TP-Link Tapo L900-5 RGB LED Light Strip Review

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TP-Hyperlink continues to broaden the product vary inside its reasonably priced Tapo sub-brand.

Lately, this contains the addition of two LED mild strips, the Tapo L900-5, which I’m reviewing as we speak and the marginally costlier RGBIC multicolour Tapo L920-5.

Tapo L900-5 vs Tapo L920-5: RGB vs RGBIC Gentle Strips

There are two totally different mild strips you will notice obtainable on-line, RBG and RGBIC. For Tapo, the L900 is RGB whereas the L920 is RGBIC.

They each have RGB lights permitting you to attain a variety of colors.

Nevertheless, the RGBIC is known as that approach as a result of it has an unbiased management chip (IC), this permits the strip to individually set the RGB colors. This, subsequently, offers you’re rather more visually spectacular impact.

Nevertheless, RGBIC does include one draw back. With the extra advanced circuitry, you’ll be able to’t trim down the strip. So if you’re planning on putting in LED lighting someplace sensible (underneath cabinets, and so forth), RGB offers a extra versatile and neater set up.

As a result of you’ll be able to’t lower the Tapo L920-5, TP-Hyperlink has coated the highest of the strip with a PU coating which offers a water resistant, sturdy coating to guard your LEDs. It’s not rated for out of doors use, however it could in all probability deal with a small drinks spill.

Specification

• 5m multicolour LED mild strip
• Just one color at a time (slightly than the addressable/ RGBIC mild strips)
• Cuttable strips (which you’ll’t do with RGBIC)
• Dimmable
• Schedule and Timer
• Voice Management with Alexa/Google
• No Hub
• 3M adhesive backing
• 5000-hour life span
• 2100 mcd max luminous depth, which TP-Hyperlink claims is 20% brighter than anybody else.

Set-Up / App

Arrange was customary for many IoT units, although I’d say it was a bit simpler than common.

The one small factor was that I plugged the LEDs within the mistaken approach round. First, it appears just like the plug is formed to be plugged in a particular approach which is what I did. I didn’t discover the arrow on the plug and strip, this must level at one another, which was the alternative of what I had accomplished.

With the lights on, the Tapo app rapidly recognized the lights, and I used to be in a position to move over my 2.4Ghz WiFi password with out concern.

In Use

There may be not a terrific deal to cowl with these lights; they’re fairly fundamental, however do the principle belongings you count on from a WiFi linked mild strip.

The primary display screen lets you choose 7-different colors and set the brightness – with these fundamental RGB LEDs it’s one color at a time.

There may be an results web page that provides you a wider number of colors and a few predefined results. These mainly swap between colors/brightness and so forth. The consequences are fairly fundamental, as a result of limitations of the RGB, you will get a little bit of a twinkly impact with a few of them, which is sweet for decorations.

You then have a sync-to-sound perform. For this to work, that you must depart the app open within the foreground, so it’s not essentially the most sensible answer in case you plan to make use of it for the night. As you would possibly guess, with this enabled, it’ll use the microphone in your telephone to synchronise the sunshine with the music being performed.

Like most sensible dwelling merchandise now, you’ll be able to hyperlink as much as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant for voice management.

With the Tapo ecosystem increasing, you’ll be able to have the sunshine strip work as a part of a scene with different Tapo merchandise. For the time being, the circumstances you should utilize are with one faucet, a set off time, they usually even have a set off gadget. I assume you should utilize one of many sensible safety cameras because the set off gadget.

Value and Different Choices

The Tapo L900-5 has an RRP of £29.99 and is at the moment simply £16.99 on Amazon.

The multicolour Tapo L920-5 is simply £5 extra RRP. If each merchandise have been full value, it could make extra sense to go for the multi-coloured choice, which could have a extra spectacular lighting impact.

There are a number of random manufacturers with LED strip lights, however most of those value extra money.

The Govee LED strips to seem like nearly like-for-like to the Tapo, the {hardware} appears the identical, the app has the identical music syncing performance.

The essential Govee lights value greater than the Tapo L900-5, however you should purchase them as much as 10M. Nevertheless, they’ve additionally launched a brand new RGBIC permitting multicolour. The 5M model is underneath £20, and 10M is underneath £37.

The primary benefit for Tapo is that (for me no less than) I’ve a number of Tapo merchandise, and it’s preferable to maintain all of them underneath one ecosystem.

On the opposite finish of the spectrum, you may have the 2M Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance LED Good Lightstrip for £70 or the 2M Philips Hue Gradient Lightstrip is £130. These are far superior merchandise, however the value appears insane once you examine it reasonably priced options like this.

Then there’s the Twinkly Line which is £80 for 1.5m. With these, you’ll be able to map the LED lights and create customized designs.

General

The TP-Hyperlink Tapo L900-5 is an efficient LED mild strip that’s simple to arrange and use. It struggles to shine in a crowded market, at full RRP I might say it is a arduous suggestion, however the present Amazon reductions make it worthwhile.

With out a low cost, you’re higher off going with the extra spectacular RGBIC multicolour Tapo L920-5.

With the Tapo ecosystem rising, I might be extra inclined to stay with this vary of merchandise slightly than Govee, which seems to supply higher worth for cash.

Final replace on 2021-12-22 / Affiliate hyperlinks / Photos from Amazon Product Promoting API