Twinkly Flex and Twinkly Line are both excellent application-controlled smart light strips that provide a large amount of customization and are superior to popular options such as Philips Hue. Twinkly Flex allows users to bend and bend the strip into creative shapes, but it is a fixed length and only 2m is available, which is a bit restrictive.

I didn't really pay attention to the technical trend of Christmas lighting, but it turns out that Twinkly is the Philips Hue of Christmas tree lights. The Twinkly lighting series provides complete intelligent control of your lighting and unlimited design options that map to how you place your own lights.

Twinkly has been expanding to more mainstream smart lighting options through the Flex & Line series, which can easily compete with Hue and do better in certain areas.

Unlike the Philips Hue with a hub, the Twinkly lighting series has the controller built into the power pack, which slightly reduces your expenses.

For Flex, all this is attached to you, there is no way to extend this light. You get 2m and that's it.

For Twinkly Line, you have something similar to the Philips Hue light strip. The light strip has been separated and you need to plug it into a power source, but you can also choose to extend it to a longer length. It looks like an additional 1.5 million extension cord will cost you approximately £40.

Twinkly Line is definitely a visually more impressive product, with higher-density LEDs wrapped in a sturdy tube that can be bent or bent. The duct allows the lighting to appear as a solid color instead of being separated from the exposed LEDs on the Twinkly Line.

The disadvantage of this is that you cannot extend it.

Twinkly Line looks like any other LED light strip, but the customizability provided by the Twinkly app is far more than any other light strip I have tried. Of course, you can bend and shape them into patterns, but only to roll on a vertical plane.

Except for the physical differences, the overall functions of Flex and Line remain unchanged.

It's hard not to compare Philips Hue to Twinkly. Today, Hue is almost a household name, but most people will not be familiar with Twinkly.

With smart Christmas lights as the background, the Twinkly app and overall functions work slightly differently from other apps.

All lights, including these lights, as well as all Christmas tree lights and pre-lit Christmas trees, allow you to map the position of the lights after setting, and then customize the lighting according to your specific location.

You can choose various preset designs or design your own LED effects. Therefore, you can get more creative customization than Philips Hue or competing brands.

For PC gamers or home theater fans, Twinkly lacks dedicated PC applications like Hue, but it is compatible with Razer Chroma RGB. Again, this applies to all their lights, so you can synchronize the Christmas fairy lights and even the Festoon lights with your PC.

Of course, Twinkly does not have all the bulbs and accessories that Hue has, so anyone who has invested a lot of money in Hue may want to stick to one brand, depending on your requirements.

I found that Twinkly products have better installation options compared to Philips Hue. You can use various stickers and mounting accessories to simplify installation.

The Twinkly settings are not as good as I hoped. For these two products, I ran into problems when passing WiFi details to it. The first attempt was to successfully add the lights to the app, but they were not displayed online, and when I tried to control them, nothing happened.

After deleting everything and trying again, everything went well. This may be a user error, but it doesn't seem to be as simple as Hue.

After successfully adding the light, you will be asked if you want to map it. This will use your camera to map the exact position of the light. This is a good idea, I think it is especially suitable for people who use large bags of fairy lights, allowing you to create custom designs.

After everything is set up and working properly, the lighting is flawless.

You have the usual controls, power, brightness, and schedule you expect. Then you can choose one of the preset designs, and each design can customize the color depth and speed.

Under the FX Wizard section, you can get more ideas. You can choose a preset design, and then customize all colors, angles, speeds and blends. Or you can draw a design drawing.

If you have mapped the lights, the design customization will accurately show how your lights are placed. To me, this is not much different from flat wire, but if you have worked hard to shape Flex into a creative pattern, you can customize the lighting for that design. I think this is an impressive feature when customizing larger sets of lights (some professional installations use 100K LEDs).

Looking at the second-generation specifications, each controller can have 600 lights, and each group can have 6000 lights. Therefore, you can create very large and complex lighting settings.

You can also link your lights, allowing you to synchronize lights or create a group of lights, allowing multiple Twinkly lights to work as one large installation. When you select a group, it will allow you to arrange the lights to the approximate location of your arrangement. Likewise, if you map the lights correctly, you should be able to get a group that accurately represents your room/design.

I don't run any Razer peripherals, such as keyboards or gaming mice, so it's annoying to have to download another peripheral application, but Razer is the only one who provides smart light synchronization with PC games.

You will need to install the Razer Synapse 3 software. Then in the module, you can enable all the chroma functions you want. For me, I think I only need Chroma Connect.

After setting up Razer Synapse 3 and Chroma, you also need to download the Twinkly Chroma connector.

After installation, you need to load the Twinkly Chroma connector and log in with your Twinkly app password.

Once everything is connected, you can use the built-in Razer RGB effects to control the lighting or use Chroma Studio to design your own lighting. This can also be paired with Hue, so you can make the two systems work together with this.

Then for any Chroma compatible game, these will be synchronized with the lights. The available games are very wide, including Fortnight, Apex, Overwatch, Crysis, Just Cause 4 and COD Black Ops 3.

I have been playing Far Cry 6 recently, which is not on the list and there are no other Far Cry games.

The 2 million Twinkly Flex Generation 2 is priced at 94 pounds on Amazon, the 1.5 million Line Generation 2 is 89.99 pounds, or the 3M model is 139.99 pounds

For many years, Philips Hue has been the gold standard for smart lighting. Their Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus v4 [2 m] White and Color Ambience Smart LED Kit is priced at £67.99.

The more advanced Philips Hue Gradient Light strip is £159.99 for a 55-inch TV or £179.99 for a 65-inch TV.

Hue can be used with Razer Chroma, their own Windows application or HDMI box.

Govee Immersion WiFi LED TV with backlight and camera is priced at £72. This is designed for TVs similar to the Hue Strip, but instead of syncing lights based on apps or HDMI boxes, it uses a camera to look at the screen to match colors.

LIFX has a 2 million WiFi smart LED light with starter kit, priced at £79.99, which also applies to Razer Chroma.

Twinkly may be known for its smart Christmas lights, but both Flex and Line lights have successfully extended their range to more everyday smart lighting. The ability to synchronize lights with Razer Chroma is also a big selling point for any gamer.

The application and system settings are not as exquisite as Philips Hue, but the level of lighting customization is very impressive, and the price is more attractive than Philips.

Twinkly Flex is visually more impressive than Twinkly Line, but the length of 2m seems a bit limited, and each Flex has its own plug socket, so if you want to use multiple Flex lights, the setup may be a bit complicated. Conversely, Line side by side does not look so good, but you can create a very long run, making it more suitable for backlight/effect lighting for movies or PC games.  

In general, both products are great. If you want to be creative in lighting, they provide a better choice than Hue.

Last updated on 2021-12-14 / Affiliate link / Image from Amazon Product Advertising API

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