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The Govee M1 is a high-quality light strip that can be trimmed, dimmed, and packs in plenty of fun color options and features. Read More
Philips Hue is known for its high-quality luminance and vibrant colors, and these smart strip lights deliver on those fronts. Read More
This is the brightest LED strip light in our guide, with lots of fun in-app presets. It also works with Matter. Read More
The LIFX Lightstrip with Color Zones offers bright colors and plenty of customizable lightning effects. Read More
The Eve Smart Light Strip only works with Apple devices, offering full integration with Apple's Siri and HomeKit's adaptive lighting. Read More
Sometimes, a fun new gadget is all it takes to transform your home completely. One of your space's most noticeable (and overlooked) upgrades is adding smart LED strip lights. It’s an affordable way to illuminate places like the underside of kitchen cabinets and add mood lighting along hallway baseboards.
The Govee M1 Smart LED Strip Light (available at Amazon for $99.99) is our top pick for the best LED strip lights. We've thoroughly evaluated its variety of customizable lighting features, ease of setup, and durability, and it has come out on top. For a Matter-enabled LED strip light that's one of the brightest you can buy, the Nanoleaf Essentials Matter Lightstrip (available at Amazon) is our pick. However, we've also considered other intriguing choices, each of which has something unique to offer.
The Govee M1 is the best LED strip light you can buy.
The Govee M1 is the best LED strip light you can buy.
With the Govee M1 Strip Light, you're not just getting a light source, but a versatile tool to create the perfect ambiance for any occasion. Whether you're hosting a vibrant dance party or setting a calm, dreamy mood, the countless bright colors and patterns, thanks to its RGBIC technology, allow for endless customization with just a touch of a button.
Setting up the Govee M1 is a breeze, and it can be adhered to almost any surface. With a simple pair of scissors, you can adjust the length of the strip to your liking. The app, accessible via a QR code on the box, offers a wide range of features, from timers and brightness control to themed color groupings and flashing patterns. This versatility and user-friendly interface make it a great choice for any smart home setup.
The Music DreamView feature even syncs your playlist with the lighting effects, giving a nightclub feel when you’re energized or a subdued, dreamy ambiance when it’s time to settle down. There are a couple of downsides. The exposed tech look when the lights aren’t on is unappealing. And if you remove it someday, it may take some of your paint with it—but this could happen with any light strip.
The M1 also comes in a Manner-compatible version if you’re looking to expand the number of Matter smart home devices in your house.
Overall, Govee’s M1 light strip offers the best blend of value, smarts, customizations, and colors, making it the best you can buy.
Read our full review of the Govee M1 Smart LED Strip Light.
Works with Alexa and Google Assistant
May leave residue behind upon removal
Unattractive when not in use
The Philips Hue Bluetooth Lightstrip Plus is our pick for Best Upgrade.
Philips Hue makes the best smart bulbs, so we had high hopes for them ranking among the best LED strip lights. We love that it works with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit, Microsoft Cortana, SmartThings, and IFTTT. However, for remote access, you will need to purchase a Philips Hue hub—an extra cost to consider—which is one reason we named this our Best Upgrade pick for the best LED strip light.
You can skip the hub and opt for Bluetooth control only via the Philips Hue Bluetooth app for iOS and Android—make sure you stay within range.
The Philips Hue Light Strip Plus puts out 1600 lumens, which illuminates dark spaces. In the Hue app, you can set the lights to one of 16 million colors or opt for one of the many fantastic preset light settings. The app is straightforward to navigate and use.
One feature that impressed us is that cut segments can be reused and reconnected to other strip portions using the Philip Hue connector. This is not the case for most smart light strips. You can sync them with your home entertainment system, which is an excellent feature, but the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box is required to make it work.
This light strip is sleek, easy to use, and full of awesome features, making it a great LED strip light if you want a premium upgrade. It's also ideal for people who are already invested in Philips Hue lights or want to start using them for their smart lighting system, as Hue offers a wide range of smart lighting options.
Robust lighting effects and presets
Works with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri
Hub required to access best features
This Nanoleaf strip light is the brightest of any we've tested.
The Nanoleaf Essentials Matter Lightstrip is a trimmable and dimmable LED smart light with a maximum brightness of 2,200 lumens—the brightest in our guide. The color output is incredible, with a temperature range from 2700K to 6500K. The strip is thick and durable and made for long-term use. It also supports Matter, so you can use it across your preferred smart home ecosystem, like Amazon Echo, Google Home, or Apple HomeKit.
While this LED strip light produces incredibly vibrant shades of tunable whites and over 16 million colors, there are a few qualms to note. The cord connection between the strip and the controller tends to come apart. This shouldn’t be much of an issue once you install it, but it was a bit annoying during our setup.
Additionally, the Nanoleaf app is challenging to navigate and lacks certain features that others in our guide have. Compared to other light strips from Kasa, Govee, and LIFX, it’s also pretty hot after being on for more than 15 minutes.
If you’re OK with a few quirks, this is one of the best LED strip lights that displays the most colorful, striking colors and works with Matter-enabled smart homes.
Very bright with rich colors
Gets hot to the touch
We fell in love with the LIFX Lightstrip with Color Zones for their incredibly simple set up, ease of use, and variety of awesome features.
The LIFX Lightstrip with Color Zones are RGBW LED strip lights that easily connect to Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit. Uniquely, it offers eight different color zones. Each zone can be set to a different color (from millions of options), allowing you to get creative with your custom lighting setup—something not every strip light offers.
At 1,400 lumens, these weren't the most radiant lights we tested, but we had no issues illuminating a dark room even at 30% brightness. On the downside, during our long-term testing, we've experienced issues with the strip randomly going offline and needing reconnection, which is one of the reasons it is no longer our No. 1 pick.
The strip light is available in two lengths: 40 inches and 80 inches. Up to 33 feet of additional 40-inch extension strips can be added, or the strip can be cut down to a smaller size.
The LIFX app has useful controls like scheduling and grouping, plus a bevy of fun lighting effects and preset color themes. The app can even make the lights dance to the beat of a song or the sound of a movie via your phone’s or tablet's microphone.
Works with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri
The Eve Light Strip is the best option for Apple HomeKit.
The Eve Light Strip is made for the Apple ecosystem, making it the best LED strip light for HomeKit that you can buy. The 1,800-lumen strip light offers a wide array of full-spectrum white and colors. While we had a pleasant and easy experience with the Eve strip, there are a few shortcomings.
This strip light isn’t as customizable as some others. It offers no fun lighting effects or presets—you're limited to single colors only.
The only smart home assistant it’s compatible with is Siri, which enables Apple users to change the color, adjust the brightness, and turn it on/off. You can do so remotely with any iOS device that functions as an Apple home hub, including an iPad, Apple TV, or Apple HomePod.
The Eve Energy app is also iOS-exclusive, and the strip supports Apple’s HomeKit Adaptive Lighting. This iOS feature automatically adjusts the color temperature as the day goes on. Overall, Android users should avoid this light strip.
Like most strip lights, Eve's is trimmable, or you can add a few of Eve’s extension strips up to 32.8 feet. We had issues with the adhesive backing, which tore off in a few spots during setup and made the lights hard to stick into place.
Overall, if you live in an Apple smart home, this is a great pick for a smart strip light that works with Siri.
Supports Apple HomeKit's Adaptive Lighting
Not compatible with Android devices
No Google Assistant or Alexa support
The Kasa Smart Multicolor Light Strip makes creating custom eye-catching light displays easy. Powered by the Kasa app, these lights are quick and easy to set up, and they have a bubble-like polyurethane coating that helps to protect the diodes.
The lights are most straightforward to install with two people—one person to hold the strip up and another to peel off the backing and place the strand—but the adhesive is strong and won’t go anywhere until you remove it.
The strip has a lot of writing, making it unattractive when the lights are off, so you may only want to use this option in concealed locations.
The Kasa Smart Multicolor Light Strip offers incredible functionality. The 16-foot strand has 50 customizable color zones that you can set to 16 million colors. Thanks to the strip’s built-in integrated circuit chip, the zones can be controlled separately, creating fun custom patterns.
The Kasa app comes programmed with color effects like rainbow and candy cane, but you can also create your designs through the color-painting function. The app even includes an energy-tracking tab showing how much electricity the lights use.
These Kasa lights are easy to sync up with Alexa, Google Assistant, or Samsung SmartThings—no hub needed. However, one downside of the KL420L5 is that it can’t be connected or spliced to increase the strand’s length, so you have a maximum length of 16.4 feet to work with.
Read our review of the Kasa Smart Multicolor Light Strip.
Works with Alexa and Google Assistant
The Govee Glide RGBIC Wall Light uses adhesive for installation and displays a lovely range of colors, but it's a different take on a light strip. The 7-piece gadget snaps together to create a thick light bar ideal for gaming and watching movies.
It uses Govee's RGBIC technology, which enables it to display multiple colors simultaneously in a neat "flowing" effect.
While it took some elbow grease to lock the pieces, that minor frustration was soon forgotten after watching the strip transform into an immersive lighting experience. Music sync mode can be used on any device with the Govee app or a built-in mic to listen to nearby sounds and create a reactive light show.
The wall light connects over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. It also responds well to voice control with Alexa and Google Assistant to adjust the colors, brightness levels, scene modes, and power.
The wall light comes with six straight pieces and one angled corner piece. It has 19 lighting segments that can display up to 57 vibrant colors at once.
One downside is the light's limited configuration options. The positioning of the power cord and the fact that you can’t connect multiple wall lights restrict your options.
Works with Alexa and Google Assistant
Great for gaming and watching movies
Can be hard to assemble
The Cync LED Light Strip is an improvement over the previous version, which required a smart bridge for features like smart assistant integration or remote access away from home.
Now, you can use hands-free voice control with Alexa or Google Assistant (but not Siri) to adjust the brightness to a certain percentage, change the color or scene, and power the lights on/off without needing additional devices.
The strip works with extenders for additional length. At just 800 lumens, it’s on the lower end of the brightness scale, but it does a fine job of illuminating a dark room at full brightness.
We also like that the Cync app sends email account notifications if someone attempts to log into your account, which helps keep your account secure.
In the app, you can choose from a wheel full of colors and white light settings like cool white, warm white, and sunset. Scenes and schedules are available in the app, but no preset lighting features, color zones, or home entertainment integrations exist.
Works with Alexa and Google Assistant
Email account verification for new logins
The Wyze Light Strip doesn't have as many bells and whistles as other of the best LED light strips in our guide, but as we’ve come to expect from Wyze, it does have some cool features at a relatively low price point.
The LED strip light works with Alexa and Google Assistant, comes with 16 million color options (including RGB and tuneable whites), and can sync to the beat of a song or a movie playing nearby. The digital setup and physical installation are painless and should only take a few minutes. With features like remote control and timers, the Wyze app makes it easy to manage the LED light strip from anywhere. The app also includes fun, useful extras like Sleep Routines (to simulate sunrise/sunset for a more leisurely wake-up), Vacation Mode (randomly turns lights on/off to give the appearance you’re home), and Sun Match (mimics the natural sunlight).
The RGB colors are vibrant and look great, but the “white” color gives off a noticeable blue hue compared to others. You can control the power, brightness, and colors using voice commands from Alexa or Google Assistant (there's no Siri support).
However, you’ll need the Wyze app to activate preset lighting scenes. Additionally, the Wyze Light Strip can only display one color at a time instead of multiple colors simultaneously. The strips are trimmable but cannot be extended. The strip is flexible and easy for outlining your TV or lining baseboards.
Works with Alexa and Google Assistant
We put each light strip through in-depth, hands-on tests to fully understand each one’s capabilities, features, and downsides. We also looked for necessary app security features like two-factor authentication.
We set the lights up in various indoor locations throughout our testers home, testing to see which ones work the best in low light, offer the best connectivity, and integrate with smart assistants for easy control. We also tested the companion apps on iOS and Android to get a feel for their connectivity, ease of use, and features.
LED strips are a versatile lighting option that can be added anywhere inside your house. They are often seen in home theater setups, but the bendable, sticky lights are a quick and easy way to brighten up the dark spots in your home and add accent lighting. There are a few things to consider before you purchase LED strip lights.
When purchasing smart LED strip lights for your home, check to see whether they require a hub. Unless you already have a compatible smart home hub, we recommend choosing a smart strip light that doesn’t require you to purchase another device.
It is also essential to select a strip light that easily integrates with your existing smart home environment. We tested models that work with Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. However, only some of these strip lights are compatible with all three popular smart assistants.
While most of the lights we tested connect over Wi-Fi, some use only Bluetooth, and others can use either. We found Bluetooth connections unreliable and slow, so we recommend selecting a strip light with Wi-Fi.
The amount of light a bulb produces is measured in lumens—the more lumens, the more brightness. Many of the light strips we tested had adjustable brightness to best suit the space in which they were used. However, even one of the sets on the lower end of brightness, the Cync LED Light Strip, with 800 lumens, could light a dark room.
Most LED strip lights can be cut down or extended with additional light strip sections. However, not all of the lights are as customizable. Think strategically about where you need extra lighting, then measure the area. During testing, we installed strip lights around TVs and mirrors, along baseboards and door trim, on bookcases and office desks, and under kitchen cabinets.
Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time. The product experts at Reviewed have all your shopping needs covered. Follow Reviewed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or Flipboard for the latest deals, product reviews, and more.
Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.
The product experts at Reviewed have all your shopping needs covered. Follow Reviewed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or Flipboard for the latest deals, product reviews, and more.
Camryn Rabideau is a full-time freelance writer and product tester with eight years of experience. She's been lucky enough to test hundreds of products firsthand, and her specialties include bedding and pet products, which often require help from her two dogs, three cats, and flock of rambunctious chickens.
Rachel Murphy is Reviewed's home editor. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Central Florida. Prior to joining the team, she worked as a freelance writer for publications like Insider and Mashable, and as an associate editorial producer for Good Morning America. Aside from smart home tech, her interests include food, travel, parenting, and home renovation. You can usually find her sipping on coffee at any time of the day.
Jill Schildhouse is a valued contributor to the Reviewed family of sites.
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