New light strips from Qube aim to bring smart home features at an affordable price

Smart home lighting solutions have been a big trend over recent years, and that’s certainly continuing this year at CES in Las Vegas. We’ve already seen a handful of new smart home products and now Qube is announcing new Smart Light Strips that aim to offer the same features as higher-end smart LED strips, at a more affordable price.

Being sold through an Indiegogo campaign, Qube’s Smart Light Strips are touted as a “truly affordable way” for customers to enter the smart lighting market. They feature built-in WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy, meaning you can control them and change their color directly from your phone.

One perk of Qube’s solution is that it doesn’t require any sort of standalone hub like many smart lighting offerings do.

Unlike other Bluetooth-powered lighting, Qube Smart Light Strips are 100 percent connected to the cloud, enabling remote access from anywhere. Out at dinner and realized you forgot to turn on the accent lighting in the entryway? No problem — simply use whatever mobile device you have with you to turn them on.

The Qube Smart Light Strips are also location aware. This means that user’s can create personalized automations that are based upon their relative position to the smart strips.

Qube says that the Smart Light Strips will be able to integrate with services like Amazon Echo and IFTTT, but it’s unclear at this point if HomeKit will be supported. Qube has developed its own iOS app, though, that also supports Apple Watch.

One trend that’s slowly becoming apparent with smart home products is that if you want HomeKit support, you’re going to have to pay a little more. Qube’s Smart Light Strips are certainly more affordable than light strips from companies like Philips, but you’ll have to decide if you’d rather pay more for HomeKit or save a few bucks and have a more convoluted smart home setup.

Qube Smart Light Strips are being sold on Indiegogo now with shipping times listed for March. Right now, a 2-meter light strip set starts at $24.