Cree Connected LED Bulb review: The right smart bulb at the right time, for the right price

The most notable omission from Cree's LED lineup has been a smart bulb, but that's changing today with the addition of the $15 Cree Connected LED. Sharing the build and lighting specs of last year's well-reviewed Cree 4Flow LED, the new Connected LED adds in a Zigbee radio. Pair it with a control hub, and you'll be able to turn it on and off remotely, or schedule automated lighting changes.

At launch, the only hub you'll be able to pair Cree's LED with is the Wink Hub, though Cree's team tells us that they ultimately expect to roll out compatibility for other hubs that speak Zigbee, too. Presumably, that would bring SmartThings and Staples Connect into play at some point in the near future, but for now at least, Cree's LED is somewhat married to Wink. That makes sense given that both products sell at Home Depot, but it might come as a disappointment to consumers who aren't sold on Wink, or to those who've already bought into another platform.

That said, this is a very strong smart bulb, and at $15, it ties with the GE Link LED as the most affordable big-brand option currently available. The lighting specs are solid across the board, and it works like a charm on the Wink platform, offering simple, intuitive controls and a much easier pairing process than the Link LED. For basic connected lighting, it's one of the best smart bulbs we've seen yet.

Design and features

Cree adapted its smart bulb design from last year's 4Flow LED, packing a Zigbee radio into the existing build. That means that this isn't a bulb that goes out of its way to look fancy or newfangled -- instead, it copies the 4Flow's emphasis on mimicking the silhouette of classic incandescents. I liked that approach with the 4Flow, and I like it with the new Connected LED too.

The new bulb also shares the 4Flow's convection cooling trick, which uses vents to circulate air through the body of the bulb, eliminating the need for heat sinks. That helps bring production costs down, and also means that the bulb is exceptionally light for an LED, weighing in at less than 2 ounces.

The Cree Connected LED shares the same lighting specs as the 4Flow LED, too, and that's largely a good thing. Both claim a light output of 815 lumens, and both clocked in even higher than that in front of our spectrometer -- 835 lumens for the 4Flow, and a very impressive 872 for the Connected LED.

In terms of efficiency, the 4Flow puts its light out using 11 watts, but the number rises to 11.5 watts for the Connected LED on account of the Zigbee radio's power draw. When we tested it out, the number was actually closer to 11.1 watts, so Cree's done a good job of keeping this bulb relatively efficient. Still, it's worth noting that both the Philips Hue Lux LED and the Belkin WeMo LED are even more efficient, each one drawing less than 10 watts.

Cree also did a very good job with color temperature here, landing extremely close to the stated 2,700K. At 2,696K, the Cree Connected LED lands closer to the mark than any other smart bulb we've tested, so if you're picky about that perfect shade of warm, yellowy light, you'll like this LED.

The one place where Cree's smart bulb lags behind at least some of the competition is the color rendering score, which measures how accurately a given light source illuminates different shades. The Cree Connected LED hits a rather ordinary score of 80 out of 100, and given that both the WeMo LED and the equally inexpensive GE Link LED hit closer to 90, I'd have liked to see Cree do better.

To access the Cree LED's smart features, you'll need to pair it with a control hub that can translate its Zigbee signal into Wi-Fi. At launch, your only option is the Wink Hub, with other options expected to emerge in the coming months. The GE Link LED followed a similar path, starting out as a Wink-centric bulb before quickly arriving on other platforms, like SmartThings. I'd be surprised if the Cree Connected LED didn't follow suit.

Different platforms might ultimately offer different features, and I'll update this space accordingly if that turns out to be the case. For now, though, we only have Wink to go on. Fortunately, it offers most all of the features you'd want from a smart light, including scheduling, remote control and conditional automation through Wink's Robots feature.

In general, I'm a fan of the Wink app. It's a well-designed smart home control interface -- more intuitive than the SmartThings app, and better looking than the Staples Connect app. For more on its general functionality, be sure and check out my colleague Megan Wollerton's full review of the Wink Hub. For the purpose of this review, I'll focus on the specific features that pertain to the Cree LED.