surprisingly good.

At 600 lumens, each bulb would be adequate but not hugely bright on its own. Over the whole area, though, they provide a very good level of illumination together. I’ve got them spread out so we could cover the space we had with the one string, but you could always opt to add another as an extension and hang them closer together for greater effect.

So far they’ve been rock solid in terms of reliability, although there can be a slight response lag to commands. This is only a second or so and is intermittent so it could easily be put down to Wi-Fi shenanigans, but using a dedicated smart home protocol like ZigBee or Thread would ensure this doesn’t happen. LIFX is committed to the ‘no hub’ mantra though, so that’s not going to happen.

The built in Themes provide a great deal of variety for setting colors across the whole string to the point that you don’t really need to spend time doing it manually unless you have something really specific you want to do, and the effects bring it together to create something a little special over and above a dumb string setup. I can see a use for all of LIFX’s ‘FX’ options, but you’re not likely to use more than a handful of them on the regular. Still, it’s nice to have choices for those special occasions.

The bulbs are capable of full saturation color, and I have some examples of that in the video below, but most of the time I prefer more subtle hues for general entertaining coupled with some of the slow shifting effects like Move or Morph. These keep things interesting without being a distraction.

Smart Home Integration

LIFX natively supports Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa, SmartThings, and Home Assistant, with additional support for Razer Chroma if you want to synchronize with your gaming rig. Apple support is particularly tightly bound thanks to native HomeKit pairing and integration with the LIFX app. This makes it one of the easiest platforms to get the lights working on since you can do it directly through the Apple Home app right out of the box.

Other platforms are handled by their various plugins/skills once the lights are paired with the LIFX app and work largely the same way as Apple in terms of control. That control is limited to on/off, color and brightness as with any other smart light. Unfortunately, themes and effects are limited to the LIFX app as they aren’t supported by third-party user interfaces.

I’ve noted that, since on/off and color commands are actually separate, you can have an automation turn on the string and it will retain the last theme you had set. So long as your automation doesn’t change the color this will work, and you can activate a theme automatically in this way. Of course, that only really helps if you only use the one theme.

An exception to this limitation is Apple’s Shortcuts. LIFX supports these as well, and using the LIFX app category you can set specific themes and effects remotely. These can be used to create pre-defined voice commands to fire up certain settings, or you could use them with something like a PushCut server to activate them from within HomeKit automations.

Alternatives

Enbrighten Vibe Smart Cafe Lights

These Wi-Fi string lights from GE brand Enbrighten offer a similar setup to the LIFX String lights but with limited smart home support and simpler lighting options. With only 62 preset color choices, single zone bulbs, and no fancy effects you won’t have as many options, and they won’t look as good. You can still extend the 24ft strings with up to two addition lengths, the same as LIFX, and they are also a solid acrylic bulb for better durability.

Enbrighten only supports Alexa and Google Home for basic control, and they’re only available in North America for 120V sockets.

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Govee Smart Outdoor String Light

These Wi-Fi string lights come in two separate strings of 48ft each for a total of 30 individual bulbs. The bulbs are ‘shatterproof’ and can be controlled using the Govee app and via Alexa or Google Home. RGBIC supports settings the full range of colors on each bulb individually and you’ll have the choice of a number of effects as well, including a music sync feature similar to LIFX.

While the lights are IP65 rated, the power supply is NOT rated for outdoor use, so it will be limited to under cover installation. These also only come in 110V versions available in North America, so if you’re elsewhere, the LIFX String is your only option.

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Feit Electric Smart Outdoor String Light

This option provides a 24ft string of 12 bulbs, similar to LIFX, but these bulbs are more conventional glass single filament LED bulbs. You can extend the set by adding one additional string on the same power supply, and it also comes with an IR remote control as well as app and smart home integration. They’re rated to IP67 for weather resistance, but the bulbs are definitely not shatterproof.

As with the other alternatives, only Alexa and Google Home are supported for smart home options. Through the Feit app you can set a number of color changing effects and configure the color of each bulb individually. Once again, this is a North American exclusive product running on 120V only.

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The Verdict

If you’re a smart home enthusiast like me or just want to spruce up your outdoor areas with high quality, interesting lighting, the LIFX String Lights are a great option. Indeed, if you use a smart home platform other than Google and Alexa or need something that supports more than 120V power sockets, these may well by your only option at this point.

Thankfully, LIFX has put the work in to make these attractive, durable, and functional beyond what the scare competition provides. A clear focus on build quality, a feature packed app experience, and a great variety of configuration options makes the higher price seem well worth it.

LIFX has always been dedicated to supporting smart homes properly, and their support (in my personal experience) has been awesome across their other products. Their expansion into outdoor spaces is a very welcome move for many smart home owners, and having a truly high-quality option like these is a bonus if you don’t want to be replacing cheap junk every couple of years.

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