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Xiaomi LED Strip

Xiaomi Yeelight LED Smart Strip Review

Since 1989 Lighting

Lighting is an important part of any home cinema.  We know LED Strip Lighting could get creative with the lighting at home. Whether  you want to add subtle ambience to living room, kitchen, your wardrobe, trucks, Motorcycle, Gold Carts, even Shoes.

That would be great!

At the first you may consider the famous brand: like Philips, OSRAM. But you know the Price like Hue is also famous. Upset.

Okay, When you want to buy the LED strip, you can find lots of LED strips on the market. In the below video, there are many  different types of LED Strips , it may get you confused to buy it. Except the input voltage like 12Vdc or  24 Vdc, lots of parameters,we can not know where to buy the good quality of LED Strips.

(From YouTube)

Price

As I am going to buy LED strip, I search lots information on the internet. Here I am going to review A Chinese Brand named Xiaomi Yeelight. You may know this brand.  Also you can find lots of review on the YouTube or other websites. For the price of Yeelight LED Strip, you can find so funny pricein the amazon.com, it is near $200!!! Crazy. Here is the price sheet, all the prices in the below sheet are searched on the 2017-09-10. I search the LED strip on 2017-09-12 again, the price has been revised to $ 29.99

Website Price To USD
Amazon.com(USA)  USD$29.99 29.99
amazon.de/fr Pegasus Online EUR 86.47 104
amazon.de/fr  BML EUR 139.75 168
amazon.ca CDN$ 38.99 32
amazon.in  INR 4,808.82 75.397
ledstore.online USD$29.99 29.99
gearbest.com  HK$227.23 29.0
banggood.com USD$42.59 42.59
aliexpress.com USD$29.65 29.65
vesternet.com £59.99 79.1
ebay.com USD$60.00 60.00
Tmall.com(Offical Channel, if not  China IP, not access) RMB 149 23.0

Unbox

I received the Yeelight LED Strip 2 days later after the order, spend $23 on that. The item ships in a box, where all the items are packed neatly. Here are the views of Yeelight LED strip packages and disassemble views.

Xiaomi LED Strip

(Front View Xiaomi Yeelight LED Strip Box)

Back View Xiaomi Yeelight

(Back View Xiaomi Yeelight LED Strip Box)

Inside View 1

(Inside View  1 Xiaomi Yeelight LED Strip )

Inside View 2

(Inside View  2 Xiaomi Yeelight LED Strip )

Inside View 3

(Part View  Xiaomi Yeelight LED Strip )

Adapter View

(Adapter View )

The plug of power supply is Chinese Standard plug, so it may be not suitable for your socket in your location, even it may not in compliance with your national standard if you live  in the EU, or  in the North America.

Switch View

(Switch button View)

There is only one button on the controller. You can press it once to turn it on or off, or hold it for a few seconds to change the light color, but seems no use for holding the button for long time.

LED Chip View

(LED Chip View)

LED type is 5050, containing three LEDs allowing for RGB and addressable strips as well as higher power levels.

Compare to others, there are no too much silk-screen on the flexible PCB of Yeelight LED strip. Yeelight LED Strip is using with PU Glue,  which is better than the Silicon and Epoxy, these 2 plastic material are easily taken off.

It also comes in an all-white exterior. The strip, the in-line control, and the adapter have a very good look, so they bring you a good feeling when using a high-quality product. All the LED chip and connections are protected in a transparent soft PU material, it is safer with the IP65 water-resistant rating but it is also more difficult for you to cut and connect to another strip.

Bad Material Sample

Bad material

(From Xiaomi Comm)

Here is the Summary of the Yeelight.

Brand Xiaomi Yeelight
Manufacture Qingdao Yeelink Information Technology Co., Ltd
Model No YLDD01YL
Color RGB
Input Voltage/Frequence 100 – 240 Vac, 50/60Hz
Input Current 0.5 A
Rated Wattage 12 w (60 Pcs x 0.2 W)

(In standby, the lamp consumes 1.2 watts.)
Output of Adapter 12 Vdc, 1 A
Life 25000 H
Platform Android & IOS
Connect Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g/n 2.5 GHz

(Just like with the Yeelight RGBW Smart Bulbs, the LED strip radiates exclusively over WLAN 802.11n. On special Smart-Home specification, such as ZigBee or Z-Wave, the manufacturer waives.)
Length of LED Strip 2m/ 6.5 FT
Operating Temperature: -10°C to +40°C
Operating Humidity: 0% to 85% RH


Performance

This smart LED strip can be controlled with the wired switch. You can press it once to power it on or press and hold it to change the color. However, it is much more fun to control it via WI-FI as the LED strip has a built-in Wifi and it can be controlled via the Yeelight app/Mi Home.

The interface of the app is very intuitive.  I had no issues connecting the strip to Huawei phone.  You can turn on/off the light, change the brightness, color temperature, flow mode for a continuous color change, set schedule and sleep timer. But someone find it hard to connected, even connected with Alexa. Living China, it can not be connected with Amazon Alexa. Go to User Experience to read others’ comment.

Besides, I installed both Mi Home and Yeelight app to control the light strip. The Yeelight app has more functionalities like music syncing, however, I prefer the Mi Home app since I can control many other Xiaomi devices here as well. After I connected to my devices in the Mi Home app, the Yeelight couldn’t recognize those devices anymore and required a reset. Therefore, I use the Mi Home app most of the time to make changes. It has similar settings as found on other Yeelight products. You can turn on/off the light, change the brightness, color temperature, flow mode for a continuous color change, set schedule and sleep timer. In the Yeelight app, you can also sync lighting with your music but it’s not something really useful.

Each of the LED light has the brightness of 150 lumens. When I set to the maximum brightness, I find that the light is very bright, so it can totally highlight your furniture and create an awesome indirect lighting effect for your room.

(Form YouTube) 

The Yeelight app has more functionalities like music syncing. It will be a great product to use on the back of a TV screen as an ambient light. It worked well to set the scene for what I am watching NBA Game,  GSW in the next season. I like its Music function, but it has to be developed in the future.

(Form YouTube) 

Teardown

(Tear Down the power supply and Switch after some months later)

 

User Expensive

Many of user find it great products, I find some others say it is hard to set up , unable to connected to Alexa,  does not work after one month or longer. To myself, to connected with Alexa, it is really hard, now it is not okay, I do not know the Yeelight side how to deal with this. The software is the key issue.

Bought four of the Smart WiFi Light strips and  finding that they need to be restarted every few days to be addressable over WiFi. Even when connected to Wifi, controlling the lights via Alexa is more error prone than with my other smart home devices. Using the Singapore server as others have noted. Unable to update the firmware from 1.2.4_16 to see if that addresses the problems.

Solid light strip. But the app is awful. Keeps losing connection to my wifi. Have to reset the strip everytime it happens. Now the app thinks my wifi is a public network and won’t connect at all

After one month of use its always disconnects from my network and i have to reset it in order to be able to control it with my Iphone.

Doesn’t work with alexa tried to go to phillipene server and reset everything have all right setting developer and more and can’t find in alexa managed to get to work maybe half of the time with iffy but does not work as well as described.

They stopped working after a month.

Yeelights are not very bright. This is the biggest disappointment with these lights. I have Philips Hue strips as well. The Hue strips are easily 2 to 3 times brighter. If used for under cabinet lighting, do not expect Yeelight to illuminate the counter tops very well. Set up with your home network also a bit difficult. Discovery of lights take a lot of time. Control of lights by phone is also delayed. Lights react 3-5 seconds after command is sent and sometimes not at all. Commands must be resent. 

The lights are okay but are frustrating to set up.

 

CONCLUSIONS

Finally, the Xiaomi Yeelight Smart Light Strip is very cool lighting solution and it has been working absolutely fine so far. The Xiaomi Yeelight is more expensive than normal light strips but it is still among the cheapest smart options.

The price of around $30 may sound a little steep for some but it is actually a lot cheaper than Philips Hue light strip. The Xiaomi smart strip does everything you can ask for this kind of product and thus, it can be definitely recommended.

But some have to changed in the future.

The light strip is 2-meter (6.56 ft) long but it is more expensive than longer normal strips. Therefore, you should consider carefully before buying, the two-meter-long strip can not be extended.

The hue control isn’t as good as what we’ve seen from other colourful LEDs, such as the LIFX and Philips Hue offerings, though they are more expensive products.

Pairings from different phones often caused issues; only one device at a time can control the lights.

It is not easily to connect with Alexa though you are in the USA.

 

Any Good LED Strip?

 

Refer:

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