WiZ, a sister company of Philips Hue, announced an array of new budget-friendly smart homes and Wi-Fi-connected products. The list includes everything from smart lamps, lightbulbs, ceiling fixtures, and more. Most notable are the new smart lamps that offer seamless smart home experiences, rather than just adding smart bulbs.
First up, WiZ releases two new smart lamps, the Hero Table Lamp and the Squire Table Lamp. These are small lamps perfect for accent lighting and come with customizable routines for bedtime and wake-up modes. Each model has a touch-sensitive top for easy on-off with the tap of a finger, too.
The Squire is more of a decorative lamp, with an angled light throw perfect for aiming at a wall or decorations. The new WiZ lamp starts at $49.99, while the Squire will run $59.99 in the US.
WiZ also debuted new fixed ceiling lamps in several variations if you’re looking for something more permanent. These new ceiling lights have cold or warm color switching, ambient lighting, plenty of accent colors, and more. The three new lights are the Adria ceiling light, SuperSlim ceiling light, and the Imageo spotlight. That last one is available with 1-3 spotlight bulbs and comes in 12 different configurations.
Unfortunately, there are some aspects of the announcement that are a bit confusing. For one, WiZ confirmed that its app platform and these lamps would support upcoming Philips Smart LED products, which will say “Connected by WiZ” on the box. However, Philips Hue lights won’t work, as you’ll need to stick mostly to WiZ’s own bulb product line. And yes, we know that’s confusing.
WiZ has a neat new smart plug that lets you turn existing lamps and other devices into smart-home compatible products and integrate them into the WiZ app. Plus, when you don’t have a Wi-Fi connection (for whatever reason), you can still control Wiz’s lights with optional remotes.
As expected, all these new products play nicely with third-party platforms, including Amazon Alexa, Samsung Smart Things, Google Assistant, and others. WiZ confirmed that all of these new products would be available on its website starting next month.
via Signify
