LIFX Mini Day & Dusk Smart LED Bulb

To begin with, I did not attempt to set this up with HomeKit, but instead exclusively used the app. Other reviewers have noted the sunrise/sunset feature can get messed up when using HomeKit to control the device, so I elected to stay exclusively with the devices own app. Unreliable Operation: On the very first day, the bulb lost communications with the app, and this has happened intermittently ever since. On occasion, it worked for up to several weeks at a time, but on average fails at least once or twice a month. Physically switching the bulb on and off will not restore communication. The ONLY solution is to restart my wifi router. This happens even when all my other WIFI devices (phone, tablet and computer) are working perfectly at the time. This bulb simply cannot maintain long term communication on its own. Having to restart the router every so often—and just for this device—is a pain. Unintuitive Controls and Operation: There are at least two ways to control the bulb. The first is manual operation with manual controls. The other is to set up a schedule simulating sunrise and/or sunset. Manual Operation— The manual screen features graphical controls for on/off, color temperature, and brightness. Both the on/off and color temperature controls are pretty obvious as to how they work; you simply push to select what you want. The brightness control however is not at all intuitive. It is a circle in the middle of the diagram with thermometer like gradations on it. However, there is no indication whatsoever this is actually a brightness control. There’s no plus, minus indicators of any kind. It doesn’t even look like a control. At first I was completely puzzled as to how one controlled the brightness. Finally after much frustration, I discovered one must swipe the circle from bottom to top (or vice versa) to control the brightness. The thermometer like markings are however confusing. Swiping up to increase brightness is intuitive enough, but that actually takes you down on the gradations...exactly the opposite of what one would suspect. The bottom most line is showing when the bulb is at maximum brightness! A standard, vertical slider with a percentage indicator would be FAR superior and immediately obvious how to use. The present “control” is not obvious at all. The “Day & Dusk” feature is what I bought this bulb for, but the setup is very frustrating and the operation very unintuitive. There are four times that can be set and adjusted: Wake Up, Day, Evening, and Night Light. Intuitively, one would expect “Wake Up” to be the time the bulb first turns on, and then “Day” the final brightness (and color temperature) you wish to ramp up to. Wrong. This device had me thoroughly confused for days. I finally had to run some experiments to determine just what it was doing. I discovered the bulb actually turns on about 28 minutes BEFORE your wakeup time. After the wake up time, the bulb continues to brighten until reaching the Day setting. However, these settings are artificially constrained. You CANNOT set the Wake Up and Day times closer than 30 minutes to each other. And since the bulb actually turns on 28 minutes earlier than your Wake time, it means it takes an entire hour for the bulb to go from its dimmest setting to full brightness. For me that’s far too long and not what I want. I would like it to light dimly just before my alarm goes off and ramp up to full brightness over about 15 minutes. That would help me gradually wake. An hour is just WAY too long. It is possible to have it take longer than an hour, but not shorter. So the fact this bulb lights nearly a half hour earlier than your first designated time is completely unexpected. Having your “sunrise” restricted to one hour might be OK for those interested in simulating reality, but it does not offer the kind of flexibility I expected...and personally require. The Day & Dusk controls are a nearly indecipherable nightmare. Nothing about it is intuitive. I had to play with it for days to get it figured out. You have to hunt and peck, try this and try that. A graph at the bottom of the screen is intended to show how the bulb ramps up and down over the day. That’s a good feature, but incomplete. It has no labeled timeline...just a shape displayed over ambiguous time. This company desperately needs to hire a professional GUI expert who can design controls that are intuitive and easy to understand. This is one of the worst designed apps I’ve seen in a while. One more issue: Like most LED bulbs, this bulb cannot ramp up its brightness from zero. Although the controls are calibrated down to 1%, that’s not really how it works. At it’s dimmest, the bulb pops on at about 5%. When I’m used to total darkness, that’s too bright and it can jar me first thing in the morning. Tungsten bulbs when coupled with a really good dimmer, can ramp smoothly up from zero...and back down to zero. Conclusion: The unintuitive controls coupled with unexpected behavior really turned me off. However, the poor reliability alone kills this product. It’s fortunate I tried just one. There’s no way I’d want to fill a house with these things. That would be a nightmare. Now I know why many manufacturer’s utilize a hardware “hub” to control their smart devices. Unlike the potential flakiness of a WIFI router, a hub is a dedicated hardware device with a built in transmitter dedicated to controlling its products. That’s definitely the way to go.