IKEA Tradfri colour bulbs now available

IKEA have now made their new "colour and white spectrum" bulbs available to buy more widely. They have been available in some locations around Europe, but now they are available online. At the moment they are only available in a dimmer set containing one E27 bulb and one remote control. They were on display but out of stock in the Reading store today, with more due to arrive next week.

Here's the link for the dimming kit online: http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/lighting/smart-lighting/trådfri-dimming-kit-colour-and-white-spectrum-grey-white-art-70338951/

Great stuff. I shall be

Great stuff. I shall be heading for the Reading store myself to get started with Smart Lighting in the near future. I had been leaning towards the Hue if only for their ubiquity, but these prices are far more attractive (and anyway, I'm an IKEA fan girl). My only question now is whether I get a Philips Hue kit with hub as well, or wait for IKEA to offer Google Home integration, as I recently got a Home Mini. (It's largely a rhetorical question.)

Do you happen to know whether the Trådfri lights have the same issue as Hue in that they come on a full brightness after a power cut? As the IKEA ones are brighter, that would be even more of a rude awakening!

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They do all work this way

They do all work this way after losing power, including IKEA ones. However they come on at the last brightness. The reason being most people still have a physical switch which cuts the power to the bulb. When you switch it back on it's important that the bulb comes on, otherwise you would lose the failsafe of using the original switch. Some Hue apps have a function to handle power cuts but I don't know how successfully. As to your other point, the Hue ecosystem is definitely the safer bet - everything works well and reliably, and 3rd party support is likely to be superior for a long time to come, but most of the important features are there in IKEA and as you say, Google home support is coming before very long. Unless you really want something it can't do (e.g. program the remotes, sync lights with your TV/music, geofencing) I'd think IKEA would be fine alone. Things could get even better next year when manufacturers move to ZigBee 3.0 so you could always make the move then.

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By the way the colour bulbs

By the way the colour bulbs are not as bright by quite some margin, especially when outputting a non-white colour. The IKEA bulbs also don't have as wide a temperature spectrum as Hue.

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