Lite Moments Globe

It's starting to get a little warmer outside, and the sun is only occasionally indicating that we can actually stay relatively sedentary outside for more than... well, a few minutes. It also means that we are taking the covers off our garden furniture and getting ready for what will hopefully be a hot summer.

I've actually done that myself - sure, we need to sand our terrace, buy a new barbecue, and generally prepare for the period of the year when the patio door is permanently open and our boys are constantly alternating between inside and outside, preferably in the evening hours.

It's in anticipation of such a setting that I recently hung a couple of Moments lights from Lite, a 14 metre light chain with 50 centimetre bulbs, which costs a fraction of what Hue, for example, charges for this kind of light - we're talking around £52 for the tested chain.

For that you get a fairly long chain where each light is IP65-certified, which means they can withstand most weather conditions. And they work with both Google Home (and therefore voice control via Google Assistant) and Amazon Alexa. There's no IFTTT, Thread, or Matter, updated standards to ensure functionality across a wider range of smart homes, and there's also no Apple HomeKit, but to be honest, Google Home is enough for me as it remains the most robust ecosystem.

There's even a microphone built in, which is platform agnostic. It doesn't listen through software to specific music services, it just "listens" to whatever music is playing and creates light changes based primarily on rhythm. It's a fairly rudimentary implementation and the effect is subtle, but it's still functionality for very little money, and to be honest, I wasn't expecting much more than voice-controlled light at this price point.

The Lite app itself is pretty compelling. There are 64 million colour combinations and you can customise both colour and light, set timers and make automations. In addition, the light always responded to voice activation via Google and was never slow to respond after I switched it on with my mobile phone.

The only downside is that even though the chain is 14 metres long, there's a metre between each bulb, so in principle you only get 15 light sources. This can make for a rather sparse effect in the garden, and it's difficult to fix immediately afterwards unless you string several Lite Moments next to each other, which seems to be a waste. It might therefore have been an idea to charge a little extra for the light chain and then place a source every 50 centimetres.

Otherwise, it's hard to find fault with the functionality, power, or app control, and if you're using either Google or Alexa, then it's definitely recommended as a worthy, cheap alternative to the established giants.