This Wi-Fi light strip is a more affordable alternative to Philips Hue

By Kevin Francisco

Spicing up an otherwise dull room using the wide range of Philips Hue products is the fun and interactive way of going about things. Although if you add up all the bulbs, light strips, and other accessories and compute its cost, it could really set you back and demand a lot from your funds.

If you’re on a budget but would like to get your hands on a more affordable alternative, we have the Zero Wi-Fi Smart RGBW LED Light Strip to test out and see if you get your money’s worth.

Zero Wi-Fi Smart RGBW LED Light Strip

Right off the bat, the name isn’t as easy to remember as Philips Hue. It’s descriptive, though, and tells you right away that it connects to an app through Wi-Fi.

This multi-colored LED comes with three things out of the box: a power adapter, a Wi-Fi module, and the roll of light strip itself.

The power adapter connects to the Wi-Fi module, which then connects to the light strip via pins. For added security, I used electrical tape around the connectors so there are fewer chances of accidentally disconnecting the two.

Stretching to five meters, this light strip has 60 LEDs per meter and has a total output of 445 lumens.

The light strip itself is also IP65-certified meaning it’s dustproof and water-resistant — just be sure to keep the module and power adapter dry!

Wireless connectivity

Through its Wi-Fi module, you can download apps that support this product so you can control them wirelessly. One of which is Smart Life app which supports a vast selection of Wi-Fi-enabled products including light strips.

Setting up is straightforward — plug it to a wall socket, power up the Wi-Fi module, open the app on your phone and select the “+” button to add new devices. From there, just follow a few instructions and have the light strip setup up in no time.

Once you’re connected, the app has a straightforward interface to change the light color, brightness, and even behavior of the lights to make it glow or cycle through colors on its own.

Readily adapts to an ecosystem

Since you’re reading about Wi-Fi-enabled light strips, you probably know that having a smart assistant in your home working in tandem with these lights unlocks new possibilities and experiences.

Compatible with assistants like Google Home and Amazon Echo, you can easily add this new device under a personalized name so you can control it using your voice in addition to the app. Have it turn on and off, change colors, and set brightness — all through voice commands.

Comparison vs Philips Hue

In essence, both Zero and Philips Hue light strips offer the same things — one can conveniently control the color, brightness, and behavior of the lights through an app and even through voice.

Where they differ mostly is the price. Two meters of Hue’s light strip is priced at US$ 79.99 or around PhP 4K when directly converted. Whereas the five-meter light strip from Zero is listed at PhP 1,750. There are also two-meter and one-meter extension variants priced at PhP 1,250 and PhP 500, respectively. Most lights from Philips Hue also don’t come with IP65 certification.

Don’t think, however, that you’re somehow cheated by going for Hue. Of course, there are tradeoffs when settling for a more affordable alternative. One is that Zero’s lights max out at 445 lumens (a measurement of visible light) while Hue’s lights can go up to 800 – 1600 lumens.

This basically means that lights made by Philips Hue are almost twice to four times brighter than the Zero light strip.

Philips also claims on its website that its light strip can last up to 20,000 hours. While Zero didn’t disclose theirs, so I’m not so sure if they can last as long as Philips’ Hue.

Conclusion

As with any other products or devices, going for the more affordable alternative has its pros and cons and one simply has to weigh them out depending on his/her needs.

For the Zero Wi-Fi Smart RGBW LED Light Strip, it offers basically what Philips Hue offers and you can also buy more of these products to have a room powered by connected lights. It’s an easy solution to adding some character in any room at a price that doesn’t break the bank.

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Canon PowerShot V10 quick first impressions: A true, blue vlogging camera

06/22/2023

The much-awaited Canon PowerShot V10 has finally launched in the Philippines. The quirky-looking camera boasts a new form factor built with this generation’s vloggers and content creators in mind. It also comes with all the modern necessities you would need such as 4K recording, vertical and landscape shooting modes, built-in color filters, and even skin smoothing.

Designed for those who want to level up the quality of their videos with ease, the Canon PowerShot V10 is a camera that is seemingly always ready when you are.

And it’s priced quite attractively too with its PhP 29,998 price tag. That comes with a free 64GB memory card and a Straightforward DVL Kairos Bag, too.

Canon PowerShot V10: Ready at a moment’s notice

The Canon PowerShot V10 is a compact and lightweight camera that is designed for portability. It measures just 3.5 x 2.5 x 1.4 inches and weighs 7.4 ounces and is made of durable materials, including a magnesium alloy body and a shock-resistant construction.

The PowerShot V10 is also weather-sealed to protect it from dust and water and comes in two colorways.

It’s equipped with a 20.9-megapixel 1.0-inch CMOS sensor and DIGIC X image processor similar to the PowerShot G7X Mark III — a popular camera among vloggers. The large sensor allows for high-quality captures and with its DIGIC X processor, the camera can offer a variety of color filters and even a Smooth Skin shooting mode.

The Canon PowerShot V10 offers up to 4K video recording at 29.97 fps and live streaming at 1080p at 30fps. It’s also equipped with a 3.5mm headphone jack, a built-in kickstand that you can also use as a grip when shooting vertically, and a 180-degree, upward-tilting touchscreen.

You can also shoot stills with the PowerShot V10 but options are somewhat limited if you’re looking for full control. There’s no manual mode here and everything is automatically set which only makes sense since this is more of a run-and-gun kind of camera. We were able to take a couple of stills and find them more than good enough for posting to socials. The wide lens actually adds a nice look to the photos and helps to make shots look a little more interesting.

Now, something I liked about the PowerShot V10 is that its whole design is very intuitive and took no time to get used to. Whether you were using the kickstand as a tripod for landscape videos or as a grip for vertical, the PowerShot V10 wasn’t at all intimidating to use. In fact, having this new form factor made it all the more fun.

The only thing I didn’t like what that you have to snap in the kickstand first before the display which feels a bit clunky for such a sleek-looking device.

The touch display was very responsive but a tad bit cramped because of the thick bezels. If there should be a next generation for this device, this is something I would want Canon to improve. The 2-inch display isn’t too small but those thick bezels do take up some room which makes it a little difficult to tap on the tiny icons. But thankfully, there are onboard physical controls to address that problem.

For ease of use and to achieve that classic vlog look, the Canon Powershot V10 comes with a 19-mm wide lens. With it, you won’t need to fully stretch out your arm to capture your entire face or the people and scenes around you. The lens also has a fixed f2.8 aperture meaning it should be able to capture a lot more light and still be able to achieve some background separation.

Face Tracking and area-specific autofocus make it easy to shoot as well. With area-specific autofocus, you can simply tap on an object on the screen and the camera will track it. I was able to try this out and it was able to distinguish faces quite consistently and was even able to track small handheld objects.

If you were unboxing or doing a show-and-tell video for example, the Canon PowerShot V10 would be a good fit given its fast autofocus and the built-in kickstand for easy setup.

In my quick time with it, I saw that since it does prioritize exposing faces, you can sometimes end up with an overblown or overexposed sky or background. There are ND filters built-in to the camera though we weren’t able to test them out due to our limited time with the device.

Stabilization is done through software and it’s not bad at all. Though at the maximum settings, the image does suffer quite a crop which will have you extending your arm a bit more.

Presenting itself as a modern solution to this generation’s content creators, the Canon PowerShot v10 is also stream-ready. Simply plug it into your computer and it should automatically register as an external camera — no software needed. More than that, you can directly stream to YouTube and Facebook thanks to its UVC capabilities.

And even if you’re not a streamer, the PowerShot V10 would make for an impressive webcam for video calls or meetings.

You can also wirelessly connect to the PowerShot V10 with the Canon Camera Connect. From here, you can use your smartphone to remotely control the device and also transfer photos or videos to your phone wirelessly. For wired connectivity, the camera offers USB-C and micro-HDMI ports onboard.

There’s also a cloud-based option where the PowerShot V10 will directly upload to the logged-in account at image.canon — a cloud-based storage service Canon provides its users.

Final thoughts

The Canon PowerShot V10 holds a lot of promise. For this generation that values both high-quality photos and videos and portability and ease of use, its design, capabilities, and novelty make for an enticing option. Though right now, I don’t see it as a replacement for a full-fledged camera like the Canon R50 but could be a great alternative to today’s smartphones that still don’t quite match the video quality of dedicated cameras.

Our time with the device was short but we were quite impressed with what it can do. And more importantly, we had fun using it.