Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsDon't hit that switch, no persistence of memory
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2021
Edit: after about a week this bulb quit responding to Alexa. It no longer responds and will not reset. I am considering it broken and will not go through the trouble of returning this one. Not recommended.
It took hours of work, including calls to Amazon and Sengled support and one returned and replaced item to get to a point where we could use this lightbulb. There are some things I learned along the way that may help you if you run into problems with your bulb. The first thing I learned is that the technological implementation of this bulb is not ready for primetime. You can ONLY configure and use this bulb through the Amazon Alexa app. It operates via bluetooth but no device other than an Alexa Echo can see it. I first tried setting our bulb up out on our patio. There is an Echo Studio out there that I intended to pair with the bulb. No matter what I did, the Studio would not successfully find the bulb during the pairing operation. I ended up having to do a reset on the Studio. Then and only then, after the Studio had set itself back up again, did it find the Sengled bulb. It controlled it a few times then the bulb quit responding. Gah! I was at the point where I was wondering if I were dealing with an interference issue? Perhaps my WiFi mesh system was gooning the pairing? I do have a fairly powerful WiFi mesh setup that I have oriented in order to have strong signal out there. Whatever. I decided to return that bulb and replace it from Amazon, figuring I might be dealing with a defective unit. Amazon did replace the bulb promptly but when I got the new one it did exactly the same thing. Echo would not discover the device when I ran the discovery routine.
As a sidenote: I had support people telling me I needed to download the Sengled app and connect accounts. Complete waste of time. You do not require a Sengled account. The Sengled app will not connect with these specific bulbs at the time this review is written. The only means to discover and connect to this model bulb is via Alexa. No account linking or app installation is required.
I decided to get the bulb away from my highest-strength mesh nodes and moved it back into another room in our house. I had an unused Echo dot sitting around so I plugged it in in our bedroom. As recommended I ran a firmware update routine on that Dot and then did the pairing operation with the bulb. It took awhile but I finally got it paired. It was then that I discovered what might have been part of my problems out on the patio. If ANYTHING interrupts power to the bulb: somebody flicks the wall switch, somebody flips the lamp switch, power goes out momentarily, anything, then the pairing between the Echo and the device is lost and will not return. Once paired, the bulb must have constant power applied to the base whether you have the bulb commanded to be on or off. If somebody inadvertently flips the wall switch the bulb will no longer respond to Alexa. The only way to fix it is to do a new "Discover Devices" routine. Tell Alexa to discover devices, wait til the routine starts, then flip the wall switch on and off 5 full times. Each on cycle must be less than a second or the pairing will fail. After 5 times off and on, turn the bulb on. You will know if you were successful because the lamp will go into a blink/dim routine. You must do this routine WHILE Alexa is searching for devices. If you time it right, Alexa will tell you it "did not find any new devices." That is because Alexa already knows about the bulb. But the re-pairing operation will put the Echo and the Sengled back into communication. You can test this by commanding Alexa to turn the bulb off or on.
Having to do this is very inconvenient. If somebody inadvertently flips a wall switch on the bulb so that it loses power, Alexa should be able to run its own routine to re-pair independently once power is restored. It does not. For this reason I cannot recommend anyone get this bulb now. It needs more work on the part of Sengled and Amazon to get the pairing and operation into some sort of usable state that is robust and fault-tolerant. At this point it is not so I cannot recommend the Sengled bulb.