Malcolm Owen
Smartbulb producer LIFX has introduced another way to light up a room, with the Tile wall panels able to change color into a variety of different light patterns, all of which can be controlled via the company's companion app or through smarthome frameworks, including Apple's HomeKit.
Consisting of five panels, the LIFX Tile kit is capable of producing 420 lumens of light per panel, 2,100 lumens in total, and is software dimmable from 1 percent to 100 percent. Able to emit cool and warm white light, the tiles can also be controlled to show a variety of different colors on command, with support for up to 16 million colors.
Notably, each tile has 64 individual zones, which can each be assigned their own color and brightness. This can be used to create animated color-changing effects that move in waves across one or more of the panels together, giving a wider array of illumination options than other smartbulbs currently available on the market.
Connecting to a local network using Wi-Fi, the tiles can be controlled using LIFX's iOS companion app, with it also including support for HomeKit, allowing for Siri voice commands and the iOS Home app to change the lighting in concert with other smartbulbs. Tile joins other bulbs in the range that recently received an update adding HomeKit compatibility.
The smart home support also extends to Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and IFTTT, including voice support for the Google and Amazon platforms.
Each tile measures 7.87 inches square, 1.37 inches thick, and weighs 1.31 pounds, with LIFX including 3D Command Hooks on the back to attach the tiles to surfaces. According to the support pages, LIFX Tile supports up to 5 tiles on a single controller, included in the kit, so those wanting to use more tiles will need to use additional controllers.
Available for pre-order with release in November, the LIFX Tile kit including five tiles and a power pack costs $249.99.
Wesley Hilliard
Marko Zivkovic
Christine McKee
5 Comments
This is stupid pricing.
1) nanoleaf comes with 9 tiles and is often on sale for 179$
2) LifX makes garbage
3) while perhaps more flexible than aurora allowing designs not requiring each tile to touch - that means 6 inch mini extension cords on your fancy light up wall ?
#stupid
no one is gonna be programming these the way they say because no one does this with the units and apps that already exist. Americans are stupid and not lighting designers...
the idea deal is cool but to make my point I bought enough Aurora (2 starters w 9 tiles, plus 4 expansion packs for like 500$ 30 tiles in all)
I designed a double sided wall partition that needed no additional wiring and was light enough to hang. Why ? Who knows.
its awesome and also - silly but LIFX would cost you twice that much and no one even knows if they do what they say... 64 programmable zones per tile seems esp. suspect
Nice!!!!! I’ll wait for the Philips Hue Panels though.
Lifx are better than Hue
How can it display "16 millions" of colors if the output is adjustable in (presumably) one percent increments? In an RGB lighting system, 100 levels per color equals only 1 million possible combinations.