Sengled Boost

I Like The Idea, Not So Much The Result – I like to imagine the nerds at Sengled sitting around coming up with ideas - one said 'what about a smart bulb with a Wi-Fi repeater'. That's actually a pretty good idea as it turns out - often you will have lights where you don't have a power point, so to extend your Wi-Fi coverage this is a valid solution. Unfortunately, the end result hasn't been as good as the idea was.

One of the downsides of having a Wi-Fi repeater installed inside a light bulb is that you cannot have an external antenna, and I believe this is one of the biggest problems. It's not too hard to setup and connect to the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure, but the performance is just not up to spec - throughput is mediocre and latency is unacceptable. At the same time, the light output is below average. As if this is not enough, this bulb requires a standalone app to manage, and is not voice controllable with Google Home.

I did purchase the GU10 version which is quite small physically, however there are E27 screw and B22 twist options - maybe these have bigger internals and will perform better, but I'm just not sure.

I really could not recommend this product.