SYLVANIA Smart Home Reviews

The only reason I have SYLVANIASmartHome is because it’s required to use it to update the lights, which wouldn’t be a problem if it actually could see the lights. For whatever reason they are incapable of seeing the lights you have in connected with HomeKit, which means if you don’t set up the lights through their app, it can’t see them. I will not unpair every light just to re-pair it with their app. Other brands have figured this out, Nanoleaf is smart enough to just search existing HomeKit devices, just go there.

The only developer response I will entertain is "we fixed this". I fully expect selecting HomeKit to show me all relevant devices connected to my hub, any other actions will not be taken.

I bough 4. Two of them worked for a day, the other 2 I could never get to connect. They had good color but then SYLVANIASmartHome crashed and never would work again, it keeps “trying to connect “ and then it says it’s my Bluetooth network… I’ve had Philips Hue lights for 3 years and never had a single issue with them, they’re expensive but they actually work. They should be embarrassed about SYLVANIASmartHome, it’s garbage.

HomeKit keeps telling me there is an update for my smart switch but I have to use SYLVANIASmartHome to download the update. I opened SYLVANIASmartHome , selected Apple HomeKit, and it checks for updates and just gives me a gray checkmark. But the switch doesn’t even show up or anything. And SYLVANIASmartHome ’s instructions to enter pairing mode do not work. SYLVANIASmartHome is absolutely useless. I just want the “update available” alert to go away.

Once app recognizes smart device it asked if you want to update and it never finishes or comes back with an error that it cannot complete are this time. After linking smart home devices to Alexa the devices are in responsive and non controllable. Bought 8 smart bulbs to try to use with app and no luck with any of them. Will not buy any SYLVANIA products again.

As every other review says, these work half the time. The other time you're wasting your day trying to get these to pair to the crap app. Have to update the bulbs every time, and go through the process of resetting them.

I'm to the point that I'm just going to throw these away and write it up as a learning experience. Sylvania had never done me wrong in the past, but these are just total garbage.

Calling these products “smart” is offensive. Trying to turn them off or on is a crapshoot, over 1/4 of the time we wanted to control them we’d have to unscrew and screw them back in to get them to work. Sometimes that didn’t work either and we’d have to completely repair them. SYLVANIASmartHome looks sloppy and lazy too - never thought I’d have predeterminations regarding buying light bulbs, but I will avoid Sylvania after this clown show of a product…

Tried the Smart + lights, super glad I tried them out before having electrician install them in 18 FT ceiling. Every time the lights were switched off they had to be reset and added back to app, then smart app kept adding additional devices every 15 seconds so there ended up being 20 devices to add and with 4 bulbs totally impossible to manage. Seems neither the bulbs or SYLVANIASmartHome has any capacity to remember previous connections. Great concept, bad execution.

There is no point to having a system that you have to set up every single time you want to use them.

Says works with google home, it does, for about 12 hours, then you have to reset the bulbs and go through the whole set up process again. Wash rinse repeat. For almost 2 months now.

And every single time, before you can pair them, you have to update the bulbs with their app.

Every. Single. Time. I tested this out of annoyance. Updated the bulbs. Checked for more updates, nothing. Paired them. Turned them on turned them off, reset them and guess what, had to update the bulbs again.

This was less than 15 minutes! Sylvania USED to be a decent name in lighting. Not in the 21st century it seems.

Waste of money.

This is the most idiotic bit of stupidity. Why have 2 apps and make them nearly indistinguishable from each other and only have the one actually work for Wi-Fi. I had to sit with that flashing light for almost an hour before I realized there was a second app. Just delete this, or if it’s for some legacy product change the name, do something to make it not the punchline to a terrible joke of how many apps does it take to turn on a light bulb.

I bought some for my kitchen and bed room the first 2 months the worked perfect then it started having to delete all devices and then reconnect them had to do this 2-3 times every other week but then it won’t let me do anything so I deleted the groups again and now it won’t let any devices hook up at all I have deleted SYLVANIASmartHome then re-download SYLVANIASmartHome several times and it will not connect to the devices! I’m done with it!!! Please Do not waste your money on these lights

I’ve had the Sylvania bulb for a couple months now. In the beginning it worked great. Paired it with SYLVANIASmartHome and it worked beautifully. Only for about a month. Then the bulb started randomly flickering and SYLVANIASmartHome said unresponsive and unable to connect. It wouldn’t connect no matter how many times I reset it. I deleted the bulb and added it again and again with no luck. I can’t control the bulb no matter what I do or try. Time to toss the bulb, delete SYLVANIASmartHome and try something else.

I have 4 br30 lights in my living room for a couple of months now. These lights have a mind of their own. They turn on randomly by themselves. Never all four together, rather a single light. The next time a different light will turn on. It seems to happen more in the middle of the night than during the day. They are controlled by Alexa. When I give the command to turn on, seldom do all four turn on. I’ve updated these bulbs countless times without luck. As a smart light, they are junk. As a regular light, they work ok, they don’t buzz like some LED lights.

I bought a couple of their “smart bulbs” because I know the brand and the box says easy set up… not at all. The instructions say to download SYLVANIASmartHome. SYLVANIASmartHome instructed me to download another app. Then I was forced to confirm email and create an account. Then you’re supposed to turn the light on until it’s flashing and add it to SYLVANIASmartHome . After about ten minutes of trying and SYLVANIASmartHome failing to find the light I just put my regular led bulbs back in and threw the smart bulbs in the garbage. All I wanted was a light bulb I could control with my device. Simple. But this wanted personal information, SYLVANIASmartHome tried to access my location, no telling how many junk emails I’ll get from this. Very disappointed 😔

Lights are constantly unable to connect. I have about 30 lights and I've gone through all the firmware updates and have them connected to a new Echo. They will work for a day or so and then many will disconnect. Absolute waste of money and frustrating.

As an update, they left what seems to be an automated response to my negative review offering to help if I reached out to them. First I tried to use the "contact the developer" link which is broken and doesn't work. Secondly I tried to call them and was tied up in a convoluted automated phone system. So the product is bad as is the customer service. I would highly recommend buying a different brand if you are considering these.

Ok Ive had these lights for almost 2 weeks and they are nice and bright and work well but when it comes to controlling it with smart home devices it’s unresponsive and it is always unresponsive when I try it.
It’s set up and programmed correctly and it still doesn’t work
If you want a light that you can only control with your phone by Bluetooth this is it but like I said when it comes to smart home devices it won’t work with them

Will not pair with smart home devices. The light it’s self is alright, but as far as pairing with my Google nest it does not work. Really disappointed considering the light bulb itself was over 10 dollars.

App is stuck at "lets see if your devices are up to date" when trying to setup via homekit. I have apple tv and homepods that are up to date eventually a grey checkmark is displayed but nothing happens i cant scroll down past steps 1 and 2, my only option is to return to home acreen

edit: i guess this is the wrong app. why would you have different apps for bluetooth vs wifi.

Wow, SYLVANIASmartHome is a wreck and is very broken. Management, please read this. It will save you serious reputation.

There is some funkiness with SYLVANIASmartHome and the Smart+ bulb firmware updates and HomeKit which can completely ruin the user experience and soil the reputation of the product.

First, when HomeKit complains that you need a firmware update for the bulb, it sends you to SYLVANIASmartHome. Which doesn’t help you, as it just mentions smart speakers.

So you create an account and drop the bulbs from HomeKit and add them to SYLVANIASmartHome and then you can do a firmware update.

But then the new firmware doesn’t do HomeKit. What? Stuck? Here is the fix:

Drop the bulbs from SYLVANIASmartHome and log off from SYLVANIASmartHome . Then go back into SYLVANIASmartHome and claim you have a smart speaker. Then you can apply the HomeKit firmware to the bulb(s). After the update, you can add them to HomeKit again.

Obviously this is a cluster and a major inadvertent error on behalf of the developers. It is embarrassingly painful and confusing. It should be fixed, or Sylvania and Ledvance can just continue to embarrass their company reputation. Management’s choice.

So I’ve had it for a year now. I have an iPhone XR and in the instructions that came with the bulb, was directions on how to operate. 1st, you have to download the Sylvania app. Once logged back in you can create the profile of the room that the bulb is in (ex: living room, theater (if your rich), I’m not so I’m using The Study.) you may have to perform IT tasks yourself simply by turning off the lamp or light source for 5 seconds (resets secret Chinese listening devices) once your bulb starts to flash ———> your paired. Use the Sylvania app settings to create either a button on your drop down menu or a widget if they have one and wah-la…! One con so far… my favorite color is red. The bulb doesn’t seem to want to adjust to a true red. Instead it thinks that red is pink. Great for if your one of the members of Aerosmith on tour…roadie… Bad if your trying to watch movies.
I would give more stars for a little more play..it would be cool to have a strobe effect mode, a color morph change mode, maybe more connectivity options such as Bluetooth connect for connections to other devices instead of iPhone, Samsung or Google telecommunications systems. I’m one for non-monopolistic corporate competition. More companies —> more options —> more jobs —>more money —>more education.

From the look of it, apparently this brand had a lot of issues once upon a time, so I got a good amount of lights on sale for a great price. Connected then to SYLVANIASmartHome, and it just works. I’ll follow up later with an updated review since I’m only 3 weeks in so far.
But so far, so great!

Thank you so much for something so easy for a problem we encountered with our wiring. We needed remote bulbs for our foyer
so that when we turned on the fan they didn’t come on or vice versa. I had purchased other bulbs and they just wouldn’t pair and SYLVANIASmartHome was horrible. I returned those and happened to walk down the light bulb aisle and seen the SYLVANIA SMART+ bulbs.. brought them home, downloaded SYLVANIASmartHome and minutes later I had working lights!! Simple! Love them! Love that I can dim them and how beautifully lit my foyer is! Thank you so much!! For this girl struggles with technology.

Sylvania Smart+ Bluetooth LED without Alexa or Siri. Needed to use app to configure from Alexa to Bluetooth only. Works just fine after LED Firmware update and “enabling.” Allows for a short name associated with each bulb.

Other apps didn’t connect.

Now instead of 5 LEDs on one switch, each LED can be controlled independently. Paid $4 each for BR30 Dimmable 2700K. Mostly they will be in the “Off” mode. Not sure how much electricity that use with Bluetooth enabled.

Do they last?