If you use Alexa to control your smart home, these are the lights you want

The ecosystem of smart home devices that work with Amazon's Alexa smart voice assistant is vast, and one of the most popular categories of smart home products is smart lighting. With so many options out there, how are you supposed to know which ones work well, or which ones work well with Alexa? My top choice is the Philips Hue White Ambiance Bulb , because it is an industry-leading product, has a massive ecosystem of other Hue products it will work with, and it plays well with Alexa.

Best Overall: Philips Hue White Ambiance Bulb

Chance are that when you think about smart lights, the brand that comes to mind first is Philips Hue. The product line was introduced way back in 2012 and has arguably maintained its status as the dominant brand in the smart lighting space to this day.

Even though Philips Hue makes a lot of different smart lighting devices like bulbs, light strips, and even lamps, I wanted to focus on an easy entry point into this rather expansive ecosystem. The Philips Hue White Ambiance A19 Bulb is one that you can pick up for a reasonable price (or get it in a bundle), and you can put it pretty much anywhere in your home. This particular bulb has over 50,000 shades of white light that you can adjust, and it can be programmed to come on gradually while you awake or go to sleep. That's quite a bit of flexibility for a plain white bulb!

The one minor downside to Philips Hue products is that they require a hub or bridge device to communicate with a smart assistant like Alexa. This has been the case since the beginning of the product line, and it doesn't seem like any changes are coming. The benefit of having the Philips Hue Smart Hub is that you can use other smart assistants (like Siri or Google Assistant) to work with the Hue lights. Plus, you can connect up to 80 Hue light devices together to be controlled via the hub and your smart assistant. Not a bad tradeoff, especially since you can often find bundles with Hue lights and the Hue Smart Hub.

Pros:

Great bulb from an industry leader
Extensive ecosystem of Hue products
You can connect up to 80 Hue lights with the Philips Hue Smart Hub

Cons:

As nice as the ecosystem is, it kind of sucks to have to use a hub
Philips Hue bulbs are more expensive than other options

Best Overall

Philips Hue White Ambiance Bulb

$25 at Amazon

$25 at Best Buy

Industry leader

These industry-leading bulbs are a great investment to begin your smart home lighting projects.

Best Value: Wyze Bulb

If you're just getting started with smart lighting and want to dip your toes in the water with an easy-to-use, inexpensive bulb that is pretty much just plug and play, then I recommend you take a look at the Wyze Bulb. Wyze is a smart device company that has made a name for itself by providing quality products at...