Belkin WeMo LED Lighting Kit Takes On Hue

Belkin has added to its growing WeMo smart home system with a new LED lightbulb, allowing for remote control of lighting around the home or office from an Android or iOS app. The new bulbs, which come in a starter pack with the WeMo Link that plugs into a spare power socket and bridges the home network with WeMo, are standard screw-fit, and the equivalent of 60W traditional incandescent bulbs.

Each bulb puts out 3,000 lumens, Belkin says, and is no larger than those traditional bulbs either, which should make straight swaps with your existing lamps more straightforward.

There's no multi-color option, as Philips has on its hue system, but Belkin has made the bulbs fully dimmable. They can also be set to a "vacation mode" which automatically lights them up in patterns to mimic an occupied home.

Another mode turns the bulbs into nightlights of sorts, automatically dimming out as you go to sleep. All of the features can be controlled from the WeMo app, though given the company's other peripherals like the Motion Detector and Remote Switch can be integrated into IFTTT, we wouldn't be surprised to see the bulbs follow suit.

Unfortunately, as we've seen with other smart bulbs systems – like the Lumen TL800 Bluetooth bulb we reviewed recently – none of this flexibility comes cheap. The starter kit, with two bulbs and the bridge, is $129, then subsequent bulbs are $39 apiece (the system can support up to fifty). That's likely to put it out of the reach of all but the most enthusiastic smart home DIYer.