We tried the Cync Smart Home Family from GE Lighting ā Here's what happened
Dim, brighten, or create a dazzling show with an easy-to-use app.
Dim, brighten, or create a dazzling show with an easy-to-use app.
Dim, brighten, or create a dazzling show with an easy-to-use app.
This review comes from our partners at BestProducts
The Products on Trial
A selection of smart home products by Cync from GE Lighting, a Savant company. Specifically, the , , , and the .
The Brief
Cync from GE Lighting, a Savant company, is a suite of that aim to make your home smarter, by allowing you to control your house's lights, thermostat, and appliances from your phone, even when you're not in the room.
The heart of the smart home experience is the (formerly C by GE). It's simple to useāthe interface is full of visual graphics so that your systems and settings are clear to see, program, and coordinate. The app basically turns your phone into a remote for your lighting and appliances, allowing you to power everything on or off whether you're in the room or far from home. You can set up schedules, automate an entire room (everything from lamps to a sound system can turn on at once) and adjust the brightness (and color) of connected Cync bulbs.
The Cync app saves routines for schedules and what it calls "scenes"ācombinations of device settings for when you want to convert, say, the mood of your living room from "Gaming Party" (brightly lit so you can see all the pieces) to "Movie Night" (cinema-dim) in an instant. Using the app and the smart bulbs together, you can choose your own colors along with nine preset light shows, you'll be able to set any vibe. At the moment, you can't combine and alternate patterns or adjust a light show's change rates, but with 16 million colors that are dimmable, you won't be hurting for choice. If this is all too much, there are pre-programmed settingsāfor example, the sunrise/sunset functionāwhich are easy to find and can work in any environment.
Cync's TrueImage feature stores a photo of the actual light source, so you can preview the look and configure it even while you're away. Much like Scenes, you can save your favorite settings to each device, so you don't even have to get out of your favorite chair to switch gears from "Curl-Up-with-a-Mystery" mode to "Disco Party"āwe don't judge how you spend your free time.
Cync Smart Light Bulbs
Now, about the lights themselves. We tried out a number of bulbs: Cync Direct Connect (both and ) and (both white and full color) bulbs. For the most part, these all perform well and identically.
We tested both Cync revealĀ® HD+ bulbs first, which seemed identical but with the full-color version providing reveal light plus additional tunable white and color options. Reveal's selling point is that the bulb helps minimize the yellowish tint of traditional light bulbs. The shift is not perceptible to the naked eyeāit cancels out green/yellow tones so that, instead, you see whiter whites and colors appear more vivid. There was a definite green/yellow cast in the room when the bulb was off, so we did observe a difference. When on, the bulb seemed better suited for task lighting than setting a moodābut for that, there's the "relaxation" mode (an option in the Cync app) that offers a more golden-tinged light.
If you can master a Cync revealĀ® bulb, you already know everything you need to handle a Direct Connect smart bulb. It's an extremely familiar matter of setting up light levels, hue, and tone with one difference: You can connect the bulb to a voice assistant, a process that was easy. As a light bulb, these performed functionally identical to the Revealsābut were even simpler and more immediate to understand. Like everything else herein, it's plug and play, barring a moment to add them into the app and check for updates.
Which brings us back to the app: In addition to controlling the intensity of the light bulbs, Cync allows you to change the color of the bulbs. There are basic preset hues (plum, red, blue, green), along with a slider that lets you choose very specific shades within each choice. The blue and plum options had the best "vibes," while the red and green options are better suited for specific situations (perhaps the holidays?).
Then, there are the party effects, specialty patterns pre-programmed in the Cync app. To be honest, these exist in limbo. It's just hard to imagine needing, say, a firework effect very often other than delighting your kidsābut if one does, it would be nice to be able to adjust the timing and pattern to what's needed. Still, it's a cool feature that makes daily life a bit more fun.
Cync Smart Light Strip
The LED strip turns on very brightly right out of the box, so you may want to squint as you plug it in. This thing is powerful! Its electrical connection is a two-parter for power management plus network integration, and both have a sleek, futuristic aesthetic.
At a beefy quarter-inch thickness, the is much more robust than its competition. Though you can attach it to other lengths, or trim and reconnect, connectors aren't included, which is curious, considering that at 80", it's about the same height as a door and you might want to do a border projectāor snip and reattach for other lengths and shapes.
The 3M adhesive on the back is intense, which you would hope, given how much body the strip has. For the same reason, we recommend deep cleaning any surface before you affixāuse a degreasing agent if at all necessary, and rubbing alcohol no matter what. There's a lot of heft here, and you don't want to weaken its grip on the wall with lint that will mute the powerful stickiness.
All colors and patterns on the LEDs are identical to the light bulbs, but here's hoping future updates take advantage of the strip's singular ability to display along indoor pathways in multiple animated patterns.
Cync Indoor Smart Plug
On its surface, a smart plugāwhich turns any item you plug into it a smart device that can be controlled via phone appāis a terrific idea for power management and integrating old tech into a smart home ecosystem. In reality, you need to be a bit strategic about what you pair it with. Most devices either need to run constantly and passively on their own (refrigerators, clocks), or you'd want to be there to make use of them (TVs, game consoles, any food prep appliance). Moreover, simple setups like your coffeemaker already have their own timers, and need to stay in a low-level "on" state to keep their clocks running and get your java brewed on time.
As it turns out, one good application of the is for voice-activated smart home assistants. Setting the plug on a timer to power down ensures that these devices aren't burning power when nobody's awake to give them commands.
Other applications that don't require the user to be present: pumps for fish tanks and plant watering, or intermittent or event-based devices that don't have their own triggers, like a very basic dehumidifier that doesn't monitor humidity levels and just runs. The real strength of the smart plug may be in pairing it with some of Cync's other monitors and detectors to smarten up perfectly functional tech you already own. Keep in mind, though, that this plug can't handle the electrical load of most air conditioners, so you won't be creating an action to cool your home at, say, 5 p.m., or once your commute puts you a mile from home.
If this sounds like a device you could use, you may be wondering, how does this little guy run? Very reliably, but you are going to want to be certain that the item you pair it with can operate with a smart plug. We tested it with a number of devices, and here's what we found:
As a no-way-will-this-work test we plugged it into a high-powered blender with its power switch turned on. As expected, the smart plug was able to turn the blender off, but restoring power flow did not turn it back on, owing to the blender's rocker switch on the front being necessary to start and stop.
Moving to a stand mixer, we were surprised to have the same experience. Our theory was that this only needed power to run with its adjustable-speed slide switch positioned above zero. This wasn't the case, and there's a failsafe to prevent the mixer from starting in this state with or without the smart plug. Sorry, you won't be mixing pizza dough while you sleep, whichā¦is definitely for the best.
Moving out of the mechanical controls, we next tried a standing fan with a push-button on/off and digital display. Again, the smart plug could turn it off, but not back on. However, a digital dehumidifier with nearly the same switch and console was able to begin running from an off state, thanks to this plug. While you're likely to use such an appliance in an always-on state to be triggered by humidity levels, it's nice to know you can implement it remotely if, say, you're traveling and don't want to come home to a week of mold growth.
Depending on your usage, the plug itself consumes 1 to 2 watts, so you definitely want to apply this to the right combination of usesāan automation that runs regularly, consumes a lot of power even in a passive state, and doesn't require your presence to be on.
Some other uses for the smart plug to consider: You can plug into lamps that don't have replaceable bulbs (or have a lot of bulbs to replace), then use a schedule or voice command to control the lamp like you would a smart bulb. It's also a good accessibility solution for hard-to-reach on/off switches (like a Christmas tree tucked into a corner).
Since you can control the plug from your phone, it can also bring you peace of mind for devices that could be inadvertently left on (such as curling irons and hair straighteners). You can also use it for devices that you want to turn off on a schedule like Christmas decorations, a sound machine after your kids fall asleep, or just making sure everything is 'powered down' for the night.
The Closing Argument
smart home products bring convenience to most households, including rentals since nothing is permanently installed (you may need to use your own double-sided removable tape if you move the light strip).
The plug illustrates that the key element to configuring these systems isn't a question of scale but scope. If you want to set up multiple smart home devices, there will be a brief learning curve to get to know the tech. That said, is designed to be all but plug-and-play, so there's nothing stopping you from grabbing a couple of smart plugs and a lone bulb for strategic placement to try it out. (Or, for fun, setting up a few bulbs at your home bar and selecting a scene for "Party Time" mode for your next at-home happy hour.)
If you have the right use case, these devices are a real gamechanger: shutting off all the lights if you have mobility issues, or just have a big house and want to save five minutes every night; starting a lot of morning routines while you stay in bed another 15 minutes and wait for the house to warm up; remotely ensuring all your lights and devices are off (and even shut themselves down) if you have three kids and no order. Things like that. Consumers who can take a full and honest look at their lifestyles and habits may just find themselves saving a bunch of energy, and some time with it. But you'll have to do a little math first.