Amazon Prime Day 2021: The best deals on smart lights and color-changing bulbs

This story is part of Amazon Prime Day 2021, CNET’s guide on everything you need to know and how to make sure you get the best deal.

Amazon Prime Day is officially a go, and over the next two days you can expect to find lots of deals from all sorts of manufacturers in all kinds of categories. That includes deals on a variety of smart lights, many of which are live right now.

That makes Prime Day a great time to try out a color-changing bulb, or to build upon whatever smart lighting setup you’ve already installed. I’ve dug through all of the latest discounts to point out the offers currently worth considering — here’s the full rundown, which I’ll update as deals come and go.

Lifx

Let’s start with Lifx, one of the more established names in smart lighting. The company’s Wi-Fi Lightstrips work with all of the major smart home platforms and voice assistants — HomeKit, Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, IFTTT, you name it — and they’re capable of putting out multiple colors at once, which is a fun feature to play with no matter where you end up sticking them.

Usually $90, the 80-inch version of the Lifx Lightstrip was marked down to $75 just ahead of Prime Day on Amazon and at Best Buy — and now that Prime Day is here, Amazon shoppers can take an extra $10 off at checkout, bringing the cost down to $65. That’s the lowest price I’ve seen for this newest version of the Lightstrip, which was originally called Lifx Z when I first reviewed it back in 2016. It’s also $15 less than the Philips Hue Lightstrip, which can only put out one color at a time, and significantly less than the souped-up Philips Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip, which puts out multiple colors but costs a ridiculous $230.

Read our Lifx Lightstrip review.

Lifx

It’s not just strips — just about everything in the Lifx catalog is currently on sale, including the company’s smart bulbs. Among all of the deals I’ve seen, one of the best is on this two-pack of Lifx Color LEDs, currently on sale for $50 at Best Buy. That’s $15 less than usual and just $25 per bulb, which is very good given that this is one of the best-looking color-changing bulbs you can buy. And remember, Lifx lights work with just about everything you’d want them to work with, including voice controls via Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant.

Don’t need two bulbs, and would rather start with just one? For Prime Day, Amazon has that same $25 per bulb price for single bulbs.

Other Lifx deals currently worth considering include:

Read our Lifx Mini review.

Signify

Meanwhille, you’ll find a variety of deals available from Philips Hue, too, but they’re mostly concentrated on the brand’s fixtures and accessories, rather than the bulbs themselves. For instance, you can score this 2-meter Philips Hue Lightstrip plus a 1-meter extension strip for $85, or $20 off. 

That’s not a bad deal if you have a lot of ground for those strips to cover, and these are the newest versions, which feature both Zigbee and Bluetooth radios–the latter of which lets you control them from your phone without need for the Philips Hue Bridge. Just remember that these only put out one color at a time.

GE Lighting

Outdoor smart plugs are great to have on hand when the holidays come around and you get that itch to automate some decorative outdoor lights. In the past, weatherized smart plugs like those sold at a premium, but the costs have come down in recent years. Now, for Prime Day, GE Lighting will sell you one with two outlets for just $20. That’s a great deal, especially considering that the Bluetooth/Wi-Fi plug requires no hub and supports voice commands via Alexa and Google Assistant.

Kasa

If you’d rather smarten things up at the switch than upgrade your bulbs, you won’t find a much better deal than this three-pack from Kasa, TP-Link’s smart home offshoot brand. Just a few years ago, this bundle would have cost more than $100, but right now, you can find it marked all the way down to $35 on Amazon, which is $10 off the regular cost and as low a price as we’ve ever seen for it. 

The switches themselves are nothing fancy — no dimming, no built-in voice assistant — but if you just want to automate a few extra lights around the house, here’s a great way to get the job done.

Read our smart switch buying guide.

TP-Link

Just looking to score a quick Prime Day deal on some simple, workable smart bulbs that can change colors via voice? This Kasa smart bulb 2-pack was already easy to afford at $25, but it’s currently marked down to $20.That’s two perfectly decent, color-changing smart bulbs that need no hub and support voice control via either Alexa or Google Assistant for just $10 each.

Govee

I haven’t tested these out and can’t speak to how good they are, but these multi-color lightstrips from Govee look like a budget-minded alternative to those fancy Lifx strips, complete with multiple colors at once, music syncing modes, and voice controls via Alexa and Google Assistant. They were relatively cheap to begin with at $30 per strip, but for Prime Day, Govee’s knocking that down to $24.

CNET Home

Bring your home up to speed with the latest on automation, security, utilities, networking and more.