Eve Flare review: Colorful HomeKit smart light that goes anywhere

Eve Flare is a great HomeKit accessory and a fun addition to your smart home. It's an accent light that can be white or literally any color of the rainbow. Control this HomeKit-enabled light with the Eve app, the Apple Home app, or a voice command to Siri. It's portable, has IP65 water resistance, and boasts over six hours of battery life, so you're not limited to using it indoors or near an outlet.

The spherical lamp has a flat bottom where it connects to its charger. On the bottom, you'll find two buttons: "power" and "mode." The mode button switches the Eve Flare between color options. There's also a thin wire handle, which you can use for carrying Eve Flare or hanging it. You can use Eve Flare while it's in its charging base or on its own, anywhere you want since it has a built-in rechargeable battery.

Since it's HomeKit-enabled, you can set it to be part of your favorite HomeKit scenes and HomeKit automations. Eve Flare portable LED smart lamp is a great addition to any room in your home or even outdoors for a special ambience.

Note that you will need a HomePod, HomePod mini, or Apple TV as a hub for Eve Flare, as with any HomeKit smart light, if you want to be able to control it remotely. You'll also need the free Eve for HomeKit app.

Eve Flare: Price and availability

Eve Flare can be purchased at Amazon and B&H. It retails for $100.

Eve Flare: Turn ons

I've been enjoying the Eve Flare portable smart LED lamp a great deal. It's always a hit with guests and my kids managed to assign some magical attributes to it, as they "contemplated the orb" in the photo above (they're a bit different, my kiddos).

While Eve says the battery will last for up to six hours between charges, I found it lasted well over that even at full brightness. It adds ambiance to any room in your home, and since it is water-resistant, you can even take it outdoors. The occasional splash won't hurt it, though it's not submersible. The color picker in the Eve app represents a full range of colors by the pixel so you can make it glow any color you can imagine, plus you can adjust the brightness to get it just how you like it.

I didn't find myself using the wire handle very much, but it's convenient to have for carrying or for hanging the Eve Flare. The lamp is quite lightweight and the flat bottom makes it stable anyplace you put it. Use HomeKit and make it part of your favorite scenes and automations, so you can have it greet you when you come home, leave it on for pets when you're not home, or make it look like you're home when you're not. I find myself using Siri to turn it on and off most often. You can also just press the buttons on the bottom. Or you can turn it on/off or change the color with a tap in the Eve app or the Apple Home app. Note that you can do some basic controls in the Apple Home app, but you'll need the Eve app for setup and more granular control.

Eve Flare: Turn offs

My biggest complaint is that it gets disconnected from the app from time to time, which requires a hard reset to fix. That's annoying. It's happened to me once in the couple of months I've been using it.

If you're expecting this to light up an entire room, this isn't the light for you. This is purely an accent light, for colorful ambiance and fun. Otherwise, the only other thing I can imagine that someone wouldn't like is the price point.

Eve Flare: Competition

Philips Hue Go is a similar product at a similar price point. Rather than a sphere, it's bowl-shaped. LIke the Eve Flare, it's HomeKit-enabled. But you'll need a Philips Hub to control it within the app.

A far cheaper option that looks similar to Eve Flare is the LOFTEK LED Vibrant Light Ball, which comes in several sizes. It's not HomeKit-enabled or even controllable with an iPhone app; you control it manually on the lamp itself or with the remote control that comes with it.

Eve Flare: Should you buy it?

• You want a HomeKit-enabled smart light in every color of the rainbow
• You want a light you can take anywhere
• You want to add ambiance to your home or party scene

• You're trying to light up an entire room
• You're looking for an underwater light
• It's out of your price range

Eve Flare is the HomeKit-enabled smart light you want if you're looking for a portable lamp that shines in any color you can dream of. It doesn't light up a room; it's just for ambiance. Eve Flare is water-resistant but not waterproof, so keep that in mind if using near water. There's no denying this is a pretty pricey light, so it won't be for everyone.

Other than one random annoying disconnection, I've had a great time with the colorful Eve Flare. It's a conversation piece; people (especially my kids) get quite a kick out of it. Eve Flare's portability and the ability to set it up HomeKit scenes and automations make it extremely flexible and useful.

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