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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Extremely bright, with excellent color presentation Remote control is good for quick adjustments, and saves you from the app Ample customizability if you invest the time Cons App is a bit of a mess Preloaded themes are too similar Quite expensive Our Verdict If you really need the extra brightness, Lumary’s Permanent Outdoor Lights Max live up to their name, but the app that comes with them isn’t nearly as robust as that of the competition. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Lumary Permanent Outdoor Lights Max Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices 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. We reviewed Lumary’s longest offering: 158 feet with 120 LEDs. Its Permanent Outdoor Lights Max are also available in a 53-foot length with 40 LEDs and a 105-foot length with 80 LEDs.Christopher Null/Foundry 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 Each light puck can glow in your choice of 16 millions colors or produce various temperatures of white light (from a warm 2200 Kelvin to an ice-cold 6500K).Christopher Null/Foundry 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. Lumary provides a handy remote control that saves you from needing to pull out your smartphone when you want to make changes.Christopher Null/Foundry 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. Lumary’s app leaves much to be desired.Christopher Null/Foundry 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. Read...

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TechHive Editors Choice At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Surprisingly fast 4K with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos at a low price Great remote with customization potential Google Photos screensavers Cons Too much useless home-screen clutter Remote lacks dedicated fast-forward, rewind, and play/pause buttons No ethernet or USB-A ports Our Verdict Walmart’s $30 streaming box gives you more than the competition the likes of Amazon and Roku. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Walmart Onn 4K Plus Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Walmart has another winner on its hands with the Onn 4K Plus Streaming Device. For $30, you get a compact streaming box with 4K HDR, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos support. It’s a surprisingly speedy streaming player for the money, with a generous 16GB of storage for apps and its Google TV software is generally useful (at least when it’s not shoving banner ads in your face). Roku’s budget streamers (such as the $40 Streaming Stick Plus) have a slight edge in terms of ease-of-use, and Walmart’s own Onn 4K Pro has some additional features and is also worth considering. But if you want a sub-$50 streaming device that does pretty much everything well, the Onn 4K Plus is tough to beat. An unexpectedly speedy streamer Jared Newman / Foundry The Onn 4K Plus measures about an inch thick and is small enough to fit in one’s palm. It comes with a power adapter permanently attached to five-foot USB-C cable, and it uses HDMI to connect with your TV. (Roku, by contrast, no longer includes a wall charger with its budget streamers.) Walmart doesn’t publicize processor details, but the Onn 4K Plus reportedly uses a quad-core 2.5GHz Amlogic S905X5M chip. Surprisingly, benchmarks by AFTVNews have shown that it’s faster than Walmart’s $50 Onn 4K Pro, and is only slower than Amazon’s Fire TV Cube and Nvidia’s Shield TV devices. My own real-world testing bears this out. With both the Onn 4K Plus and Onn 4K Pro running side by side, the cheaper Plus was often a bit quicker at launching apps, and it was much smoother at speed-scrolling through the Pluto TV channel guides and Google TV’s Live menu. (The Onn 4K Plus was also noticeably faster at loading apps than the Roku Streaming Stick Plus.) That said, the pricier Onn 4K Pro has twice the RAM as the cheaper model—4GB versus 2GB—and that made a difference when switching between apps. After cycling through three or four apps, the Onn 4K Plus usually had to reload the next app from scratch, whereas the Onn 4K Pro would pick up where I’d left off. The Onn 4K Plus also has half the storage of its more expensive sibling—16GB versus 32GB—but that shouldn’t be an issue unless you’re installing a bunch of games on it. It’s still more generous than the 8GB on Amazon’s cheapest Fire TV Sticks. While we’re comparing, the Onn 4K Plus supports Bluetooth accessories (such as wireless earbuds) and Wi-Fi 6, but has no USB-A accessory port and no wired ethernet port. Those are exclusive to the Onn 4K Pro in Walmart’s lineup. It comes with a feature-rich remote Jared Newman / Foundry If you like a remote with a lot of buttons, the Onn 4K Plus is for you. Beyond the standard directional pad, home, and back buttons, the Plus’ remote has buttons for voice commands, quick settings, profile-switching, a link to Google’s live TV guide, a link to free videos, a channel flipper, and the obligatory paid-advertising shortcuts for various streaming services (YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, and Paramount). The remote can also control the power on your TV, and its volume buttons can control TVs, soundbars, and external A/V systems. Unlike Roku’s players, you’re not limited to HDMI-CEC control, either, as the remote can control sound systems over IR if that’s a necessity for your setup. Lastly, the remote has a programmable Star button in the top-right corner. You can use it to access smart home controls via a Google Home panel or set it to launch your favorite app. If that’s not customizable enough for you, third-party apps such as TVQuickActions let you remap the remote buttons to do whatever you want. I’ve used this to quickly access the full app list, map the Live button to Channels DVR, and reassign the pre-programmed app buttons. While Amazon’s Fire TV devices prevent such behavior, the Google TV platform Walmart uses is more permissive. And yet, a few things are missing: The remote’s buttons aren’t backlit like they are on the Onn 4K Pro remote, and there’s no “finder” function for playing a sound on the remote if it goes missing. The remote lacks dedicated fast-forward, rewind, and play/pause buttons as well—you must use the directional pad and select button instead—which may take adjustment if you’re coming from a Roku or Fire TV device. Google TV has too much clutter, but it’s still useful Jared Newman / Foundry Like Walmart’s other Onn streamers, the Onn 4K Plus runs on Android TV with a menu system known as Google TV. That means Google’s home screen will suggest things to watch based on your interests. The first three home-screen rows are pretty useful, with a row of recommendations followed by a list of your installed apps and a “Continue Watching” row. The latter pulls in movies and shows you’ve started watching on services such as Netflix, HBO Max, Apple TV, and Disney+, so you can quickly pick up where you left off. Jared Newman / Foundry Things get dicey, however, when you scroll down further, with sponsored content rows, lists of free content from Google, and on-demand movies to purchase. In the screenshot above, for instance, you can see how a large sponsored panel appears directly below the “Continue Watching” row. Google does let you customize what appears on the home screen to some extent, with a “Your services” menu where you can toggle recommendations for each streaming service. If you don’t subscribe to Peacock, for instance, you can hide its content from the home screen. Jared Newman / Foundry Still, certain things can’t be disabled, like the movie purchase row and recommendations from Google’s own free streaming services. That means you must wade through some noise just to get useful signal. More Google stuff Jared Newman / Foundry Because the Onn 4K Plus is a Google TV device, is has some other notable tie-ins to Google’s ecosystem. Most notably, the device’s Screensaver mode ties into Google Photos, letting you choose which albums to appear when the device is idle. By setting up live albums, you can turn your TV into a photo frame that’s always updating with new pictures, and it’s easy to get sucked into revisiting those memories. (Roku devices can show Google Photos albums as well, but the setup is clunkier.) The Onn 4K Plus also works as a Google Cast device, so you can stream video or music from Cast-supported apps on your phone and mirror the screen from an Android device or the Chrome browser. Jared Newman / Foundry Walmart’s streamer ties into Google’s smart home system as well. Using the Google Home panel in the quick settings menu, you can view connected cameras and adjust connected lights, thermostats, plugs, and other smart home devices, Should you buy the Walmart Onn 4K Plus? I’m an Apple TV guy, but the Walmart Onn 4K Plus is what I’d buy if I didn’t want to spend that much, especially for a secondary TV. It offers great performance, enough storage, and software that I generally find useful despite its ad-related annoyances. The Google Photos tie-in is a nice touch, as that’s where we store our family photos. There’s always a case for other streaming boxes. Roku’s latest Streaming Sticks are frequently on sale and provide a less chaotic (but increasingly frustrating) interface, and Amazon’s Fire TV streamers might appeal to folks who are all-in on Alexa. The Walmart Onn 4K Pro is also compelling for the extra bells and whistles, most notably its USB-A port and remote-finder function. But the Walmart Onn 4K Plus is what I’ll suggest for folks who want an inexpensive upgrade over an old streaming player or stodgy smart TV software, especially if they aren’t set on another platform, such as Roku. No other streamer offers more for less. This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best media streamers. Read...

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