Smart Light Bulb + WiFi Repeater = Sengled Boost

One of the common troubles with WiFi networks is range. If you have a larger house, you may find a lot of weak spots in your WiFi coverage. This forces you to buy into WiFi extenders to expand the coverage into those areas. They join your network and act as a point of re-broadcast so that the over-all umbrella (or bubble if you prefer) is larger.

There are many ways of achieving this. Most extenders look similar to your router, and require they be located near an outlet for power. You then have to find a place to either hide the extender or make sure it compliments the room (visually) it is in. Other common extenders look like a box that plugs directly into your outlet without any wire (simply looks like a box sticking out of the outlet).

What if you didn’t have to worry about outlets and aesthetics? What if the device could piggy-back off of something else while blending into the environment so that guests may never even know it’s there? That’s where the Sengled Boost comes into play.

The Sengled Boost is an LED light bulb that offers all the typical features you would expect to find in a “smart” LED bulb. You can access it remotely on your phone and control the light as well as fade it in and out. However, it also has a WiFi Repeater built-in. No wires, no boxes and no worries. You simply screw the light bulb in and follow the directions to set it up and add it to your network.

It claims to cover a distance of up to 50m in the house, serving as a solid addition to that umbrella (or bubble…). It fits any fixture that supports a standard-size light bulb, and supports 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz speeds of up to 300Mbps.

The Boost only puts out a max of 470lm (lumens), so if you are looking for bright-lit room (average 60-watt CFL or incandescent is about 800-850lm), you may want to re-think where you will be using it. It would be best to compare this to a 40w bulb, best for reading lamps and small areas that don’t need maximum light.

It consumes about 7.5-9w of electricity depending on load (the LED by itself consumes around 6w), and has a color temperature of warm white. It does not support additional colors like some smart bulbs, but you have to sacrifice a little to squeeze that WiFi technology into the base. It can dim using its app (iOS or Android), but they don’t recommend using external dimming switches as it could damage the bulb.

To assure that it properly extends your network without creating multiple networks all leading to the same source, make sure to name the SSID and password to the exact SSID and password of your network. By doing this, it will “seamlessly integrate into the network” (Sengled), thus widening that over-all umbrella (…or bubble).

If it properly accomplishes just that, it would be a killer buy, as you never have to change networks on your device at any point. If that were the case, and we had one in our hands to test out, it may end up scoring pretty high ratings in a full review of it.

More details and specifications can be found below. The Sengled Boost can be found online at websites like Amazon or Sengled’s website.

Specifications:

• Power Supply: 100~240V AC, 50/60Hz
• Light Socket: E26, E27, B22
• Power Consumption: 7.5W (LED + Wi-Fi Repeater), Peak 9W
• Operating Temperature: -20° C ~ +40° C
• Store Temperature: -40° C ~ +70° C
• Operating Humidity: 10% ? RH ? 95%, Non condensation
• Atmospheric Pressure: 86kPa ~ 106kPa
• Colour: Neutral White
• Dimensions: 120mm (H) x ? 60mm (Dia.) (approx.)
• Weight: 290g (approx.)

LED Light

• Power: 6 Watts
• Luminance: 470 lumens
• Light Beam Angle: 225 degrees
• Colour Temperature: 3000K – Warm White
• CRI: 80
• Dimming: Yes (Do not use with external or outside dimmers)

Wi-Fi Repeater

• Wi-Fi Standard: IEEE 802.11b/g/n
• Wi-Fi Transmitter Frequency Range: 2.412 – 2.484 GHz
• Power: 1.8 Watts (Standby), 2.8 Watts (Full load)
• 2T2R MIMO wireless technology
• Security Mode: 64/128 bit WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK, WPA/WPA2
• Encryption Type: WEP64/WEP128/TKIP/AES
• Wi-Fi Transmitter power:
  • @ 802.11b: +20dBm (Max.)
  • @ 802.11g: +18dBm (Max.)
  • @ 802.11n: +15dBm (Max.)
• Wi-Fi Receiver power:
  • @ 802.11b: -89dBm
  • @ 802.11g: -81dBm
  • @ 802.11n: -711dBm
• Distance Range between Router and Boost Bulb: 35 meters
  (near line of sight, depends on the environment and network conditions)