Verdict
This long, weatherproof string of candle bulbs is ideal for providing light and colourful effects along fences and fascias, or even when strung across a ceiling. With 80 lanterns spread over 24 metres of cable, the Twinkly C9 Bulbs provide a surprising amount of light to outdoor spaces, and can deliver incredible, punchy colours in a wide variety of customisable effects. They’re a little expensive, but they feel well made, and perform with real panache.
Pros
- Bright bulbs with strong colours
- Huge range of effects
- Smart home integration
Cons
- App missing a couple of features
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Smart string lightsThese smart candle lights come in 12 or 24-metre lengths, and have an individually controllable, multicolour bulb every 30cm. Use the Twinkly app to apply incredible effects.
Introduction
If you’re looking for a string of lights to add festive cheer, or all-year colour to a stretch of your home or garden, the Twinkly C9 Bulbs should be near the top of your list. Available in two lengths featuring either 40 or 80 individually controlled multicolour lamps, this light set is perfect for illuminating long stretches of fascia or fence, or for weaving to and fro across an outdoor or indoor space.
I’m testing the longer, 24.4 metre (80 feet) version of the Twinkly C9 Bulbs, which has 80 lanterns: the half-length version has half the bulbs, so both feature a light about every 33cm. The string is weatherproof, and each lantern has a small plastic clip to help with mounting it.
Design and Features
- Weatherproof bulbs every 33cm
- Compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant
- App missing a couple of features
For those not in the know, C9 bulbs are the larger of two commonly used decorative candle lights. While strings of these would conventionally have had replaceable incandescent bulbs, these days they have LED imitations. The longer set of Twinkly C9 Bulbs has 80 non-replaceable lamps, each of which is illuminated by an LED light that can display more than 16 million colours. Each bulb has a faceted ‘pine cone’ finish, lending them a decorative effect, and giving white light some subtle multicolour fringes.
Twinkly has given each of the bulb holders a small plastic clip. While this can only extend a few millimetres, it’s enough to hold onto a guide wire, or possibly even a thin fascia board or gutter, making it easier to fit these lights along the side of a house or shed. Alternatively, you could string them in a zigzag above a room or outdoor space, again using a guide wire if needed.
At the end of the Twinkly C9 Bulbs’ cable you’ll find a permanently attached controller with a single button. This in turn connects to a supplied power adaptor via a weatherproof locking ring. The adaptor itself is IP44 rated, meaning it’s fine for damp environments like a shed or cellar, but it shouldn’t be exposed directly to liquid. The rest of the set is fully weatherproofed.
Out of the box, these lights have a simple pattern that sees a wave of white lights pass down the string. To get anything more out of them, you’ll need the Twinkly app. This initially connects via Bluetooth, but ideally you’ll then add the C9 Bulbs to your wireless network, allowing you to control them from anywhere. If there’s no signal in your garden, the Twinkly controller can act as an access point, allowing you to still control the lights from a distance with Wi-Fi.
The Twinkly C9 Bulbs are intended to be used as a long string, so the Twinkly app initially offers only one-dimensional effects that play along the set’s length. However, in my small garden I had to pass them three times across the same length of fence.
This wouldn’t have been too bad if I had left it as was, but the Twinkly app has a mapping feature that helps it work out exactly where each bulb actually is. Guided by the app, you point your phone camera at the lights while they flash, until they all show green. Once the app understood the bulbs’ true positions, it offered me a range of two-dimensional effects, really helping unlock the lights’ potential.
With the Twinkly C9 Bulbs set up, you can use the app to browse Twinkly’s range of effects, and also download any featured or seasonal ones. You can even use the FX Wizard to create your own, starting from scratch, an existing pattern, or a GIF file. Once you’ve selected and applied an effect it’s stored in the controller’s memory, after which you can use the button on the controller to cycle through stored effects.
Once the controller’s memory is full you have to remove effects to add news ones, but you can only delete effects in reverse order. That’s a tad frustrating if you want to remove the first effect in the queue, as you have to delete everything and then start again.
While the Twinkly app is good, there are at least a couple of ways it could be improved. The scheduling support is very basic, supporting just a single on and off time to be applied each day. You can’t, for example, set the lights to come on in the morning and evenings during the week, and all day at the weekend. You can’t fade effects in or out, and you can’t even specify the effect to use – the lights default to the most recent one. However, with support for Alexa, HomeKit and Google Home, you can add the Twinkly C9 Bulbs to smart home routines.
Performance
- Brilliantly bright, saturated colours
- Excellent effects
I was slightly surprised by just how powerful the Twinkly C9 Bulbs lights are. Turned down to about 10% brightness, they were just right to discreetly add colourful fun to my garden, without turning the lawn into a light show. Only when I came to take photos of the installation did I realise it wasn’t especially impressive.
Turning the brightness back up cured that problem. At anything above about half power, these lights were plenty powerful enough to create an impressive Christmas display.
At full power they were bright enough to be highly visible during moderately bright autumn days.
Even more impressive, however, was the intensity of their colours. During the day, the lanterns’ faceted plastic seems to trap daylight, diluting the LEDs’ hues. At night there’s no such problem, and the bulbs emit pure, saturated colours that can be truly remarkable.
The Twinkly C9 Bulbs aren’t really dense enough for some of Twinkly’s more sophisticated 2D effects, but most are still impressive. I found that was particularly true for those where individual bulbs shift colour rather than turning off, although one-dimensional chase effects did of course work well. I gently criticised the Twinkly Cluster for the fact its lights sometimes appeared to step, rather than move smoothly, between multiple shades. There was no such issue here.
You can, if you want, set the bulbs to show a solid colour. Some of the effects are also more subtle, such as the static reds and oranges shown here.
At full brightness, set to pure white, this set consumed a maximum of 41 watts.
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Should you buy it?
You want great outdoor lights
This long light string offers bright bulbs with powerful colours, animated with effects via the Twinkly app. It’s ideal for house fascias, sheds, fences and other outdoor or covered areas.
You don’t need the features
These lights’ features mean they’re moderately expensive. If you don’t need their quality, you could spend a lot less.
Final Thoughts
The Twinkly C9 Bulbs are simply a great set of outdoor lights. Weatherproof, bright, and intensely colourful, they’re a great way to liven up the edges of a house, shed or garden. My experience suggests that a single set would be enough for a small urban garden, but if you want to create bigger or more sophisticated effects, you can use the app to group and coordinate multiple sets of Twinkly C9 Bulbs, or other Twinkly lights. Perfect for Christmas, or just for cheering up the garden with a big splash of colour.
How we test
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Used as our main smart light for the review period
Tested for at least a week
We measure the light output from bulbs at different colour temperatures and colours so we can compare light output
We test compatibility with the main smart systems (HomeKit, Alexa, Google Assistant, SmartThings, IFTTT and more) to see how easy each light is to automate
FAQs
Traditionally, C9 bulbs are bigger, and typically brighter than C7 bulbs, but they may use more energy. Twinkly doesn’t make a C7 equivalent to its C9 Bulbs product.
If you’ve got an existing string of C9 light bulbs, you could retrofit them with LED lights. It’s unlikely to be cost-efficient, though. You also wouldn’t get the same effects that are available with a modern smart string, such as the Twinkly C9 Bulbs.
