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Novostella 20W RGB Flood light review

Novostella 2 Pack 20W Smart LED Flood Lights

We’ll lead the Novostella 2-pack 20W flood light review with that my wife is interested in purchasing more of these for our house. I can honestly say there have been a total of maybe two things in ten years of reviewing products where this has happened (one being the JAM Audio speaker back in 2012, and I don’t even remember the other thing.)

Novostell has some deals (15-30% off) going on right now on their website as well.

The Novostella flood lights are extremely bright when they’re set as white lights, and pretty bright when set as a color. Pretty much the same as any RGB bulb except these are significantly brighter and designed for outdoor use. They function via the Smart Life app, so if you’re familiar with that they’ll integrate into your smart speaker ecosphere the way a normal light bulb would.

With the Smart Life app you can easily set timers to turn the lights on and off, but I don’t see an option for timers+colors. Maybe I’m missing that one. When the lights come on they’ll be the last color you selected so maybe this isn’t a concern for anyone other than me who wants differing colors throughout the night (I can do it with Home Routines, but I’d hope there’s an app-based way.)

Novostella 2 Pack 20W Smart LED Flood Lights

This is the app Smart Life’s domain mind you, not Novostella’s.

I attempted to get some photos of how the lighting works to turn half of my house a different color, but being LED lighting in no lighting conditions all you get is a washed out under/overexposed photo (see below).

Some complaints

Pairing is… not smooth. As with most smart bulbs this requires pairing. Many other manufacturers ship a bulb that’s already in pairing mode when you get it. Novostella doesn’t. I will stress this is not a huge deal normally, but powering on and off these lights 3 times is … you’ll need to plan where you’re doing this because the front yard in a utility plug that is hard to put a cable in and out was not ideal.

Next, if you’ve ever gotten a headache from a 6w lightbulb flashing on and off in pairing mode prepare for a 20watt dose of that. I did this outside, at night, both at the same time, and had a headache by the time I was done.

The instructions also appeared to be for a version of Smart Life that was not what I had. I had to figure out that these were panel lights I think. Menu options were not the same. Instructions were wrong for what I was looking at. Maybe they were the iOS version of Smart Life. I don’t know. Plan to set these up inside, with the ability to place the thing face down to prevent strobe disco party while you’re pairing.

Next, see this picture:

- for some reason we don't have an alt tag here

It tends to indicate they are designed to sit like that and can sit like that. Now take a look at the top picture in this article and look where the power cord is connected. It’s basically the exact opposite of the WiFi antenna and does not bend. You cannot set the Novostella light up like this. The kickstand ideally should be screwed into something, but you’re not getting these sitting flat.

Also as a side note, the multi-color display on their box is almost what it looks like in real life.

Overall

I suspect we’re looking at mounting a set permanently and changing lighting up for various holidays and home/away routines. I can’t stress how bright these can be as floodlights.

The Novostella 2 Pack 20W Smart LED Flood lights are available from Amazon for $17.52 off today (Black Friday sale)

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Paul E King

Paul King started with GoodAndEVO in 2011, which merged with Pocketables, and as of 2018 he's evidently the owner. He lives in Nashville, works at a film production company, is married with two kids. Facebook | Twitter | Donate | More posts by Paul | Subscribe to Paul's posts

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