I Wish All Smart Home Upgrades Were as Easy as This Light Bulb

Smartphone-controlled light bulbs were one of the first smart home products that worked as promised, with minimal fuss. Philips’ Hue line, one of the first smart lighting systems available, uses bulbs that look and work just like standard incandescents. The only catch is that Philips’ system requires a wi-fi network in your home, a base station connected to your router, and yet another adapter squeezed onto your already crowded power bar. But there’s a much easier solution now, as long as you’ve completely bought into the Apple ecosystem. Installing Sylvania’s new Smart+ A19 full-color LED bulb is as easy as changing any of the bulbs in your house, because instead of talking to a base station, they talk directly to your iPhone or iPad using a built-in Bluetooth radio, and piggyback on the HomeKit smart home infrastructure Apple introduced to its mobile operating system a few years ago.