Meross manufactures a wide range of HomeKit-compatible smart home devices for multiple regions of the world, including garage door openers, air purifiers, smart plugs and more. With Meross’ smart LED bulbs, LED light strips, ambient lights, and desk lamps, I was able to create a HomeKit lighting setup to test the company’s smart home accessories.
Compared to its direct competitors, Meross’ smart lighting products are among the most affordable HomeKit-compatible devices on the market and differentiate themselves without the need for hubs or third-party apps. Meross devices can be added, controlled, automated and managed through Apple’s Home app, providing a more streamlined ‘HomeKit’ experience.
setup
Meross’ smart home offerings differ from many other brands in the same space, such as Philips Hue smart lighting, because they don’t require the use of a hub or third-party app. In theory, you just need to open the Home app on your iPhone, tap Add Accessory, and scan the code on the device. Overall, this makes the setup process significantly easier than the clunky hubs and apps claimed by many other smart home brands.
While this is the standard scenario for most smart home accessories, I had trouble setting up some of Meross’ devices on my network, where they repeatedly failed to connect to the Home app. Some users may need to temporarily disable their router’s firewall and the 5GHz portion of their network to overcome these potential issues. This may not be necessary in your case, and Meross’ setup experience is generally very good, but potential customers should be prepared to troubleshoot their network if there are any problems.
Smart Wi-Fi LED Bulb
The Meros Smart Wi-Fi LED Bulb has a white enclosure and a frosted diffuser, with a ‘HomeKit’ pairing code on the side. The bulb is a standard size and can be purchased with a range of bases for different light fittings including E26, E27 and B22. It is not weatherproof or suitable for outdoor use.
The bulb can emit up to 810 lumens, which means it can be as bright as a 60W bulb, and can display 16 million colors with color temperature adjustments from 2,700K to 6,500K. The bulb handles small adjustments in color temperature well and color reproduction is good, especially for blues, reds and pinks. Greens, yellows and oranges are a bit flat, with more muted, pastel tones, but overall vibrancy and dynamic range are good for a low-cost bulb like this.
The Meros’ bulb is bright and vibrant enough for most uses, but more expensive competitors are a bit more dynamic in terms of brightness and color reproduction. That being said, it’s important to note that Meross’ Smart Wi-Fi LED Bulb is one of the cheapest HomeKit-enabled bulbs out there, starting at just $18.99 each and more than enough for most ‘HomeKit’ setups. The company also offers multi-packs, with two-bulbs available for $27.99.
Smart Wi-Fi Light Strip
Retailing for $34.99, the Smart Wi-Fi Light Strip looks fairly standard for products in its category, with multiple LEDs evenly spaced along its length. The strip is 16.4 feet long and is wrapped around a plastic reel and comes with a control module, power adapter and a range of mounting clips and adhesive pads.
Setting up the strip was easy, just connect the strip to the controller module and the controller module to the power adapter. A button on the module acts as a manual control and can be used to reset the strip, and Meross includes an adhesive pad specifically to help keep it out of the way.
The strip offers up to 16 million different colors and lights evenly across different brightness levels. Red tones are very rich, and blues are pretty good too. Yellows and purples aren’t reproduced very well, but the overall range of colors is more than serviceable.
The light strip can be mounted with the adhesive mounting clips included in the box, but the strip also has an adhesive back if that’s more appropriate for your implementation. It is also easy to cut the strip to size for a guide along its length.
Meros’ light strip is ideal for accent lighting, such as running along the underside of furniture rather than as the room’s only light source. The strip shines along its length adding a great, unobtrusive light to any room.
Smart Wi-Fi Ambient Light
The Meros Smart Wi-Fi Ambient Light is a lamp with a sleek, cylindrical design, with white glossy plastic at the base and transparent plastic extending across the rest of the device. The top of the lamp has a touch-sensitive capacitive area embedded under the plastic enclosure.
The lamp is only eight inches tall and four inches wide, making it the perfect size for a small side table or nightstand. The design looks good, even when it’s closed, and its cylindrical shape puts the lamp’s colors to the fore as it can emit light around its entire circumference. The light inside the diffuser is fairly well distributed, although you can tell the actual light source is below the enclosure, but it doesn’t negatively affect the overall look.
The lamp has touch-sensitive controls for added convenience, functions to turn the lamp on and off, adjust brightness and cycle through colors. The manual control option is definitely a worthwhile feature. For example, double-tapping the top control area turns off the lamp, which is perfect if you don’t have a device with the Home app or Siri.
The lamp is powered by a barrel connector port on the back, which isn’t as convenient, secure or easily replaceable as a USB connection. Surprisingly, there’s an extra small LED power indicator light on the back, which doesn’t seem very useful as it’s too small, obscured from view, and unnecessary to determine if the lamp is powered on.
In terms of light, the lamp can emit 400 lumens, which is respectable for its size. With its small design, the lamp does not provide enough light to be used as the sole light source in a room and works better as an accent piece depending on the other lighting conditions in the environment. I would have appreciated greater peak brightness to make the lamp more useful, but positioned as an accent, it’s still a worthwhile part of virtually any HomeKit–lighting setup.
Colors were similar to Meros’ other offerings, with whites, reds and blues looking rich and vibrant, while greens and yellows were a bit washed out in darker shades. The lamp’s design, offering plenty of versatility with controls and ‘HomeKit’ functionality, seems a very fair price at $42.99.
Smart LED Desk Lamp
At $68.99, the Smart LED Desk Lamp is one of Meros’ pricier smart lighting items. The lamp has an ultra-slim matte-black design perfect for minimalist desk setups. The base is made of plastic, but the upper two parts of the lamp are made from aluminum for better heat dissipation and durability. The design seems to dissipate heat well in everyday use, and even when it gets warm at full brightness, it never gets uncomfortably hot.
The upper arm is easily articulated and holds its position well, and there is a magnet at the base of the lamp to keep it closed when desired. There’s also a set screw that you need to screw in to attach the light to the base, but there’s no stop for the screw and it’s very easy to accidentally screw it in too far, which felt like a small design oversight.
Unfortunately, I feel that the hollow plastic base lets the design of the lamp down significantly. The matte plastic looks considerably less premium than the top of the lamp and shows any scratches and scuffs very easily, my lamp already has plenty of scratches right out of the box. The base looks and feels cheap, which stands in stark contrast to the premium, solid aluminum design of the rest of the accessories. Furthermore, it seems as if the plastic base doesn’t have enough weight, making the lamp a bit more precarious and wobbly than it should be.
The arm has 46 LEDs that can produce up to 400 lumens of brightness. There is no flickering of light, even at low brightness settings, which is essential to avoid eye strain with a desk lamp. Although it cannot display color, the Meros desk lamp supports white color temperature adjustment from 2,700K to 6,000K.
The base features touch-sensitive controls for added convenience, allowing the lamp to be turned on and off and the brightness changed with just a tap, which is often more convenient than calling Siri or using the Home app on the desk.
A desk lamp is great for lighting a specific task because it’s focused on a small area, but not great for lighting an entire desk. It does a great job offering practical functionality with a premium feel, but it’s a shame that the design is let down by the plastic base.
Connectivity and HomeKit support
Once the devices were paired, their responsiveness was good and provided a reliable connection to the Home app and worked well with automations. Unlike other HomeKit devices I use, the Meross offers a consistent connection to my network, with no “no response” warnings. Meross’s smart lighting responds quickly to app and voice commands, including toggling on and off, changing color and adjusting brightness, all within seconds.
Colors don’t always translate correctly from the Home app to the accessory, so it can sometimes take a little longer to find the shade you like in the app. This is due to slight color reproduction issues with some shades on some devices, but this is fairly normal for LED smart lighting, especially for shades like green and purple, and is unlikely to be noticed by most users.
The devices work over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi only, connecting directly to the router rather than through a hub. As a result, Meross devices may slow down or refuse to reconnect to the network when Wi-Fi is temporarily unavailable, but this is a random occurrence and seems to fix the cycling power issue.
bottom line
Overall, Meross’ HomeKit accessories are good, affordable smart lighting solutions. The company’s devices are well-designed, with practical conveniences such as intuitive manual controls and no need for hubs or third-party apps. Occasional issues with my network during setup and little oversights like the desk lamp’s plastic base are easy to overlook, and I wouldn’t hesitate to expand my HomeKit– setup with more Meross devices.
If you’re looking for smart lighting with the best possible color reproduction, high brightness output or weather-resistance, Meross’ devices may not be for you, but they’re excellent for their price and are worthy rivals to many of their competitors. For users looking to kickstart a HomeKit–setup on a budget, Meross’ smart lighting is a great place to start.
How to buy
In the US, Meross’ range of devices is available from Amazon and the company’s own website:
- Meros Smart Wi-Fi LED Bulb (Two-Pack) – $27.99
- Meros Smart Wi-Fi Light Strip – $34.99
- Meros Smart Wi-Fi Ambient Light – $42.99
- Meros Smart LED Desk Lamp – $68.99
Note: MacRumors is an authorized partner of Meross. When you click on a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps keep our site running. Meross provided MacRumors with a Smart Wi-Fi LED Bulb, Smart Wi-Fi Light Strip, Smart Wi-Fi Ambient Light, and Smart LED Desk Lamp for the purpose of this review. No other compensation was received.
