C by GE Sol - Review 2022 - Feldman Befterver

We've seen plenty of smart light bulbs and lamps, only until now none of them could serve equally a replacement for your Amazon Echo. The center-catching C by GE Sol is a smart lamp with an LED light band that goes from cool to warm white light. It also has Amazon's Alexa built in, and then you lot tin can issue vocalism commands through information technology merely like you can with your Echo. At $199.99 its expensive for what'due south essentially an Echo Dot built into a lamp, simply it could brand for an bonny addition to a nightstand or side table in a room that doesn't take an Echo in it.

Blueprint and Features

The lamp part of the Sol is a sixty-watt-equivalent circumvolve on a gray pedestal. My married man dislocated it for a Dyson fan at first glance, while my daughter's initial instinct was to put her head through it and shout howdy.

Y'all can connect to the lamp using GE's free app for Amazon and iOS devices to command color temperatures and other settings. It also has Amazon'due south Alexa built in, so it can reply questions, prepare timers and alarms, and command smart abode devices that piece of work with the Echo. It doesn't offer voice calling similar the Echo devices do, and it can't play music from services like Pandora or Spotify. It does support music from Amazon, iHeartRadio, and iTunes, nonetheless, and tin access Alexa's xx,000-plus skills.

There are two light rings. The outside 1 runs through five versions of white lite from cool to a warm that's so warm it's orange. There is a noticeable hum yous tin hear from about a foot away on some of the settings, including my favorite, warm white.

The inner ring lights up brilliant blue when yous call on Alexa and when a timer is set; you tin can watch the countdown using the band of blue light. It also communicates the time if you lot accept it set to clock mode, in which bluish light represents the hour hand and the infinitesimal is shown in scarlet. I found it tough to figure out the time, although that was partly due to a glitch in the beta software my device was running, which GE says should be fixed now.

The Sol tin can exist programmed to wake you upwardly in the morning with a white, brilliant low-cal at a specific time, and can also exist programmed for bedtime. Other suggested lighting modes listed in the app include Movie Time and Welcome Habitation. When setting a schedule, yous should program the scene first and and then note when you'd similar to use information technology. Because the light responds to voice commands, you're more probable to utilise settings like Moving-picture show Time by shouting out every bit needed as opposed to programming ahead of time.

You can also command the light, the book, and ready a privacy mode using a touch interface on the base of the lamp. It's not particularly intuitive, merely after reading the instructions it'south not difficult to get the hang of. You can plow the light on and off and control the effulgence, but you can't control the color temperature. You demand to exercise that through Alexa commands or the app.

Setup and Performance

GE Sol Setting upwardly the light requires several steps. Yous have to install the app from GE, link the lamp to Alexa using your Amazon business relationship, then enable an Alexa skill. From there, you need to run a device discovery. It's non different than connecting most connected devices, only the app doesn't offer any help once you've been shifted over to link your Amazon account.

Surprisingly for a lamp designed for a nighstand or side tabular array, the Sol doesn't give off much light. Even on the brightest and coolest white setting it was hard to read a magazine from two anxiety away while testing. Using the warmer settings made it even more difficult. Warm lite might be meliorate for helping yous go to sleep, merely it certainly doesn't cut it for reading in bed.

The schedules worked and were easy to gear up (aside from the time zone consequence due to the beta app that woke me upward at 5:37 in the morning time i day). Waking up to a absurd bright light is remarkably effective at chasing abroad tiredness.

Voice command allows for a wide range of capabilities, such as setting a scene, changing the color temperature, and dimming or brightening the light. In a dark room the clock mode was besides bright for me, as was the glowing ruby light you can turn on to see if the mic is turned off. Besides, in a dark room, if yous talk to Alexa and the blue inner ring lights, it's very brilliant.

Talking to Alexa requires a little more than volume or closeness than a traditional Echo, but it works well. In improver to being able to control any Alexa-enabled home automation devices, you can also utilise the Sol to command any standalone C past GE bulbs in your home.

Sound quality is roughly equivalent to an Echo Dot. Information technology's lacking in bass, but not overly tinny or distorted. An inexpensive Bluetooth speaker like the $fifty JBL Prune 2 offers meliorate sound quality.

Conclusions

The C by GE Sol is a unique device. The Alexa portion performs well, only the dimness of the calorie-free makes information technology a hard sell as a lamp, unless you lot're looking for something architectural and interesting that won't throw much light. I wanted to use it every bit a bedside tabular array lamp, simply information technology was really difficult to read next to it at night. The bright lite to wake you upwards is cracking, though. I also actually similar the expect of the lamp, although I realize that it's not for everyone. If you're into the blueprint and want to add together Alexa to a room that doesn't have information technology, yous'll probably be happy with the Sol. Otherwise y'all can get much better sound quality with an Echo, or salve a lot of coin with an Echo Dot and a Philips Hue White.