WiZ Connected Color and Tunable White A19 bulb review: A colorful Wi-Fi smart bulb that won’t break the bank

WiZ Connected makes some of the most attractive and reasonably priced smart bulbs we’ve ever tested, and its Color and Tunable White A19 bulb is no exception. This no-hub-required Wi-Fi smart bulb installs in minutes, and it boasts a couple dozen color modes as well tunable white modes.

You can put the bulb on a schedule, program lighting scenes, or even set it to a circadian rhythm, and you can control it via app, Alexa or Google Assistant voice commands, an optional remote, or even using a “dumb” light switch thanks to the clever WiZclick feature. Priced at a few pennies south of $15, the Color and Tunable White A19 bulb packs plenty of value.

This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best smart bulbs, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping.

Design and specifications

Signify-owned WiZ Connected offers a couple other color and tunable white bulbs besides its A19 model, including a color and tunable white BR30 floodlightRemove non-product link ($15.97) and an RDL6 recessed downlightRemove non-product link ($16.97).

Rated to last up to 25,000 hours, the A19 bulb is fitted with an E26 base that will screw into a standard light bulb socket. You can tune the bulb’s white light from a very warm 2,200 Kelvin to a cool 6,500 Kelvin, which is approximately the color temperature of daylight on a hazy day, and it can also glow with up to 16 million colors, all of which you can control using the WiZ mobile app.

Measuring 4.65 inches long and 2.36 inches wide, the WiZ A19 bulb can emit up to 800 lumens at full brightness (the equivalent of 60-watt incandescent), which is bright enough to light up a room or a workspace.

Setup

It only took a few minutes to get WiZ’s A19 color and tunable white bulb up and running, After downloading and installing the WiZ app on your iOS or Android device, you screw the bulb into a socket, power it on, and tap the “+” button in the app to add the bulb to your WiZ “home.”

As with most Wi-Fi smart bulbs, the WiZ A19 bulb only connects to 2.4GHz wireless networks, which could lead to hiccups if you’re using (and you most certainly are) a dual-band 2.4- and 5GHz Wi-Fi router. If you don’t want to deal with deactivating the 5GHz band on your router during the discovery process, you can manually add the bulb to the WiZ app by connecting your phone to the bulb’s local (and temporary) Wi-Fi signal. But if you are willing to briefly turn off your router’s 5GHz network, you can use WiZ’s “Smart Pairing feature,” which (unlike the manual pairing process) lets you add multiple new bulbs at once.

I tried both the manual and Smart Pairing methods and didn’t encounter any problems, and within a few minutes I had both of my A19 review samples installed in my “basement” room.

Features, app support, and smart home integrations

The WiZ app comes with more than two dozen presets for both white and color modes, including four white presets (warm white, daylight, cool white, and night light) and six “simple” colors (including “cozy,” “relax,” “plant growth,” and “focus”), plus custom white and color modes that let you choose a shade or a hue by swiping on a color palate.

Ben Patterson/IDG

Besides its static lighting modes, the A19 bulb supports more than a dozen “dynamic” modes, ranging from flickering “candlelight” and “fireplace” modes to pulsing “ocean” and “deep dive” settings. For each of the dynamic modes, you can tinker with both the brightness and the speed of the dynamic effect. Also available are wake-up and bedtime modes that gradually boost and dim the bulb’s brightness respectively over a 30-minute period.

The WiZ app lets you set lighting schedules for a room of WiZ lights, as well as create lighting scenes that you (in the parlance of WiZ) “record” and “play.” You can also set a daily circadian rhythm that automatically changes the brightness and color of the bulb depending on the time of day, while a randomized vacation mode helps to trick bad guys into thinking that you’re at home.

If you want a physical remote for controlling the A19 bulb, the optional Wi-Fi WiZmote lets you control all the WiZ bulbs grouped into a single room, and you can assign up to four lighting modes as “favorites” corresponding to four numbered buttons. There’s also a nifty WiZclick feature that lets you switch between the first two favorites by flicking a light switch either once or twice, essentially turning a dumb switch into a quasi smart switch.

WiZ lights such as the A19 bulb support an impressive number of smart home integrations, including Alexa, Google Assistant, IFTTT, SmartThings, Conrad Connect, Enki, ImperiHome, and Alice. There’s no Apple HomeKit support, but at least you can assign WiZ room scenes to a Siri shortcut.

Bottom line

Wiz Connected continues to impress us with its value-packed Wi-Fi bulbs, and its A19 Color and Tunable White bulb makes a fine addition to its smart lighting lineup. Inexpensive enough to be a staple for budding smart homes, WiZ’s A19 bulb is a cinch to set up and control, and its wide array of white and color modes offer plenty of creative lighting opportunities.