These smart lights made my home Halloween-ready in minutes (and they're on sale) | ZDNET

Oct 24, 2024

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Landscape lighting can elevate the look and feel of your home's exterior and curb appeal. But smart lights you can control from your phone make them a whole lot easier for holiday decoration, as is the case with the Linkind Smart Solar Lighst SL5.

I've been testing the Linkind SL5 lights outside my home for several months and am pleasantly surprised at how easily they transformed its exterior, especially in preparation for Halloween this month.

The Linkind Smart Solar Lights SL5 come in a six-pack for $126 and work with a mobile app on your smartphone to change colors.

The lights are easy to set up. You only have to choose where to install them and push down their stakes into the ground. Because they're solar-powered, they don't have any wiring to plug in, making the process easier than other landscape lights.

While the Linkind Solar Lights SL5 are better off with direct sunlight to keep their battery charged, they've been on the north-facing side of my home for two months and still get sufficient charge to work daily, with no hiccups.

The Linkind SL5 lights take simplicity to a whole new level: after installing them, I connected them to my phone with the AiDot app to control them and there I can change their colors whenever I want.

The lights connect to your phone via Bluetooth, however, which limits you to controlling the lights when you're near enough to maintain the connection. You can't control the lights remotely when you're away and want to change their color or switch them off. While this can be inconvenient for some, it also means you don't have to buy a separate hub or set the lights up to connect to your Wi-Fi, potentially congesting your home network with more devices.

The Linkind SL5 lights are also inexpensive smart lights, at $126 for a six-pack (minus 30% if you snag the Amazon on-page coupon). This price point aligns with the lights' connection simplicity, as the smart component is meant to be a means for convenience rather than full smart home integration.

After installing them, my lights have switched at dusk like clockwork, and there are no issues with the low battery. I had an issue connecting one via Bluetooth but could correct it after a couple of days, so it may not have had sufficient charge to perform the connection.

The coolest thing about the Linkind Smart Solar Lights SL5 is that they can stay put in your yard year-round, but are versatile enough to change colors for different themes, all for a low startup cost. The lights typically shine a warm white on my home, but I just made them purple and orange in preparation for Halloween and love the fun atmosphere they create with other decorations.

I'm looking forward to changing them for Christmas, using them to work with my holiday decorations, and then reverting them to a smooth, warm white next year.