Xiaomi Yeelight Smart Wi-Fi Light Strip Review

We live in a smart world. Almost everything you can imagine has an internet connected version available. Do you want a connected refrigerator? ? There is plenty to choose from! One place where the Internet of Things has really taken its place is lighting. And it makes sense — who doesn’t want to turn the lights on and off with their phone (or even with their voice if they have echo or )? It’s just convenient!

Today we are going to dig into the Xiaomi Yeelight Smart Light Strip. This is a 2-meter (6.56 feet) strip of LEDs that connect to your home Wi-Fi network and allow you to control them from your phone or remotely.

Obviously, the first name that comes to mind with connected lighting is Phillips Hue, and in the case of smart strip LEDs, Hue costs around $90 (and needs a hub). There’s also a LIFX Z starter kit that sells for the same price. Xiaomi Yeelight is available on GearBest for only $30!

Initial Impressions

The first thing you’ll notice when you get your Yeelight Smart Light Strip is that nothing is cheap about it. It comes in a very Apple-like white box, which makes it feel a lot more expensive than it really is.

Once you crack it open, you’ll be greeted by a flexible strip of lighting, with a power cord and a remote control hidden underneath. The power cable is quite long, 3 meters (9.8 feet) long, and the strip itself is 2 meters. The one-button remote is on the cable. You quickly press the button to turn the light on and off and hold it down to change the color.

Of course, you’re buying a smart light strip, which means you’re likely to use the Internet’s light-working features more often than not. However, having a remote control is good for situations where your internet isn’t working or you just don’t want to pull out your phone.

The lights

Quickly, before we get to all of Yeelight’s internet features, let’s take a moment to take a look at the lights themselves. First, they support 16 million colors via RGB LEDs, so you can definitely customize them to suit any mood you’re trying to achieve. There are no separate white LEDs, though.

The light is also quite bright, coming in at 140 lumens. At full brightness, they will illuminate the area well. For example, if you use them under cabinets to light up your counter, they will be well accentuated.

The strip itself is flexible, so you can safely bend it to get around corners or focus on something round. It also has some spots on the strip so you can cut it if you don’t need the full length for the project itself you are trying to do.

Speaking of which, it comes with an adhesive backing so you can easily attach it to just about anything you want. Depending on the situation, you can also get creative with the mounting, but for most people, the adhesive backing will ignite and roll.

They are also somewhat rugged, rated IP-65 thanks to a rubberized coating that covers any electrical contacts. This means that they are very resistant to water on the surface of the light (but not completely immersed in water) and completely dustproof.

Connected features

The real key to the Xiaomi Yeelight Smart Light Strip is the fact that it connects to the internet. After you turn on the light, you need to download the Yeelight app and follow the process. Everything worked on the first try and it was easy to get started. The app forces you to select a server location and the only options are Singapore and mainland China. I’m in the US, but with the Singapore server everything worked fine.

The app itself does what you’d expect — you can turn the lights on and off, change the color, and adjust the brightness. The basic features you would expect from a light are definitely there.

You can also set them to run on a schedule. You can set them to automatically turn off and on at a specific time, or you can turn on the sleep timer to turn off the lights after a specific time.

Another cool feature in the app is the ability to create preset scenes. They are easy to make and will allow you to switch between multiple presets without having to manually drag and drop colors. Obviously this feature is a lot more useful if you have multiple Yeelights as you can set up scenes so they all work together in unison, but it’s also essential if you want to use IFTTT with your lights (and trust me you do).

Option Favorite in the app allows you to choose from several recommended styles (or create your own). For example, you can select sunrise to make the light change to bright yellow for 15 minutes. You can also choose sunset to walk in the opposite direction for 10 minutes. These preset scenes offer a fun way to brighten up the mood in any room.

Third party features

Right out of the box, the fixtures are Alexa certified, which means they are fully supported to work with Echo for voice control. I don’t have Echo, but based on user reviews, it works pretty well.

I really helped Yeelight get through IFTTT support. You open up all kinds of possibilities with it. I set it up to work with Google Home through it and it worked great. I set the «Hey Google turn on/off light strip» command and it did exactly that. You can also assign comments to change colors. For me, I set the «Hey Google, make the sun go down» recommendation to force the light to go into sunset mode. You can get creative by setting the commands the way you want.

Another interesting use I have found for IFTTT is to turn on the lights when you arrive home. If you attach a light along your stairs and use this command, you can make sure you can see where you are going!

Here are just a few other ideas for IFTTT and the Yeelight strip:

• Blue when you receive a Facebook notification
• Turn on the lights in the color of your favorite team when their game starts
• Scene change when outside temperature drops below a certain point
• Connect smart home devices to work together

These are just some of my heads, but you get the idea. You can get creative, of course, and depending on where you put the lights, you can do some pretty interesting things with them.