Top pick smart string light: Govee Outdoor String Lights 2
Top pick
Compatibility: Amazon Alexa, Google Home
Who this is for: String lights are an excellent accompaniment to patios, porches, and any other outdoor areas in need of a little extra ambience. Use them year-round on a set schedule so your backyard glows while you grill, sit by the fire pit, or simply enjoy the view of your very own, customizable twinkle lights.
Most models are dimmable and offer adjustable white-light color-temperature controls so you can set just the right mood for the occasion. Some models, such as our pick, add a color-changing feature to the mix so you can create festive combinations for the holidays and other gatherings.
Why it’s a pick: The Govee Outdoor String Lights 2 offer more lights than the competition, for less money. Available in 48-, 96-, and 144-foot strands, these smart lights are a great choice if you have a lot of ground to cover. They also feature a traditional bulb shape if you prefer the classic string-light style. The Govee app offers customizable white-light color temperature, color-changing capabilities, and a range of themes and Scenes, along with more sophisticated settings. Those advanced features and options may be overwhelming for some people, but you can ignore them and still get satisfying results with the entry-level functions.
Another good option: The LIFX Outdoor String Lights, with a modern, cylindrical shape, offer a fresh take on string lights. The app is nicely organized and easy to use, from the initial setup to the highly varied selection of adjustable white-light and color-changing options. You’ll also find an assortment of light presets ranging from holiday and sports-team colors to nature-inspired Scenes. Compared with the Govee lights, these LIFX lights are expensive, but each of the 12 lights in this 24-foot strand has three different zones, so you can create lots of nuance with color, even within the same bulb. These string lights work with Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings.
Another good option: The GE Cync Dynamic Effects Smart Cafe Lights offer a range of dynamic presets as well as customizable settings for pretty much any color combination you might want. And I liked that the clear glass spiral filaments produce an attractive, vintage aesthetic. Dim the lights to 25% on the Candle Light setting for a subtle warm wash of light, bring them to full brightness with the Cool White setting for better visibility during a backyard barbecue — or try one of the presets like Rainbow, Volcanic, or Aurora just for fun.
Top pick smart spotlight: Govee Outdoor Spot Lights
Top pick
Compatibility: Amazon Alexa, Google Home
Who this is for: Spotlights project focused beams of light on your home or around your yard to add a dash of flair to landscaping. They include a ground spike for installation in your yard or garden, so they’re not ideal if all you have is a concrete patio. You can leave them up year-round, and during holidays or other festivities use the app to select more colorful and dramatic colors and modes. They can also be set to illuminate dark areas around your property as a low-level security measure.
Spotlights are often sold in multipacks, which makes it easier for you to cover more ground, literally. They typically come with adjustable white-light and color-changing functionality, so you can create pretty much any mood to suit the moment. Smart features such as scheduling and Scenes, among others, make it easy to automate when, and to what color and level of brightness, your lights turn on.
Why it’s a pick: The Govee Outdoor Spot Lights offer a bright, 500-lumen output per light at a good price. The Govee app gives you adjustable white-light color temperature, the full color wheel of RGB options, and tons of features and settings to explore. Because there are so many options, the app can seem confusing or just overdone at times. (Is anyone looking for a preset color gradient called “Anger”? I was intrigued but, alas, it turns out in the world of smart lighting this particular theme just means turning from fuchsia pink to deep red.) But these lights are easy to set up, they work well, and it’s no problem to set schedules, sync the lights to music, and much more.
Top pick smart path light: Eufy Outdoor Pathway Lights
Top pick
Compatibility: Amazon Alexa, Google Home
Who this is for: Path lights add a polished look to a walkway and can improve safety on uneven or poorly lit pavement. Some path lights are equipped with light and motion sensors that turn the light on when it’s dark out and someone approaches them. Smart models also send an alert to your phone when the sensors detect activity, letting you know that someone (or something) is there. You can also adjust the sensitivity of the sensors to limit your motion alerts to bigger things, such as people rather than, say, the neighbor’s cat (unless it’s a really big cat).
Other models rely on power cords to operate, which allows them to run continuously if you’d rather schedule your lights to turn on and off at set times.
Why it’s a pick: Unlike our previous pick, Ring Solar Pathlight, Eufy Outdoor Pathway Lights plug into an outlet and so provide the option of continuous light rather than being motion-activated, so you never have to worry about recharging or changing batteries. It also means you’ll need to tuck away the power cord among your landscaping so it isn’t an eyesore (and so you don’t trash it with a mower or weedwhacker). The Eufy app is a little more complex than I’d like and can be confusing to navigate, but it offers Scheduling and a range of control options, like the ability to cycle through colors. The lights also work with Amazon Alexa and Google Home if you want to integrate your path lights into your broader smart-home setup.
Top pick smart rope light: LIFX Outdoor Neon Flex
Top pick
Compatibility: Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, Matter, Samsung SmartThings
Who this is for: Smart rope lights are ruggedized versions of their indoor cousins, strip lights. Instead of flexible tape, these thick, weatherproof tubes house a string of color-changing LEDs. Beyond their white-light and color-shifting abilities, rope lights are versatile due to their flexible design, which you can form into pretty much any shape you want. You might attach one under a porch railing to give your home a bold accent of color, or install one around the patio to better define it from the rest of your yard. Curve it around the base of a tree for a fun, festive holiday accent. Line your steps to provide better visibility.
Why it’s a pick: The LIFX Outdoor Neon Flex is a powerful rope light with an impressive white-light color-temperature range of 1,500 K to 9,000 K — that’s basically dim candlelight up to beaming, stadium-like bright white. At 100% brightness, it emitted more light than the other model we tested. The colors were also deeply saturated and intense, so this model is a great option for anyone craving bold color. (Fortunately, its dimming capability works well too, if you want to tone it down a bit.) The LIFX app is well designed and pleasant to use, allowing for easy control of lighting devices individually or grouped by room. And because the Flex rope light supports the wireless standard Matter over Wi-Fi, it works with all of the major smart-home platforms.
Another good option: The Philips Hue Lightstrip Outdoor offers a lot of the same features as the LIFX rope light, but its colors weren’t quite as bold in our tests, and its white-light color temperature has a slimmer range, from 2,000 K to 6,500 K. Hue lights also require the use of a Philips Hue Bridge, which makes them a pricier purchase. But the Hue Bridge uses Zigbee wireless, which has a far greater range than Wi-Fi, so this rope light may be a better option for anyone who has weak wireless connectivity outside.
Another good option: The dimmable, color-changing EcoSmart Outdoor Rope Light Powered by Hubspace is an excellent, affordable alternative to the other two picks. You can schedule this bendy outdoor-rated light to turn on and off, adjust the color (or the color temperature), and access other features in the Hubspace app (a universal app compatible with various smart home products sold at Home Depot). This smart rope light also works with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. I had trouble connecting these EcoSmart lights to Wi-Fi initially when just 20 feet away from my router, so I wouldn’t recommend them if you have limited Wi-Fi outdoors.
Top pick smart fixture light: LIFX 50-foot Supercolor Permanent Outdoor Smart Lights
Top pick
Compatibility: Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings
Who this is for: Permanent smart lighting is intended for year-round use. Typically installed along rooflines, these small lights are dimmable, with adjustable color temperature and color-changing capabilities. The best models give you maximum flexibility to change up the vibe depending on the time of year, holiday, or other special event. That way, you can set your lights to a warm white light at 25% brightness to add an attractive light feature around your home or garden, without annoying the neighbors with glare. And you have the option to mix things up in an instant for special occasions, say vibrant red and green for Christmas, red, white, and blue for Fourth of July — and deep bloody red for Shark Week, naturally.
Why it’s a pick: The LIFX 50-foot SuperColor Permanent Outdoor Smart Lights are excellent and offer adjustment between white light and various colors. Setup and configuration in the LIFX app is straightforward, but they’re also Matter-enabled, so you can connect these lights to any (or all!) of the major smart-home platforms so you have the option to control many or all your devices in one app.
At the most basic but useful you can set a recurring schedule that turns these versatile lights on in the evening and off before sunrise. But there’s plenty of options for customizing as you like, from extra-bright cool-toned white light (LIFX says these lights have 90 lumens each, and they do look notably brighter than our runner-up option, below) to a more subtle warm-toned light — and any combination of colors you so desire thanks to its customizable zones.
I tested the 50-foot pack with 30 lights, but you can scale up to as much as 200 feet with 120 lights.
Another good option: The Hampton Bay Permanent Outdoor Lights Powered by Hubspace may not be as bright as our top pick, but the same 50-foot strand of 30 lights costs significantly less. Like the LIFX lights, these smart permanent lights deliver dimmable, adjustable white light, as well as customizable color-changing capabilities. They support Amazon Alexa and Google Home so you can control your lights via a third-party smart-home app and ask your smart speaker or smart display to turn off the lights for you. You can also extend these strands up from 50 feet to 100 feet.
Top pick smart flood light: GE Cync Full Color DirectConnect Outdoor Smart Bulb
Top pick
Compatibility: Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings
Who this is for: Flood lights (aka PAR38 bulbs) provide focused, directional light around the perimeter of your home. They’re especially useful for providing additional security in areas that don’t otherwise get much light. Many homes have designated spots for flood lights high up near the roofline to cast bright light over a larger area. Smart flood lights offer additional features, like scheduling, optional pairing with outdoor-rated motion sensors, adjustable color temperature, and the ability to change colors.
Why it’s a pick: The GE Cync Full Color DirectConnect Outdoor Smart Bulb is a bright, Matter-enabled PAR38 bulb with a wide variety of useful features. I created a schedule so the light turns on and off at a set time every day and adjusted the bulb’s brightness and its color temperature from bright and cool to a more pleasant warm white (should you feel especially jazzy you can go with colors instead, but that wasn’t my style). Just keep in mind that this bulb works over Wi-Fi, so be sure your network extends to wherever you plan to install the lights ahead of time to ensure a reliable connection.
This article was edited by Jon Chase and Grant Clauser.
