Twinkly - Smart Light String 250 LED RGB Generation II - Multi

This is my second review a product from Twinkly (I reviewed the STRING + DOT here as well). I started with this smaller set of lights, and FELL IN LOVE with them and bought more!! I used two short sets (two of the 100-light Strings) for the 5-foot tree in photo. They are EASY to pair with your phone, EASY to map all sets for making all-over patterns (do that after ALL SETS are on your tree or home.) Your phone maps and saves the position of individual lights, and then you can go nuts with patterns and colors, and make and save your own colors, animation speeds, or pattern edits. Totally cool. This will save me money, since I can put these 2 smaller light strings on my small porch trees, and re-program them for each season!! I will love that, instead of buying yet another color for each season. The photo is during the day, which shows how super bright they are. At night they are stellar!!!

Think twice before a Twinkly purchase. Quality and reliability are low. Last year we purchased a $230 light string in November prior to the US Holidays. We installed the string in December and enjoyed beautiful colors through the month, then took them down and stored them carefully in a plastic container (less than 6-weeks total use). This year in the same timeframe we re-installed the lights in the same exterior location and are experiencing two defects that Twinkly has acknowledged as “Hardware Defects,” but they are unwilling to address. 1. No light section. A section of lights does not respond to the app or hardware reset, and only shows functional lights during the RGB Tests that Twinkly techs asked us to try. 2. Random colors. Sections of the strings do not respond to selected colors, showing either a similar color family, or a very light blue or white lights. Twinkly and BustBuy are unwilling to warranty our 600 light string product because we discovered and reported the problem a couple weeks beyond the stated one-year warranty – with less than 6-weeks of use. Well thanks for the support folks! Apparently we should be putting our lights up sooner in the Holiday season :( to identify hardware defects sooner. After getting a flat out sorry from BustBuy, we contacted Twinkly in Italy for a support inquiry, again being upfront about our purchase date, installation date, with all receipts and the box top. We spent nearly an hour after receiving 15 technical diagnosis steps from their support team, then provided them with no less than 12 photos of the problem and documented reset procedure as well as a requested video stepping through the factory reset process in a shared folder. Twinkly’s response was thank you, but our technology team has identified this as “hardware defect problem” that does not have a solution. I have a suggestion: either do the right thing and replace the product, or don’t sell it. Offering a 25% discount on another set is a slap in the face. On a side note, our $500 Twinkly Christmas Tree (bought at HD) is on its fourth year and the contacts between some of the sections are failing, resulting in spots without active lights on the tree. We have accepted that problem because we’ve figured out how to carefully align the fragile powered contact sections not making the finicky contact. The firmware updates and quirkiness of the app were tolerable – when the products “worked.” Absent a working product or support, we suggest avoiding Twinkly products because of their reliability and cost. We’d recommend buying throw-a-way programmable LEDs on A*zon and accept the risk of getting junk up front at a much lower price.

In total, I've bought 2900 Twinkly lights in strings - 7x400 sets and a 100-LED set. The 400-light sets also each came with a USB-powered 60-light string, so I have 7 of those as well. At first, I bought this to throw on a hat that I was going to wear to an outdoor event (the first picture). I connected them in haphazardly, then strapped a Jackery 290 power station to my butt under the long pirate coat I wore, and it ran the string on my hat for a good 8 hours with only an 8W draw while I controlled it with a spare Pixel 3 XL phone running a hotspot (without Internet access or cell signal to boot). The special effects were insanely great - having apparel that pulsed and throbbed with the beat was a very novel idea to attendees, and I went back and added another 800 onto my coat. The Jackery didn't last QUITE as long after that, but it did what I needed it to do. After that, I used this string (and 1600 other lights) on the front wall of my house to create a light display. ... and within 24 hours, I had the HOA leadership knocking at my door to ask me not to make it look like emergency / first responder lights. In response, I used the Twinkly app to mirror Rick Astley's video of "Never Gonna Give You Up" on loop, then did the same with Wham's "Last Christmas" and Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You," all complete with audio on speakers outside the house. Sure, you can argue that this is a HUGELY frivolous and unnecessary use of disposable income. Considering that I can leave this stuff up year-round, though, I consider it a VERY good use of mine.

The Twinkly products are outstanding. Twinkly is the absolute best smart light products you can buy. I have over 43 different Twinkly products, Xmas tree, Flex, Squares, Curtains, Wreath, festoons, 100, 200 and 600 light strings. They also have a USB music adaptor which you can use to have any one or all of you Twinkly products respond to the music. Twinkly has the coolest products you can use all year round. They are continually adding new / seasonal effects for download. You can change the themes and patterns to suit every holiday or occasion. I put them up over two years ago and have not taken them down since. Don't wait to get this product. You will not regret buying Twinkly. The app is very easy to use once you start using it. I give this product a 100 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Well all I gotta said about this lights they make Christmas More l fun as you can customize your lights how you want and also it syncs with music and is perfect when you have Christmas music on

I randomly ran across this line of “smart” lights last week and picked up a couple of the 100-light sets to mess around with. I’ll say up front that I’m very happy with them. Here’s a few random notes on my experience. The first thing I wondered was exactly how long the lighted portion of the string actually is. The specs for the 100-light set is 26.25 feet. I’ve attached a photo showing the distance between each light is 3 inches. With a 100-light set, there’s 99 spaces between each light, meaning your actual lighted length is 24.75 feet. Upon first plugging in the lights, I was very pleased with how bright they are. I don’t see an official listed brightness anywhere off a quick google search but they’re definitely sufficient. The colors are extremely vibrant and show very well in the dark. On an iPhone 13, I didn’t really have any issues getting them connected. On the first strand, I did have to try it a couple of times, then restart the app to get it to go, but I believe that’s because I had already launched the app and had it searching before I held down the button on the lights to put it into findable mode. The app doesn’t seem to like searching before there’s something to search for. On the second strand of lights, I first put the lights into findable mode and then launched the app, no problems. I was within a foot of the lights with my phone and they read each other fine. My two strands of lights are wrapped around the two small columns on my front porch so I really can’t comment on the scan. I did do a scan but since they’re just wrapped around, it seemed kind of pointless, so I deleted it. There’s more than enough patterns built-in and downloadable to keep me entertained and switching it up every night. A few of the patterns rely on a “curtain” of lights but a lot of them still look good just randomly wrapped around my porch columns. Of note is that by default, it considers the very last light on the string to be the “top”, so if you’re doing effects like falling snow, then you’ll want to mind how you hang your lights vertically. Lastly, there is a somewhat hidden “sync” option on the last tab of the app. Where I had two strings of lights, I couldn’t initially find a way to make them do the same thing at the same time. I set them both individually to the same pattern, which was changing through colors, but they were going through different colors. After I couldn’t find a way to link them, I instead starting trying to time when to turn the second string on so the colors would get close. I eventually found the small chain icon in the upper-right of the last tab of the app that lets you link strings together, which solved my problem. The only thing I wish was here was a way to control the lights when I’m away from the house. The only time the app works is when you’re on the same Wi-Fi network as the lights. This is completely understandable because there is no hub or software to be able to talk to over the internet, but it would be nice if it were an option in the future. I’ll come back and edit my review later if anything goes wrong, I’ve only had them for a week.

Lights look great and work with ease. Simple to hook up to your phone for complete control and settings.

Striaght forward to install and use. It does what is does and i couldnt be more happier with my purchase. Worth the price and works perfectly on our entrance door. I will defintely purchase more.