Simpler Than a Smart Bulb, Better Than a Regular Lamp – Review Geek

Wyze makes a lot of excellent and interesting products. Its cameras are probably the most well-known, but it has a whole slew of other products, like a scale, smart bulbs, vacuums, and a lot more. The newest member of the Wyze family, however, is the Smart Floor Lamp, and it’s arguably one of the more interesting products in the company’s catalog.

Before we get into the details, however, it’s worth pointing out that the Floor Lamp is available for preorder now and will need to hit 50,000 backers before it becomes a permeant part of Wyze’s product lineup. If it doesn’t, then it’ll remain a limited edition product. So if you want one, you better to order as soon as you decide, because if you wait, you might miss out!

With that, let’s talk about it.

How Smart Is Lamp

Most people know of Wyze from their cameras and smart home gadgets, so with a name like “Smart Floor Lamp,” you might expect the lamp to be, well, smart. And it is—just not in the sense that we come to think of “smart” gadgets these days.

There’s no voice assistant integration, so you can’t tell Google or Alexa to turn your lamp on. Instead, what makes this lamp smart is that it “learns” your behavior over time to automatically adjust the light’s brightness as you need it. So if you start your day with the lamp at max brightness and then adjust it to half at around noon, and you do this day after day, the lamp will start to do it automatically. Interestingly, I used the lamp very sporadically—some days it was on at full brightness nearly all day, while others I didn’t need it at all. I assume that behavior made it hard for the Lamp to learn my use patterns (because they didn’t really exist), so I never really experienced any of the automatic adjustments.

You can also set a schedule for the lamp to turn on and off using the Wyze app, but we’ll talk more about that in just a few. Otherwise, it’s kind of a regular lamp. Kind of.

It also has this nifty little remote. It’s just a big ol’ button that’s also a dial to cycle through the lamp’s 11 brightness settings, but somehow it feels weirdly futuristic to me? I can’t really explain it, but it’s just a neat remote. It’s also magnetic so you can stick it to a fridge or any other metal surface. It even sticks to the lamp itself if you want to put it there for some reason.

And then, there’s the app. The lamp doesn’t have Wi-Fi, but it does have Bluetooth. That means it integrates with the Wyze app so you can turn the lamp on/off, adjust the brightness, set the aforementioned schedule, and toggle the smart-dimming feature that makes this lamp special in the first place. The remote can also pair with the app for firmware updates.

Neat, But Is It a Good Lamp?

All the smart features and app integration in the world won’t matter if it’s in a crummy product. Fortunately, the Wyze Smart Floor Lamp is far from crummy. In fact, the temperature of the light is pretty much what I’ve tried to get out of the Hue bulbs in my office for ages—it’s the perfect “get stuff done” lighting.

The whole thing is powered by a PARB bulb, which features 15 individual condenser lenses. The bulb is warrantied for 36 months and has a life expectancy of 25,000 hours. It’s also worth mentioning that all the smarts of the lamp are in the bulb, not the lamp itself. That means you can’t toss another bulb in the lamp and expect it to work the same way. You have to use the included bulb for the full benefit. Wyze tells us that eventually, it’ll sell replacement bulbs, but there’s no word on when or how much they’ll cost.

I’m not going to pretend to nerd out over Kelvin color temperatures and all that (because, honestly, who cares?), but the Wyze Smart Lamp falls in the 4000k range, which is considered “daylight” or “cool white.” That makes it very natural.

But the Wyze Lamp is about more than just the temperature of the light. It’s also about the coverage area of said light. According to Wyze, the Lamp has 23 degrees of directional lighting at max brightness, with that area getting less defined as the light gets dimmer. That’s especially interesting, as it highlights the usefulness of the Lamp for several different circumstances. This isn’t a lamp you use to light an entire room—it’s more of a task lamp that you use to highlight a workspace, a book, or even use as a subtle nightlight with the brightness rolled down.

Speaking of, it has 11 different brightness levels, so it’s good for a wide range of uses. I mostly used it by my desk with the light angled toward my work surface. During the day, I keep it at full brightness, but as day turns to evening and then into night, rolling the brightness back for normal work tasks creating an excellent atmosphere for focus and concentration. I also use my desk for other things—like restringing guitars—and I never found the max brightness to be too little.

Final Thoughts

Overall, for $30, I don’t need to tell you that there’s no reason not to buy the Wyze Lamp. Okay, well, maybe there’s one: the shipping. Shipping on the Wyze Lamp is $13.99 per lamp. So really, it’s not a $30 lamp. It’s a $45 lamp. Wyze is quick to point out why shipping is half the price of the lamp itself, but it still might be a dealbreaker for some.

Still, I’ve spent far more on lamps that do significantly less. I love the remote control and smartphone integration, making this a unique and versatile lamp. I wish it had smart assistant/voice control compatibility (which is possible over Bluetooth), but hey, they can’t all be zingers.