CES 2022 has already seen plenty of new and exciting smart home tech products announced. But if you're looking to add some flash to your living room, it's hard to top the Sengled Wi-Fi Video-Sync TV Light Strip.
As the name suggests, Sengled's new product is a smart LED light strip that works with your TV. But it’s not just any old set of LED lights on a strip — this device syncs the visuals on your TV to an adhesive, wall-facing light strip using an external camera. The resulting light show extends the colors on screen to your entire room.
The Sengled Wi-Fi Video-Sync TV Light Strip has a tentative price of $119 and can come fitted to screen sizes 45- to 75-inches.
Unlike other immersive TV lights like the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box, Sengled's Video-Sync lights don't analyze content though an HDMI cable. That frees up a precious HDMI slot on the back of your TV, giving you space for your sound bars, consoles and other peripherals. Instead, Sengled's lights use a small camera positioned to face the TV to read the colors in the current picture, mirroring them across the strip of rear-mounted LEDs.
The Video-Sync Light Strip is also cheaper than most alternatives. The Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box costs $229 by itself, and the actual lights have to be bought separately.
These lights build on the functionality of two previous Sengled products — the Audio-Sync TV light strips and the company's LED light bars. The Audio-Sync light strips produced an impressive light show and were great for listening to music, but getting the same experience synced to video instead of audio is great for gamers and streaming, and could even give Sengled a shot at being one of the best TikTok lights.
This style of smart light strips turns whatever you’re watching or playing into an immersive experience, meaning it could be like having a home theater without shelling out hundreds for the whole setup.
Sengled’s products thrive on their ease-of-use — the company's products have made our lists of the best smart lights for years running because of their easy setups and relatively low cost compared to the competition. They integrate with the Sengled app, which is easy to use, and work with Alexa, Google Assistant, HomeKit and SmartThings.
The Video-Sync lights look to continue Sengled's successful track record. They may seem expensive for a set of ornamental LED lights, but the comparative cost of buying a fancier, fully-immersive TV setup and the fact they're not tied up to HDMI cables makes me interested.
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