We've seen smart lightbulbs before, but who would have thought we'd see them playing music too? That's exactly what Sengled's Pulse Bluetooth-equipped lightbulbs do, which while sound ridiculous, could prove to be a charming, interesting set with some practical uses around the house. The Sengled Pulse promises to not only light up your room, but shower it with music too, all via built-in JBL speakers - but is the starter kit any good? We popped a pair of speaker-bulbs into our living room to find out.
The good
While it might sound like overkill, stuffing a speaker into a lightbulb is actually pretty smart, and that's exactly what Sengled has done with its Pulse starter kit - a duo of lightbulbs (with one denoted as the master, the other as a satellite) that screw into your fittings and beam out music and light. The Bluetooth-equipped bulbs pair up with your phone, and an accompanying iOS and Android app lets you fiddle around with them too, from dimming the bulbs themselves to adjusting the audio, but it pretty much just works like your standard Bluetooth speaker - pair up and you're done.
The bulbs themselves are comically oversized, and you may have a bit of trouble finding somewhere to actually screw them into - but if your fittings can take them, simply screwing the bulb in and hitting the light switch is all you need to do to get started, and you can start to pair up the bulb with your phone and the app right away. That means no messy wires and no power sockets used up, which is pretty handy.
Each bulb outputs 600 lumens of brightness giving you plenty of light, and they both contain a 1.75-inch, 13-watt JBL loudspeaker that sounds pretty good. While it won't completely fill a large room with sound depending on the size and shape of your room, the actual quality of the audio is great with clear tones, decent bass and great mids - not bad for a speaker inside of a lightbulb.
The app itself is also rather simple, although you don't necessarily need to use it. Without the app, you won't be able to fine-tune the audio (and set the pair to play either left or right channels separately, or together), or adjust the brightness of the bulb, but it's well worth downloading as it's incredibly simple and lets you get going right away. The master bulb can also link up with up to seven other satellite bulbs, providing even more light and music around your house, but you may be limited by Bluetooth range.
The bad
When you cram a speaker inside of a light bulb, the biggest issue is going to be size: you might not even be able to fit the bulbs into your fittings. Aside from that, the other main issue we had with the Pulse bulbs is that the Bluetooth range leaves much to be desired. Even moving as little as 10 metres away from the bulbs, we noticed the audio quality start to dip before finally fizzing out, meaning you might want to stay near - or inside the room - when you're playing music from your phone.
The bottom line
While it might sound like a ridiculous gadget, we were thoroughly impressed with the Sengled Pulse lightbulbs. While they may not sport high-end audio like fully-fledged speaker systems, keeping your home audio out of sight and hidden away in your lightbulbs can be a handy and viable choice, and you don't have to bang nails in the wall to prop up any hanging speakers. The app is easy to use, and the sound quality itself is pretty great - for £149, the Pulse kit is well worth a look if you fancy a gizmo that's a little bit odd, but secretly great.
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