This Matter-enabled smart ceiling light costs under $100

Smart light fixtures are quickly becoming a thing, making it a little easier to add colorful, fun, and useful lighting effects to more areas of your home than you traditionally can with smart light bulbs. While these types of fixtures have been quite pricey, smart lighting company Lifx just announced its new Super Color Ceiling Light starting at just $89.97.

The full-color smart LED light fixture offers 2,500 lumens of dimmable light. It works with dynamic lighting effects through Lifx’s app, including a daytime sky with clouds floating by, a night sky with meteors, an invigorating sunrise, and a relaxing sunset.

It also has tunable white light ranging from 1,500K to 9,000K, allowing it to work as everything from a soft nightlight to a brilliant task light. The Wi-Fi-enabled fixture fits flush to the ceiling and features both uplighting and downlighting, which can be controlled separately, and can be set on schedules and dimmed using the Lifx app.

Image: Lifx

As a wired light, it needs to be hardwired and have a constant power supply — meaning, if you wire it to a standard switch, that switch will need to stay on. Lifx says it will attach to a standard junction box for easy installation. At 15 inches in diameter, the ceiling light is quite small — especially compared to Aqara’s smart ceiling light or Nanoleaf’s Skylight ceiling panels — so it’s probably best suited to a bedroom or hallway rather than a main living space.

The Aqara and Nanoleaf options, which start at $150 and $250 respectively, are significantly more expensive than Lifx’s new light. Lifx’s ceiling light is also a third of the price of the new Philips Hue Datura ceiling light, which costs $300 for 15 inches. While both Aqara and Hue use a hub with their lighting products, the Lifx does not since it works over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. However, in my experience, lights that work over Wi-Fi can be less reliable than those that rely on a hub.

Image: Lifx

Lifx has said it’s transitioning its entire line to support the new Matter smart home standard, and the new ceiling light is Matter-enabled, so it works with Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Samsung SmartThings (you’ll need a Matter controller from the platform you want to use). Smart home integration also allows for voice control of the light.

Lifx is one of the original smart lighting companies. It was purchased by US-based Feit Electric in 2022 and has since released a number of new products including an outdoor lighting line. The brand has long been known for its rich colors and high brightness as well as its ability to work over Wi-Fi and not require a dedicated hub. But traditionally, it has been one of the more expensive brands. This shift into more affordable offerings is a welcome one and might be giving the folks at Philips Hue some sleepless nights.

The company has also developed a polychrome technology that merges colors more naturally to give off an ombre look from a single light. I’ve tested this on its string lights, and it works very well. The new ceiling light has the same tech, and Mark Hollands, chief technology officer of Lifx, explains that “it uses a grid of lighting zones to push the boundaries with smooth zone blending, simple gradients, and dynamic moving effects.”

The Lifx Super Color Ceiling light is available now from The Home Depot starting at $89.97. It comes in white or black trim, with the white trim offering a slightly higher 2,850 lumens, compared to the black trim’s 2,500 lumens.