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TP-Link KL50 edison style kasa smart bulb reviewed

January 4, 2021

Vintage bulbs with smart features

Decorators love the look of warm glowing filament in clear bulbs housed in open light fixtures. The problem with these vintage reproduction edison bulbs is that they are still incandescent using more electrcity than LED bulbs and putting off more heat. In addition, they lack smart home features.

Vintage bulb

On the other hand, smart LED bulbs offer the energy savings and smart home features, but lack the visual interest of filament bulbs.

Ugly smart bulb

That is where the TP-Link KL50 (affiliate link) smart bulb comes in. It looks like a vintage edison bulb, but has exposed LED filaments casting a warm light, is dimmable, and has all the smart home features that come in the rest of the Kasa ecosystem.

✅ Vintage exposed filament looks

✅ Energy efficient LED

✅ Smart features; Alexa integration, Scheduling, Routines

✅ Smart dimmable controls (Kasa, Alexa, Google Assistant, IFTTT)

In the video review below I set out to replace the incandescent edison-style light bulb in the cool steampunk lamp holder shown above with the TP-Link KL50 smart filament light bulb. It goes over pairing with kasa, the kasa app, and voice commands with Alexa.

Step 1 - Screw in the light bulb

This normally only takes one person to do.

Start by powering off your lamp holder then unscrew your old bulb and screw in the TP-Link filament bulb. Turn power on the the lamp base. The KL50 light should turn on then flash 3 times to indicate it is ready.

KL50 vintage filament smart bulb

Step 2 - Pair the smart light bulb with Kasa

TP-Link uses the Kasa app to manage their smart home devices. It is one of the more feature rich and polished smart phone apps out there. If you already own another TP-Link smart device adding the KL50 smart light bulb can be done in moments.

If you don't already have the app it is still a simple install from the app store and you just need to register an account.

Once in Kasa, click the + sign in the upper right, and choose to add a device. From there, select Smart Light, then Filament LED bulb.

The rest of the guided navigation will have you change your phone's wifi network to the wi-fi network of the KL50 smart bulb and return to the kasa app to finish the guided wizard.

If you have the Alexa app on your phone it will automatically detect the light and add it to your Alexa-discovered devices.

It's important to note you will need to use a 2.4ghz network for most smart devices, including this one

Kasa Smart Light Features

From the Kasa app you can customize and save 4 different preset brightness levels for the KL50 filament bulb.

You can also use the Kasa app to specifically fine adjust your levels in 1% increments from 1-100%.

At full brightness the bulb reaches 600 luments which will add a very bright warm glow to your space. At this brightness it will leave spots in your eyes if you stare at it.

For visual interest I found 30% brightness or dimmer worked best. It is nice to have the option either way.

Additionally, you can create multiple day of week schedules to control when to turn the light on and off.

Alexa smart home integration

During the Kasa pairing Alexa will add your device using the name you provided (for example bedroom light).

To control the light using Alexa you can just say

Alexa turn [on/off] the [light name here]

or

Alexa set the [light name here] brightness to [number] percent.

Kasa and Alexa integrate very well together.

Final Thoughts

The TP-Link KL50 smart filament light bulb has all the smart home features one would want from a dimmable LED bulb, but corrects the appearance downsides of a normal LED bulb adding the attractiveness of warm-glowing LED filament rods.

The brightness dimming is really nice because it let's you adjust the brightness intensity from mood lighting the space to task lighting as needed. Since the bulb tops out at 600 luments it is powerful enough to do double duty.

The bulb itself is only slightly more expensive than a non-smart LED bulb so this is a great value and recommended for fixtures that aren't already controlled by smart switches. You can purchase the TP-Link KL50 filament smart bulb from the affiliate links in this review if you found this article helpful as it helps support the site. Thanks!

The steampunk looking lamp base can be found from seller NewWineOldBottles on Etsy

Photo of David Mello

David Mello

Breaker of software, geek, meme enthusiast.

 

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