Lumary Permanent Outdoor Lights Max review: Bright lights, bad app

Best Prices Today: Lumary Permanent Outdoor Lights Max

Lumary is a newish smart home company focused heavily on lighting products, and its latest offering is a high-end (or at least high-priced) permanent outdoor strip lighting solution. The company makes three permanent lighting products, with the Lumary Max, reviewed here, being its most expensive solution

Price, however, is hardly always the best signal of quality.

Specifications

The Lumary Permanent Outdoor Lights Max product features a familiar set of LEDs daisy chained along a sturdy wire, all clad in white and ready to attach to your eaves. The system comes in three length options: 40 LEDs/53 feet, 80 LEDs/105 feet, or 120 LEDs/158 feet. Prices are $300, $450, and $650 respectively. I received the 120-LED version for review.

From the moment the Lumary Permanent Outdoor Lights Max are powered on, it’s evident they are much brighter than the competition.

Lumary bills its LED technology as RGBAICW, with 16 million colors supported in each LED and programmable white temperatures ranging from 2200 Kelvin to 6500K. The lights are very bright, maxing out at 60 lumens each, a significant upgrade over most other permanent lights I’ve tested. Maximum power draw is specified at 96 watts. The lighting modules and wiring are rated IP67 for weatherproofing, while the inline control box is IP65. Read TechHive’s IP code guide for a better understanding of how products are protected from the elements.

Lumary says that product lifespan varies based on production batch, with early batches specified at 15,000 hours and the latest jumping to 50,000 hours. (It’s not clear if there’s any way to tell which batch you’re purchasing.)

LEDs are separated by a distance of 16.5 inches and come with 20 LEDs in each segment, which are connected to one another with waterproof seals. Extension cables of both 4- and 12 feet are included that you can use at any point in the chain of lights. Only about 3 feet of extra cabling appears at the A/C adapter side of the lights along with the control box; you’ll probably need to use one of the in-line extension cables or a standard electrical extension cable to reach an electrical outlet.

Lights can be mounted with either preaffixed adhesive or screw hardware; both options are included, as are additional clips to help keep wiring in place, a handy bonus. All necessary hardware is included, as is a remote control powered by two AAA batteries (not included).

Lumary’s lights connect to its mobile app via 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. Third-party support for Alexa and Google Home infrastructures is also included.

Installation and setup

Setup of the Lumary Permanent Outdoor Lights Max is a familiar process, and as with most permanent lights, you’ll spend the bulk of your time planning exactly where they should go and where to use the included extension cords before breaking out a ladder and painstakingly attaching the lights to your eaves.

After installing the Lumary app, the system is designed to auto-discover new Lumary hardware via Bluetooth. I had to turn the lights on and off a few times via the single button on the control box to complete the task, but otherwise the process was quick, after which I tapped in my Wi-Fi credentials and started a firmware update to complete the onboarding.

Using the Lumary Permanent Outdoor Lights Max

From the moment they’re powered on, it becomes evident that the Lumary Max lights are much brighter than typical string lights or permanent lights. The 60-lumen LEDs sear the retinas at close range and full brightness, even though the beam is fairly wide and diffuse.

The Lumary app, however, is a real oddity that is far from intuitive and is clearly a work in progress. The apparent problem is that is a clone of the Smart Life app, a multivendor application that ranks as one of the worst user experiences on the market. Lumary’s app takes Smart Life and seemingly makes it even more scattered.

Like Smart Life, the Lumary app first drops you into a view of all your Lumary gear. Tap the Permanent Lights Max icon to drill down and access detailed management features. The first page of device management is a bulb-by-bulb editor that lets you paint your chosen color directly to each LED. This mode however only supports static colors and white bulb—no visual effects—and bizarrely, these scenes can’t be permanently saved after you’ve painstakingly created them.

One tab over you’ll find Lumary’s pre-created scenes, divided into “Scenery” (like “Lotus Reflecting the Sun”), “Life” (“Holiday,” “Working”), “Festival” (“Christmas,” “Forest Day”), and “Mood” (“Love and Fantasy,” “Spring Fishing”). There are some 55 scene modes available, and they’re all a lot alike, with few seemingly seasonally appropriate.

I’m not sure why, but the Christmas theme features a variety of flashing colors instead of red and green hues, and they come off like cheap party lights. The colors and animations in the app also don’t match up well to what the lighting looks like in real life. You won’t get any kind of sense of what these themes look like unless you try them out one by one. Fortunately, the themes are adjustable—within reason—and these adjustments can be saved for future use. But again, so much trial and error is needed to make your theme look good that it really doesn’t matter which one you use as a starting point.

Lastly, various music modes (which can work with either a microphone on the control box or your phone’s mic) are included.

The app has a basic countdown timer and scheduling system that can turn the lights on or off and set a theme from your collection, but this all needs to be done when you’re drilled down into the lights’ detail screen. You can make quick adjustments to brightness, color temperature, and the countdown clock from the Lumary home screen, but the countdown clock here is only displayed in seconds, which is awfully unintuitive for a multi-hour timer.

The included remote control is fortunately a thoughtful touch, letting you cycle through scenes and adjust scene speed and brightness, in addition to cycling power. Five additional preset buttons let you turn the lights to all red, green, or blue or set them to warm white or cool white.

Should you buy the Lumary Permanent Outdoor Lights Max?

Lumary’s lights are very bright, the colors are vivid, and its remote is useful, but I really dreaded having to deal with the app. The $546 street price for the longest kit, 158 feet in length, is another potential stumbling block. For my money, Govee’s Permanent Outdoor Lights 2 is a more well-rounded offering that’s easier to use, even if it’s not as bright.

If you truly need something that will make your house the brightest in the neighborhood, on the other hand, Lumary’s kit might be worth a look.

This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart lighting.