Christmas begins to approach and a house, a balcony, a Christmas tree decorated with flashing lights are the passion of many people. Twinkly, with its smart and connected lights, is able to transform this passion into a real art. The Italian company, born in 2016 and operating in forty world markets, offers in fact a wide range of solutions to furnish with light all year round, and especially during the Christmas period, the house, the terrace, the garden but also the office, the bar, the restaurant. The LED lights offer an unlimited combination of colors and plays of light and are all controllable from the smartphone, even remotely.
Products
There are many products marketed by Twinkly, we have tried perhaps the two most popular: Flex and Strings. The first is a kind of flexible tube (sold in different lengths and with a different number of light bulbs) that allows you to decorate rooms with light, hung on the wall, fixed on a piece of furniture or on a balcony. Installation is very simple: inside the package we find all the instructions to mount it and also all the hooks and nails to fix it to the wall and create shapes and curves; the second is probably the most purchased product, especially in this period: it is the lights for the Christmas tree. Once the lights have been installed, configuration is simple and immediate. Everything is done through the Twinkly app which allows connection via Wi-Fi (in this way the lights will always be connected to the internet) or via the Bluetooth of the mobile phone. The first thing to do when adding a group of lights to the app is to carry out the mapping: through a wizard and a computer vision system, the mobile phone camera detects the exact position of each individual LED and recognizes how we have installed the product . In this way on the smartphone screen we will see the exact shape of our LEDs reproduced and we will be able to create plays of light in the right orientation and appropriate to the shape we have installed.
What can be done with lights
With Twinkly it is possible to create a truly infinite series of decorations: from Christmas to Halloween to plays of light to illuminate shops, offices, outdoor or indoor premises. The lights are controlled through the app, through which you can choose the effects and change their colors, intensity and speed. It is also possible to download new effects from the web or create new ones from scratch. And again: through the app it is possible to create playlists of effects that vary during the day, it is possible to turn the lights on and off remotely and also to choose the switching on and off times; finally, it is possible to associate Twinkly with an Alexa or Google Home voice assistant. And for those who have large spaces? No problem: the app is able to group multiple products and make them light up in a synchronized manner, for example if we have a large tree or if we want to turn the tree and the lights on the balcony on and off in unison.
Twinkly Music
The latest addition to the Twinkly family is Twinkly Music: it is a sort of USB stick that allows you to turn the lights on and off to the sound of music. The installation is very simple: the flash drive must be powered (via a USB adapter, a PC, a dock, etc …) and must be positioned near a music source (we, for example, have positioned it near a smart speaker Alexa): at that point just add the Twinkly Music functionality to the Twinkly app and the lights will automatically turn on and off based on the type of music being played or even the voices, laughter, applause picked up by the stylus.
Verdict, availability and pricing
We found the Twinkly system very interesting and we were unable, in our three weeks of testing, to identify defects: installation is very simple, the lights are set up in an instant and everything works perfectly. The price is perhaps a bit high, although certainly there is a lot of technology behind these lights. In particular, the 2-meter Flex model we tested has a list price of 89.90 euros, the 250 LED Strings model has a list price of 109.99 euros, the Twinkle Music pen instead costs 32.99 EUR.
Pros and cons
PRO
- Innovative lighting system with many functions to decorate or furnish your home
AGAINST
- A little high price (but justified by the many features offered)
Source-tg24.sky.it