Light up your home: Yeelight LED Strip 2 for $36.99

Yeelight products are no longer a blank page. For many of you, and also for me, they are a kind of introduction to the topic “Smart Home”. Because you can integrate the Yeelight Bulb, the Yeelight Ceiling Lamp or the Bedside Lamp into your WLAN and control them with the App. Also the Yeelight LED Strip is popular, but now there is a second version, the Yeelight LED Strip 2. This offers a decisive advantage: you can extend it!

• Yeelight LED Strip 2
  • at TomTop for $36.99 | AliExpress for $41.99 |  Amazon for $59.99
• Yeelight LED Strip Additional Strip
  • at AliExpress for $9.99 | TomTop for $8.99 | Amazon for $15.99

Technical Specifications

Packaging & Scope of delivery

Anyone who already owns a Yeelight product himself should know that this is by no means “Chinese scrap”. The packaging alone confirms this impression, because first of all it is visually modern and everything is well packaged. If you open the box you will receive the english manual. Below is the Yeelight LED Strip 2, rolled up accurately, of course. Underneath is again the power supply and the European adapter (depends on where you buy it), which is attached to the power supply with a turning mechanism.

Much more is not available and also not necessary. The first impression of the quality is super and Yeelight has everything well packaged. In the manual you can find the QR-code for the app, so you shouldn’t throw it away immediately!

Hardware

First a few hard facts about the Yeelight Strip 2. The actual Strip is two meters long and accommodates 200 LEDs, the predecessor had only 60. The power is 7.5W and is therefore a bit lower than the predecessor (12W). The color temperature of the white varies between 3000 and 6500 K. The wavelength range of the visible colors ranges from 760 nm (red) to 390 nm (purple).

But the LEDs are not the only technology in the Yeelight LED Strip 2. No, to be smart, WiFi is still missing. That’s why Yeelight uses an 802.11 b / g / n 2.4GHz WLAN module.

Between the LEDs and the power supply there is also a control element with a button. With this you can switch the lamps on and off. You can also “click” through the colors by keeping the button pressed and simply stopping at the desired color. Theoretically you could leave it at that and use the Yeelight Strip 2 just like that. The full potential can only be achieved with the Yeelight App!

Integration into the Yeelight App

Integrating the Yeelight LED Strip 2 into your own network is really easy. First you have to download the Yeelight app to your smartphone (Download Android | Download iOS). Then you have to change the server to Mainland China/Mainland China in the settings (top left into the menu and then to “More”).

Then click on Add device, alternatively you can do this with the plus sign in the upper right corner of the app. Then you have to enter your WLAN password, go to your WLAN settings, connect to the network of the Yeelight Strip (“yeelight-light-strip2..”) and go back to the app. Now the connection process should start and a red circle should appear. That’s it!

The Yeelight App

If you are not familiar with the Yeelight App yet, I would like to give you a short overview. Because the Yeelight App is relatively extensive. For each device you add, there are presets by Yeelight, including a sunset, night or cinema mode, which I especially liked. But one can also manually select the desired color via the color palette and of course change the brightness. Also the color flow mode is part of the game, where you can select a sequence of colors that should be displayed one after the other.

In contrast to the Yeelight LED E27 light bulb, what is missing is the “sun” mode, in which you can choose the right white between warm white and cold white. The timing makes it a little smarter. You can set up as many schedules as you like, with which you can set the start and end times and the scene. There is also a Sleep Timer. I find the color recognition particularly interesting. This allows you to identify the color of an object in the apartment with your camera in the app and the light strip then adjusts the color – very cool!

It is also possible to add several devices to a room, allowing them to be operated synchronously. And if you haven’t figured it out yet, you can do it all on the go with your mobile network without being in your own WLAN. So if you see in the app that you accidentally left the light on, you can simply switch it off again with your smartphone.

Voice Assistants & IFTTT Support

Alexa & Co. can also be easily linked to the Yeelight products. The support includes Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant & Apples Siri. The Yeelight app also provides instructions on how to network the assistant and your Yeelight gadget. In addition, this manual also provides you with some voice commands. You can find this in the app in the menu under “Integration”. In my test with Google Assistant as well as with Siri this worked well, even though I rarely use it privately.

If you are already familiar with IFTTT (“If this, then that”), you will be happy to know that the Yeelight LED Strip 2 is also compatible with it. So you can combine a trigger and an action. An example: When I leave my house, the Yeelight light strip switches off automatically. Of course you have to define how the smartphone knows when you leave the house. In any case, the Yeelight app already offers some ideas here, which you can also find under “Integration”.

Yeelight LED Strip 2 Extension

The biggest advantage of the second generation of the Yeelight light strip is the possibility to extend it. The manufacturer offers a 1 M Extension Pack, which can be clipped to the end of the Yeelight Strip very easily. You can’t use the extension separately! It needs power and the connection to the WLAN from the actual light strip. I personally don’t need it, 2 meters are enough in my apartment. It’s just an extension, there are no more functions or the like.

Conclusion

Yeelight generally provides an easy introduction to the topic of “Smart Home” and the Yeelight LED Strip 2 is no exception. Here, too, everything is fine, the processing is super, the app is relatively strong and the integration into the network and the link to the language assistants works without any problems. The only notable advantage over its predecessor, however, is that it can only be expanded, and those who can do without it can stay with the first version.