LED Strip lights are a versatile, energy efficient and customisable way to create beautiful lighting effects in your home. I’ve been using LED light strips as part of my smart home and they beautiful alternative to traditional overhead bulbs.
While there are lots of different LED light strips available in Australia, I’ve put together a list of what I believe are the best options based on quality, user experience and most importantly light quality.
The Best Smart LED Lights Strips
I’ve tried out a number of different LED light strips that are currently available in Australia. These are my top picks:
Philips Hue Light Strip
The best LED light strip you can currently buy in Australia is the Philips Hue Light Strip. I’ve used these LED strips in my own apartment over the last 5+ years and they’ve been fantastic.
Signifiy (the company that produces Philips LED products) makes one the highest quality LED chips on the market. A Philips Hue LED strip will last 15-17 years.
I like the Philips Hue ecosystem because I’ve found it to be the most reliable smart home lighting brand. In my current setup, I haven’t had a single connection issue (aka the dreaded “this device is not responding” message). While this is often dependent on your network, Philips Hue uses Zigbee which is a mesh networking protocol. This makes the entire setup more reliable. It doesn’t need an internet connection to work (like many cheaper alternatives). If you want a smart home lighting setup that just works, Philips Hue is the way to go.
Phillips Hue works across all smart home platforms. I recommend getting the Hue Bridge which will connect your lights into your smart home system like HomeKit. There are also a host of Hue accessories like remotes, buttons, motion sensors which can used to control your lighting.
The Philips Hue light strip has both Colour and White modes. The Hue colour brilliance has always been better than pretty every other smart bulb.
Like most light strips, you can cut the strip down to the correct size and there is a sticky adhesive on the back of the strip for easy installation.
Philips Hue Gradient Light Strip
Philips has launched an updated Gradient Light Strip. Unlike the regular LED light strip, this strip can display multiple colours at once.
The Philips Hue Gradient light strip also has a diffuser on top, this will create a more seamless blend of light.
This is an upgrade over the existing Philips Hue Light Strip however it is about twice as expensive.
LIFX Light Strip
The LIFX Smart LED Light Strip is a solid alternative to the Philips Hue light strips. The LIFX strip supports multiple colours in the one strip.
LIFX lights are Wifi smart lights and connect directly to your router. There are pros and cons to this approach. The main pro is you don’t need to a Hub. LIFX lights work out of the box with HomeKit, Alexa and Google Assistant. The main con is they aren’t as reliable as the Hue lights. While reliability is often dependent on your router setup, I have found that these lights, even with a top of the line mesh wifi router can sometimes be slow to connect. However I have found that LIFX lights are generally much more responsive than other Wifi lights and have a better Wifi chipset than many cheaper bulbs.
TP-Link Smart Light Strip
If you’re looking for a cheap LED light strip, it is hard to look past the TP-Link Smart Light Strip.
TP-Link Tapo sells a couple of variants of the light strips and the do come in longer lengths of 5 and 10 meters. If you’re looking to install a light strip over a longer length, these could be a good option. These strips are also available in Multicolour and Multicolour Zone options. The Multicolour zone lights can display multiple colours on the same strip at once.
These are Wifi Light strips. They won’t be as reliable as the Zigbee powered hue strips. No hub is needed for these light strips.
Unfortunately TP-Link doesn’t support Apple HomeKit. So if you use these if you own any Apple devices as they just don’t integrate as well as some of the other alternatives.
Meross Light Strip
The Meross Light Strip is another cheap LED light strip but it also works with Apple HomeKit. It is similar to the TP-Link Light strip and is a Wifi strip. No hub is required.
The main difference between these two products is the Meross strip works with HomeKit. If you have an Apple device and want a cheap light strip, I would get this strip over the TP-Link option.
How Long do LED Strip Lights Last
LED Light Strips should last for over 50000 hours. The lifespan of the LED light Strip will depend on the quality of the LED’s. In theory a light strip should last around 15-17 years.
I’ve been using my light strips for over 5 years without any issues so far.
Can You Cut LED Light Strips to Size
Yes! One of the main advantages of using LED light strips is they are highly customisable. You can both cut and extend most brands of light strips. Some of the very cheap light strips are not cuttable. Each brand will give you instructions on where to cut the strip, it’s really easy and can be done with regular scissors.
