Twinkly - Smart Lights Festoon 20 RGB LED Generation II

Who wouldn't want an outside light show? Fully customizable outdoor lights seem like the next step in my efforts to fully customize my home's lighting and Twinkly has a very appealing offering with this set of festoon lights. The lights look great. They're sufficiently bright. The colors look nice. Effects created and downloaded via the Twinkly App look great. Unfortunately, the app itself needs a bit of polish. But even with a few nitpicks, my family and I are really enjoying these lights. I should disclose up front that I received these lights for purposes of producing an honest, unbiased review. I have been using the lights for a week now while testing the software on Android and iOS devices. Out of the box set up was easy enough. Following the in box instructions, I had my lights on and connected to my phone in a matter of minutes. It's easy to download effects via the app. Google home integration was easy. I can control the lights and change the color easily via Google Home on my phone. Speaking of the set up, I should probably point out that the power brick is huge. If you have a recessed outlet or just one outside outlet, you may struggle to plug anything else in. I attached a photo for reference. I wish the brick were a bit smaller as the documentation with my lights seemed to strongly discourages plugging the lights into an extension cord. The Twinkly app itself needs some work. I got error messages and had crashing problems while mapping my lights. And, once my lights were roughly mapped, I struggled a lot with getting my light selections to work correctly. For instance, I could see my individual bulbs, but pressing the light via my edit effect page, would often not select the light I wanted to select if it clicked with a light at all. I would say that editing effects worked better on my tablets than on my phone. While mapping, it's important to keep your camera still. If you don't, you'll get error messages. Speaking of mapping lights, I had more luck mapping from a sufficient distance. That tends to be more difficult with patio lights as you often don't have a view of all the lights from a distance. For instance, a few of my lights were hidden by columns. 3D mapping never seemed to work for me. I couldn't rearrange the map once the app had set it up to drag lights around. Now I have a map that isn't quite right. Short of totally resetting the device, I haven't found a way to clear the map and restore the default configuration. I have a feeling many of these features work better with the smaller lights that are more tightly grouped. But, still, the effects on the Festoon lights are pretty. However, my biggest complaint with the app is how difficult it is to do simple things. It's easy to change an effect (and the app has quite a few to choose from), but if I want to set my lights to yellow or orange, I have to edit an effect, click on each light with my preferred color, then save the effect. It's easier to go into Google Home and set the color and brightness than to use Twinkly's app. There's a timer built into the Twinkly App, but it's hidden in the top right corner of the app. I really like these lights. I look forward to adding more sets in the future. But right now the software is a bit buggy. It's not the worst by any stretch of the imagination. It just needs a bit more polish. But as it is, I highly recommend these lights.

Didn’t realize how much I’d love these bulbs! J first got the small 100 pack and grew to three of these 20’s. Next year I will buy way more! Super bright and easy to use. FYI these do not connect together. You need to have separate power tan to the beginning of each strand.

These lights work great! The Twinkly app is easy to use and the light sequences are really customizable to your liking! You can take a templated light sequence and customize it to the shade of color you desire. My only complaint is I wish they were a bit brighter. Other than that, they are worth the money!

Work great. It was hard to figure out how to Just get a steady light but thats because they are so advanced at dancing and multicolor light patterns.

Really easy to set up and highly customizable. once you arrange them how you'd like; whether in a string or in a grid pattern, you can map how the lights are arranged within the app (seen in pictures attached) from there it's a matter of setting your animations and then tweaking to how you want. On top of the default animations, there are also many more that can be downloaded from the online section of the app. I will likely keep them in a grid in my kids room on the ceiling for something fun while they're playing, but when it warms up to hanging outside weather, i'll string them along my patio and just remap them into a line. If you don't want to have the patterns moving on a timer, you can also sync up to a playlist and have them move to music. That being said, it may not be the best effect with only 20 of these. You want to add a couple extra sets of lights to the string. I imagine this feature may be more appealing to the twinkly Christmas tree what i took a star off for was for the smart integration. While it works with my Google home system, its quite limited. I can tell it to set a colour or brightness, but i can't set a pattern/effect. for example, i can say "hey google, set twinkly to blue" but i can't say "set twinkly to rainbow". Though i don't consider it a deal breaker, since you can just set that up on your phone manually and i imagine most people are not constantly changing between effects. Most would likely pick one and leave it; or better yet, curate effects to a musical playlist in advance.

First Twinkly Festoon Lights we have owned. First off I really like the size of these, there are 20 nice large size round lights. Easy to use, I love the fact that they include a plastic circular flexible hooking attachment which makes it so easy to add these without having to buy anything else for putting them up. In our case we opted to put them in our closet and were able to just clip the existing hard plastic circular part to thin metal closet brackets. They are very very cool and can be adjusted as bright or dark as you like. So many effects you can create or just use the gazillion ones that are already set up. The App: Easy to use, easy to set up your device. It is a complicated app in that you have a lot of options of what you can do if you have the time and want to make your own design. For us we chose three colors we like, the brightness and set up the time we want them to run in our closet. Overall a very cool product. Like the fact they can be fastened to metal and easily come off if you want to take them and decorate for Fourth of July, or Halloween etc etc. Works with apple which is what I prefer to use.

The Twinkly festoon light is a great decor addition to any backyard, patios, decks including bed rooms the ideas are endless. The lights are very well built, plastic and rubber and you can notice they will last a long time sitting outdoors. This one has 20 RGB lights in a very long cord. It is over 40 foot long and it can be extended. The bulbs are not that big but they are bright and the colors are vibrant. Setting them up did not take too much science, just attach the controller, plug it to the power and that's about it. This light can be controlled via the included remote or remotely (Wi-fi) via app. Setting them up with the app was super easy. The lights once plug are already in setup mode. The app is what makes these lights come to life. You can customize them to your liking including mapping them and they are very responsive to the effects included in the app. The transitions from one color to the other are very fluid. They can also react to the music and it works very nice. However, you will need to give the app permission to use your phone mic for this to work. It would be nice if that mic was included in the remote itself without the need of a phone for that to work. A little detail I noticed, the manufacturer could have included an End cap to close the extension port. Since these lights it's designed mostly for outdoor use, the connector could corrode overtime with weather, especially with water. Another great feature this light has is that it works with Google assistant and Alexa. After linking the twinkly account with my Google assistant I was able to control the lights with my voice. Overall these lights are a great addition to my smart home they're bright with good color reproduction and very easy to use.

In the Spring, Summer and Fall we live on our back porch! Outdoor living space is a must and great mood lighting really adds so much to a fun get together or just chilling outside! We currently have the standard white dumb bulbs on a remote clicker and that's fine but it’s time to kick it up a few notches with the Festoon lights!! Set up was easy. Pulled them out and downloaded the app. I panicked at first, cause I got it all synched but the lights weren’t coming on… well that because you have to plug the strand into the Bluetooth synching unit on the string of lights. I got a head of the instructions…. Read the instructions. Turned them on and I scrolled through some of the preset patterns and they are fun. So much programmability and possibilities!!! You can put them outside, a kids room, an adults room out front for Halloween or inside for XMAS!!! The more the merrier! If you’re a DJ, add them to your kit. Media home theatre…. Why not spice it up with some mood lighting. Just a ton of fun. You can also buy a Twinkly music dongle that will let you synch your music to the lights. You can also buy a couple of strands and map out the lights with your phone and do animations! Skies the limit! Highly recommend!