i replaced yeelight for tapo L535E multi color light bulb.

it was an improvement because

1. integrate to the wifi network is MUCH MUCH more reliable. Whereas yeelight it was buggy as hell and worked less than half the time.

2. tapo had stats for power usage, whereas yeelight didn't.

3. tapo supports matters platform. i didn't test it because the default tapo app worked fine for me. But if you want to use with matter platform/devices e.g. samsung, you can if you want to.



price wise it was about rm50. for an older model on sale it was around rm35 or something. But the thing is, the life for the older model (L530E) is far less than the newer one, so i didn't mind paying a bit extra (not to mention it can also go much brighter).


so what can be done with the new smart light bulb?

scheduling. So you can auto turn on and off. And when you are away from home, there is a toggle to off the lights.

you can also adjust the lighting brightness to dim or have higher brightness.

There is even a setting to set brightness to auto which matches with the outdoor brightness throughout the day.

Also rather than just sudden on/off, there is a fade on/off which supposedly reduces eye strain when transitioning between on/off state.

there are themes if you want to do disco or whatever (i don't particularly use or care about that, but it's there).



I've been using smart led light bulbs for few years now, i can totally recommend it to others. Rather than playing around with physical switches, just use your smartphone to control it. Better, it has automation which makes life more convenient. We already know that led lighting uses little power, so maybe the power consumption stats is not needed, but still, it's nice to have.

I noted that the yeelight was slightly more bigger than the tapo, also it was far more heavier than the tapo (not sure why though). Lighting performance i felt the tapo was fine for me. One thing i will give yeelight, i do think it can dim much lower than the tapo. That said, i think the lowest dim for tapo was sufficiently low for me. Overall i don't feel yeelight is worth it mostly due to how unreliable it's software is. The only thing good about yeelight was it's lighting performance, but everything else sucked.


https://www.reddit.com/r/TpLink/comments/1g...l535e_vs_l530e/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tapo/comments/1jh3..._is_too_bright/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tapo/comments/1l20...ht_bulb_owners/





This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Oct 7 2025, 05:22 AM