The intersection of smart home and decorative lighting often feels like Las Vegas to me: messy, overwhelming, and a place where I don’t particularly want to take my money. I’m talking particularly impractical things like vivid geometric panels or modular light bars that glow with oversaturated, unnatural colors. The kind of loud lighting that feels like it’s mostly meant to live in the background of thousands of YouTube videos as an attention-grabbing substitute for curious taste.
A purely decorative smart light doesn’t have to be a bright statement piece. Sometimes it can be a delicately colored, 12-inch-wide, cushioned glass donut. That’s what you get with Ikea’s innovation Warm flash smart bulb. You also get a lamp that works well on a table or mounted on a wall. Whatever smart home ecosystem you’re using, Varmblixt is compatible with it thanks to Ikea’s ‘Matter Over Thread’ app (provided you have a Thread border router like the latest Apple). HomePod or Amazon Echo speaker). However, if you don’t care about that sort of thing, it works fine with the small, two-button remote it ships with.
I have a hard time justifying spending money on purely decorative lighting. However, there is something very endearing about the deliciously curved, colorful Warmblicht donut lamp.
Ikea Warmblitz LED smart lamp
Ikea’s doughnut-shaped Varmblixt is a colorful smart accent lighting piece that works with any Matter-over-Thread-capable smart home ecosystem.
- Fits the item
- Colors that look great
- Smooth color transitions when using a pre-paired remote
- Very sensitive
- It costs the same as the non-smart version
- A little too dark
- Sharp Color transitions when using third-party ecosystems
A happy decoration
I will immediately note that this is part of the light Ikea’s Warmblitz collectioncovers many different shaped bulbs. Ikea doesn’t call it the “Varmblixt Donut” or anything—smaller text under its name on the Ikea website differentiates it from the original donut-shaped Varmblixt with the words “LED table/wall lamp, dimmable smart/white glass color and white spectrum.” So, for the sake of this review, let’s agree that when I say “Warmblixt,” I mean the donut-shaped Matter-compatible smart bulb. Got it? Continue with the review.
As a person of a certain age, I dreamed of living a minimalist lifestyle complemented by Ikea products. I’ve always loved the simplicity of her products and the idea that I can remove my clutter and complete a hipster home look circa 2012. Warmblicht would fit well with this aesthetic, but luckily it also works well with the actual vibe of my home, which could probably be described as chaotic furniture with a Victorian twist.
Ikea has done a great job of making sure the colors this lamp produces look exactly as I would expect when choosing one from the Apple Home app. Warmblixt also uses Matter’s Adaptive Lighting feature, meaning it slowly changes its white light color temperature throughout the day, going from a bright, bluish color in the morning to a warmer yellow color as the day progresses. When the light was at its brightest, it was nice and uniform all over the frosted glass in rooms with no other light, but it would take on a mottled look if there were other light sources interfering. It was more obvious than the dimmer the bulb gets, but I didn’t hate it. In fact, it might be fun to try to match the color of the wall behind the lamp so that its color and the color of the light from my windows blend inside the lamp.
Warmblicht will not let you forget that it is, above all, a decorative element. You know, accent lighting! According to the box it ships in, it puts out about 120 lumens, or about what you’d expect from a dim bulb or small flashlight. It also gets so dim that I could still detect some colors at the lowest brightness. At the time, it had an interesting effect, especially during the day, because rather than being illuminated from within, the glass itself appeared to be painted.
I like that there’s no chance of accidentally blinding myself temporarily with this lamp, but I just found it to be over the top. touch very gloomy. In the darkness of my bedroom and with the Warmblicht as bright as possible, I could immediately see the area around the lamp, but everything was in deep shadow a few feet away.
As for where to put the thing, the Warmblicht has cushioned legs on the bottom, which allows it to be placed on a table, but I like hanging it on the wall the most. You can remove the top glass by pressing a button to release the clip on the base, which allows you to use the base as a mounting plate, but I found it easier to attach everything to the screw I used. It’s best to be cautious anyway; The outer glass shell of the Warmblixt will definitely break if you drop it.
One thing to note: If you’re considering Varmblixt’s version of a smart bulb because you think it might be somehow superior to its original, non-smart predecessor, you should probably try to see them together in the same store. They may have the same price and the same general shape, but there are key differences. The original is encased in a glossy caramel-colored glass that looks like a giant piece of hard candy and emits a warm, cozy light. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the same quality of light from the smart version.
Thread, Matter and smart home compatibility
You don’t actually need a smart home to use Varmblixt as a light bulb. The button next to the power cord works well to turn it on and off, and Ikea Bilresa two button remote control comes with it out of the box. You’ll need to supply the two AAA batteries required by the remote, but once you have it, you can turn the lamp on or off, dim or brighten by pressing and holding the up or down buttons (these buttons aren’t labeled, but the one with the larger divot at the top), and you can smoothly cycle through the colors by double-tapping its buttons.
If you want to use it with your smart home, its Matter Over Thread implementation means you won’t need an Ikea Dirigera hub, but a Thread border router like the Apple HomePod mini or the new Amazon Echo speaker. Connecting the Varmblixt to my Apple Home network took less than a minute after a quick scan of the Matter QR code underneath it. Once on my network, Warmblixt worked very well. When I made changes to the Apple Home app, it was almost instantaneous, and I never experienced a reaction during the nine days I tested it.
There was only one thing that really bothered me about Varmblixt: the way it changes colors. When it was paired with just the remote and nothing else, I could double-tap any of the buttons on the remote and it would seamlessly blend in with a pre-selected set of colors. That’s nice! But that disappeared when I connected it to Apple Home; If I change the colors in the Home app, the change is sudden. Other color-changing bulbs, like the Leedarsen bulb on my desk lamp, maintain their smooth transitions even when connected to my Home app. Plus, I once paired Warmblixt with Apple Home unpaired With Bilresa, and it seems this or the other; I couldn’t reconnect the remote to the bulb until I removed its Mate connector. It’s a minor quibble, but a quibble nonetheless.
The $100 question
Warmblixt is probably not for everyone, and I doubt if it is for you, you knew that before reading this review. I’m one of those people, so for this and its no-nonsense predecessor, they both cost the same $100. I wouldn’t necessarily buy one, but it has more to do with my income and priorities than whether or not it has value as a decorative piece.
That said, if Warmblicht appeals to you enough and the price tag feels right, I say go for it. The build quality, the colors it produced, and its reliability on my network all pointed to a light I will not regret purchasing. I’d even be tempted to separate it from my smart home thanks to the included remote. The main thing to remember here is that Warmblicht will never replace an existing bulb to light a room. It’s pure eye candy, designed to vibe with your space, not command it. And it does a great job at it.
