Cololight Mix ACID RGB Review

One of my favourite RGB lights yet

Whenever I look at ways to accessorise my gaming and office space, I like many turn to RGB lights such as the Nanoleaf and Phillips hue but these options can be expensive and all feel rather samey due to a rather narrow choice of products. Enter Cololight with their new MIX RGB light that quite quickly became one of my favourite home office accessories for a few key reasons.

Design

The Cololight MIX is a large square slab coming in a black or white colourway with a circular diffuser on top. Underneath that diffuser is a 32-light bead array that can all be programmed and controlled individually. The plastic base acts as the power unit for the device and features a button to allow you to control the device and power as well as a simple sensor for some cool effects we
will talk about later. Surrounding each disc is also two slots that are used to connect other Cololight MIX lights to create arrays of them for some pretty jaw-dropping wall lights, The connectors slide in using a special chip design that comes in the box they are designed to be easily removed and swapped if desired but this does leave a piece of plastic sticking out the front of each light, I would have made more sense to do this on the underside of the product so it was less obvious and easy to break. On the underside, you’ll find the two power ports. One is the USB C port and the other is for
the 24v adapter. Lifesmart says that users can connect up to 11 MIX lights using a USB C cable and a 24v 1A adapter. Anything past 11 MIX lights requires an additional power adapter which they will happily sell you and it’s nice to be given the option of how exactly you want to power this device.

How to mount

The base contains magnetic which is great for fridges and other magnetic surfaces, meaning you can quite easily move these lights around to find the perfect location for them, There are also two placeholder slots for the 3M tape that comes in the box so mounting to the wall is a breeze too. Or you could simply sit this on your desk flat or in an upright position, there really are 101 ways you can mount and enjoy this little light making it one of the most versatile on the market.

Performance

Out of the box, you can control the light by simply plugging it in and pressing the physical button to cycle through a few pre-determined lighting effects. though of course being a smart home product it
does have a companion app that opens up a whole world of Lighting possibilities.
Setting up the light was a breeze, holding the button for a few seconds entered bluetooth pairing mode and from there just launch the app, and provide a wifi password and it was done. the process was painless and quick.
The app experience is well laid out and mega easy to navigate thankfully as there are a lot of different features here. If you already own Cololight products the presets section will feel familiar to you, sadly there are no new presets to choose from but it’s easy enough to cycle through them and choose your favourite. Custom templates are where the fun really begins. Given that the Cololight
MIX has a bigger light with more beads the custom mode has new ways to tweak the viewing experience. There are 27 lighting styles and 66 different colour profiles. Each profile and style can also be tweaked to a certain speed between 1 and 32 or even be reactive to music. Having the light breathing between a range of different colours is where this light is the most visually pleasing and impressive.

The diffusion created by the large white defuser really leads to a beautiful and bright light that appears to breathe and blend between colours and styles, I really have seen nothing like it, especially for its price range of just £45. You can really go to town on these custom modes to make something unique for your setup. You can also save multiple and simply swap between them all by swiping through the app. Sadly, I only have the one Cololight MIX to play with today so didn’t get a chance to play with some of the multi MIX effects. I would have loved to test out the link to see how multiple lights connected to one another. The reactive music mode that flashes the light to
whatever sound it detects is fun for all of a few minutes before you discover just how annoying it is and proceed to turn it off and never use it again. It does however seem to perform better than some other lights with similar features thanks to the microphone being built into the actual device rather
than relying on a smartphone.
Watching some of the videos surrounding this product it does feel a little misleading in terms of what this product can actually do. A good example of this is during one scene the user places a model on the mix and the light changes to mimic that colour. Now unless I have completely missed that setting in the app this doesn’t appear to be a feature at all and was just some clever trickery in the app. you can of course place models on this and manually set the light to reflect its colour and I can understand the appeal, the MIX feels like a great way to show off some of your favourite models but just be warned an automatic colour matching options is not available here.

One feature I did appreciate here was the gesture controls, that other circle on the top is actually a sensor that allows you to change the effect based on 2 options, brightness (the more ambient light the brighter it is) and gesture to hover and swipe over the device to change effects. I suspect this is actually how they did the car colour change trick mentioned above.

Third Party Connections

Like most smart home lighting products Cololight MIX supports Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant so you can issue commands to these home apps to turn on the light and change the mood to something else. In what appears to be fairly standard once again in the smart lighting space there
is no Apple Homekit support here which is infuriating and sorely missed, of course, if you have the knowhow you could absolutely use something like HomeBridge or Home Assistant but this requires a bit of work I think most people will simply not bother with.

Conclusion

Overall then with its dual core processor, large light array and bold design cololight have created quite a cool and unique light here. It is bigger and bright and portable. Sadly the software still leaves a little to be desired and the lack of Homekit means its an instant write-off for some. That alongside the questionable advertising and features still makes me recommend this to anyone
looking for a unique lighting experience as long as they understand its limitations before purchasing.

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