Many of you are probably thinking that the LIFX Beam has been around for quite some time now, and yes, you’re right. So why are we looking at this product now? Well, simply because the past year has seen a significant increase in working from home setups.
So, what products come to the rescue when you need your Zoom or Teams backdrop look on fleek and disguise those pesky décor walls or lack of? That’s right, LED lighting…one of the most effective ways to create that ultimate YouTuber style look and feel to your office.
The pandemic has led to a huge increase in Smart Home product sales, and this is why we’re excited to feature the LIFX Beam, simply because it is one of the nicest solutions you can get on the market.
Why? Read on…
About LIFX
Firstly, who are LIFX (pronounced life-x)? They were established in 2012 at the early stages of the Smart Home category, and their first product to market was a Multicoloured Wi-Fi Light. 9 years on, LIFX has become a very well known household name when it comes to smart home products, with a nice range to choose from and now selling in over 80 countries. As with any well-established brand, you can also benefit from seamless integration with the likes of Amazon Alexa, Apple Homekit, Samsung and Google Home.
What is the LIFX Beam all about?
The Beam takes LED lighting to another level. Most people install the Beam as a feature above their home office desk setup, on their Lounge or Dining room wall or in the kids’ bedroom to create the ultimate lighting experience for all manner of moods.
LIFX have created a fun product too, which is customisable to suit your look with a really clever design using magnetic connectors!
Check out more from LIFX
Unboxing
The unboxing experience was great. The quality of the box and packaging of the parts have all clearly been well thought out. Before you have even opened the lid, the packaging really demonstrates the capability of the beam, which gives you a little warm fuzzy feeling that will light up your life (pun intended)!
In the box, you’re greeted with six light strips (or bars) known as the BEAMS and 1 corner square connector. Each of the beams are 300 x 35 x 20mm, and they all have power connectors at each end, which forms part of the layout setup.
A dynamic light bar for framing your space
The beam will support up to 8 bars (with 2 corner connectors) in total, this would allow for more shapes to be created, but 6 and 1 corner has proven to be very sufficient for most.
Over and above the main parts, you also get the power unit and 4 power adapters to suit which ever country you’re in.
Each of the beams also have two 3M Command strips pre-installed, ready for you to mount onto the wall. So, for people like me, this out of the box experience cannot get any simpler really, short of me getting someone to come over and do it for me…which…did cross my mind!
Again, a well thought out experience, well done, LIFX.
The Setup
The first thing you WILL all think about is where and how you’d like to install the beam. I highly recommend you think about this first, and thankfully, there is a nice quick set up guide which gives you up to 9 ideas on how to lay out your design.
Once you figure this out, make sure this works with where your plug socket is, the last thing you want is for the cable to be dangling all over your wall or you haven’t allowed for the right length etc. Rule of thumb is to make sure the last beam is placed so that you have the least amount of cable showing, but don’t worry…the cable is a decent length for most solutions. (Panic not)!
The power connector is pretty much like a MagSafe connector you’d find on an old skool MacBook (remember those); whilst they are a great solution for the dreaded snagging cable that AWLAYS gets walked into, the only issue is that they’re fairly weak, so keep this in mind when finding your perfect setup solution.
Once you’ve figured all of the above out, then next step is to download the LIFX app and register your details (unless you already have an account), which is all pretty standard stuff these days…I hope.
Wi-Fi Connection: for the geeky people out there, the Bean uses 802.11n Wi-Fi (2.4GHz). To all of you “Non-Geeky” people (like me), this just means the Beam uses little bandwidth on your home network and just needs to be in decent range of your home router or access point(s).
The setup process was fairly easy, it did take a little while but nothing too frustrating. For the purpose of this review, it was just being setup on a desk (apologies).
At first, I connected the Beams and only one of the bars was working (frustrating moment) but it kind of taught me WHY you need to read the instructions sometimes. Basically there’s a button on the power lead block, a little like those annoying reset buttons the size of a pin head. Once all of your bars are connected up, you have to press and hold this button for a second to successfully sync them all to work as one unit…silly me!!
Back in the game…back on the app…light up my LIFE LIFX!
The App and Features
Seriously, I would be here forever explaining the amount of personalisation you can achieve with the Beam; you have 61 zones per pack, exclusive effects, 16 million colours to choose from, Polychrome Technology™ which allows you to create a zone for each Beam, are you still following me? So basically, this product will not allow you to get bored.
A dynamic light bar for framing your space
Colour temperatures range from 2500k to 9000k which you can also dim right down to 1%. LIFX also claim a lifespan of the LED’s at 22.8 years, to be exact.
The App itself is really intuitive, easy to navigate and the best feature by far for me was the ability to PAINT the Beam whatever colour you like, in this example you see the colours of the Mauritian flag (my roots) Red, Blue, Yellow and Green. This is probably the function I would use all of time, to be honest.
Endless personalisation with LIFX Beam
The available “Themes” are great too. From Ghoulish, Intense, Dream, Love, Peaceful and many more which just adds to the list of personalisation available to you.
Finished? Not quite…!
As mentioned earlier, you can also connect this to your Smart Home assistants, which adds another layer of fun to your setup; turn your Beam on and off, set the colour or temperature, add the Beam to existing themes you have. If you have Apple Homekit, the unique code needed for setup is included in the box.
There are lots of reviews and videos available online on how these can work with your smart home, which are seriously worth checking out for more in-depth advice and ideas.
From 1% to 100% brightness range
Final Thoughts
I LOVE this product, seriously! Yes, it is pricey, usually £180 but currently on offer on Amazon at £157.39 (at time of this review being published).
Why do I love it? Simply because of the design, it’s different from the usual LED Strips that are on the market and the fact that they are designed to be a wall feature and provide amazing function at the same time.
The Beam is a solution for the home hipster. That is literally the best way for me to describe it…! Bravo LIFX, bravo.
I look forward to seeing what the Gen 2 Beam brings to the table, but no doubt, you’re enjoying the revival of sales due to the pandemic!
As always, thank you for reading.
Why not check out more of our SmartHome reviews here
Where to buy?
Final Ratings
Design: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0
Features: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0
Value for Money: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0
Overall Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0 – 5.0 Stars
Thanks for reading this review, please continue to support us and check out our other reviews and follow us on Social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin and don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter below.
Love the review Faz, really captures the essence of using light to improve health and wellbeing as we all hunker down working from home
Thank you, Martin. Glad you like the review, much appreciated. Look forward to supporting more products from LIFX in the future.