WEBVTT

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so the holidays are here and that means it's time for the usual trappings of the

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christmas season excess spending excess

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amount of eggnog and excess decorative lighting now for many

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people this might just mean grabbing some lights from that box in the attic

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throwing them into an outlet and draping them over something but that isn't

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exactly very fun or interesting and maybe that's why we've seen so many

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smart christmas lights hit the market in the last couple of years

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but are the options out there good enough to turn your average tech heads

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house into a veritable santa's workshop that you can control in the palm of your

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hand well it's time to find out

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after we thank rosewill for sponsoring this video check out their neon k85

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gaming keyboard with mechanical switches and m53 gaming mouse with up to 4000 dpi

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at the links below

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so we're going to be looking at a few different options for your high tech

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holiday setup with varying feature sets but all four of them seem to have one

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simple idea as an integral part of their

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design philosophies having to continually unplug and re-plug

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your lights every night is a massive pain

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especially after going to all the trouble of setting them up in the first

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place especially if your decorating style reminds the neighbors of clark

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griswold so just how convenient then did our

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contenders make our experience first up let's have a look at the

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twinkly system from italian concern led

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works and even though the sales rep might give you a confused look if you

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walk into the store and ask for twinkly lights it did actually come to us on a

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very handsome looking not to mention well labeled box

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twinkly more than any of the other products in this video seems designed

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specifically with christmas trees in mind which is cool because the app will

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connect to your phone's camera and will actually map where each individual led

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bulb is on the tree after you set them up you'll be able to

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see this map on your screen so that you can address each light individually for

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granular control allowing you to draw

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custom effects onto the tree unfortunately the app's a little finicky

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it couldn't find the light set way too often and the system was a bit slow to

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respond at times so the ability to create these custom effects is cool but

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it's not very intuitive and the setup was kind of a pain as it didn't specify

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that you need to be on the 2.4 gigahertz band when connecting it to your home

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network you could use it on the five gigahertz band but only after it was up and

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running with all that said the lights themselves look great they're plenty

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bright and the effects really helped bring john's we're actually at john's

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house right now john's tree to life they are a bit pricey at 110 dollars for a

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105 light starter set and that gets even

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worse because i would definitely consider getting an extension if you

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really want full coverage of your tree this one actually needed a second set of

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plain old regular lights to complete the look and at that price point i would

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expect better app implementation but overall this one's not a bad buy at all

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on the subject of underwhelming app support let's take a look at the lumen

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play from s4 lights next unlike twinkly

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this one connects via bluetooth 4.0 so

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you'll need to make sure your phone is compatible and even then the app might

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still cause problems so it was totally non-responsive on a nexus 6p running

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Android 8.0 oreo although we did get it working on devices using Android 7 or

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iOS 11. with all that said any app that

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hasn't been updated in a while isn't a good sign

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physically though the lights themselves felt heavy duty and well made and i

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wouldn't worry about putting them outside in the elements but the flip

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side is this did make them a little bit unwieldy and cumbersome for indoor use

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especially with the three bulky modules that we needed for just

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the 36 lights that you see in the kitchen here which i imagine would make

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them pretty annoying to try to put on a tree

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the effects that you can select look all right though you can create your own

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maybe because when we tried certain patterns

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of animations ended up throwing random colors into our setup

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so while the lights themselves aren't bad the very buggy app experience earns the

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lumen play a pass from us at 160 dollars

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for 36 lights though the set your lights

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to music feature actually did work nearly flawlessly as long as you're

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playing something from your phone's local storage that isn't drm protected

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so that's good if you want to stare at something other than a yule log while

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you listen to christmas carols speaking of yule logs there's one

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product family with so many lighting options i'm surprised they haven't

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released a smart yule log philips hue which you've probably seen

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on display at your local big box store the cool thing about this is that they

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can all be controlled by this little wi-fi puck thing called the bridge which

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can connect to up to 50 different lights

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so you'll probably only need one we have a

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pair of hue light strips which we tried running behind some pcs and behind this

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couch for a bit of christmas themed bias lighting as well as two of the area

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effect hue goes no relation to the french novelist philips hue was easily

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the most polished experience with a slick intuitive app interface with very

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low latency and that responsiveness is exactly what you want when you're

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dealing with an elaborate lighting setup also remote access over the internet was

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easy to set up and worked like a charm the go lights aren't super bright but

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they're powerful enough to light up a corner and they have cool features like

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three hours of battery life if you want to move them around or position them

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somewhere temporarily during a christmas party and the ability to tilt them up on

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this little integrated stand to aim them at your wall phillips does offer another

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area effect light called the bloom which is slightly more powerful but we

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couldn't get our hands on that one for this video the light strips on the other

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hand get extremely bright if you just

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set them to emit white light and are actually like i'd say they're bright

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enough to really change how your workspace feels unfortunately you can

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only set them to one color through the native app even if you have two strips

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joined together like we did like the other options hue is extremely

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customizable within the app but this is cool it also features a large

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number of third-party apps with pre-loaded color profiles including

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christmas themed one this setup is a bit pricey including 60 bucks

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just for the control bridge but having a very pro feeling experience that works

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almost without a hitch makes it at least

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somewhat easier to justify but maybe even if you could afford it it's

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possible that you already have like 10 000 bulbs worth of existing dumb

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christmas lights and just don't see the point of tossing them all in the garbage

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well if that sounds like you you might be interested in something like the wemo

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from belkin which isn't really a lighting product at all instead wemo

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makes smart outlets that plug into your existing ones

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now although they won't suddenly make the el cheapo lights that you got at the

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dollar store customizable and super fancy they will at least enable control

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from your phone and a light schedule randomizer in case you're leaving for

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the holidays and you want to deter any grinches that are roaming around we

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weren't huge fans of how bulky the plugs

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are but that was really the only complaint setup

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wasn't hard although again you'll need to use the 2.4 gigahertz band initially

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and then you can control it over 5 gigahertz later and remote access over

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the internet is enabled by default and worked just fine the app interface is no

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nonsense and the plug itself actually gives off an extremely satisfying

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audible click when you turn your lights on and

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well that's on but not off off so you don't have to wonder whether it worked

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the fancier insight switch will also give you a one touch report on power

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consumption and if you enter how much your power company charges you it'll even tell you

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exactly how much you're spending on keeping your house looking like one of

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those shopping mall santa displays the good news is that while you don't

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get any actual lights they are a cheaper

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option compared to the other ones we've looked at at 80 bucks for two switches

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if you already own lights now to be clear none of the products

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we've looked at here are really geared towards those folks who want to do like

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crazy custom lighting setups that require a pc or a raspberry pi to drive

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them not to mention more extensive programming

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but with that said hue does have a public API if you are into that sort of

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thing however from what we've seen for the main streamers out there there

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are plenty of options that while not perfect could add a little bit of

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fun techy christmas joy to your holiday setup if

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you choose the right one especially if your aunt's dancing santa

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claus just isn't cutting it this year

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speaking of not cutting it is your computer case not cutting it be quiet!

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just release their versatile dark base 700 midi tower and to celebrate they're

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having a contest it's called the dark bay 700 character builder you have to

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build and configure a pc through their site we'll have that linked below for a

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chance to win that system or one of eight dark base 700 cases the contest

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runs from now until november 29th and the winners will be announced by be

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quiet on december 1st so check it out at the link in the video description

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so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get

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subscribed maybe consider checking out where to buy some of the christmasy

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stuff that we featured in the video description also link down there we've

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got our merch store which oh i don't think we carry this horrible sweater anymore but the t-shirt i'm wearing

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under it we've got that in our merch store and we've also got a link to our community forum