Linkind Smart Solar Spotlight SL5C Review: Efficient LED Lighting For Your Front Yard

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When reviewing products such as a laptop computer, smart toaster oven, or even a car, finding parameters on which to gauge the various features and benefits can be easy because of the multiple ways in which those products can directly influence daily life. Determining how a computer helps work get done and why increased fuel mileage and adaptive cruise control make commuting more tolerable both represent tangible benefits to daily tasks. Applying the same parameters or logic to decorative outdoor lighting kind of falls apart as the nighttime exterior aesthetics of your domicile really don't have any practical or utilitarian impact upon our lives in any way. Nonetheless, AiDot has provided SlashGear with a set of its Linkind Smart Solar Spotlights to use and enjoy and report back to our readers whether you should enjoy them as well.

Aside from well-to-do home owners in houses with the perfect kind of curb appeal for one of those cable home listing shows, most of us likely rarely think about home lighting. Of course, interior lighting is a must while exterior lighting can be more of an overlooked luxury. But as a way of making beautiful outdoor spaces for the dwellers of average homes – even the renters – these Linkind Smart Solar Spotlights SL5C, also known as an upgraded version Smart Solar Spotlights SL5 we reviewed last year, are meant to be an easy way to give your home an evening glow-up on a budget. I've spent a couple of weeks with them installed on my home, and this is how they worked out for me.

Perhaps the biggest impediment to updating or upgrading your exterior lighting after picking out the right equipment is actually setting up and installing it. Historically, permanent outdoor lights have had to be wired and that can mean not only digging channels in which to bury electrical wire, but also hiring an electrician to hook them up to a switch in the house. Even if you plan to do it yourself, hiring an electrician is likely an inescapable cost. 

Fortunately, these Linkind lights are all solar powered and operate independently from the power grid and can be installed anywhere in minutes – and even less. For example, they come with the option of mounting to a wall or fence and a spike for the ground. This means installing a light into a flower bed takes seconds – just the time to shove the stake in the ground. And even if you want to mount them to a wall or fence, all you need to do is drill two holes and use the accompanying screws and anchors, raising the time from a few seconds to a few minutes per light.

Once you have figured out the best places to add some illumination and have all the lights exactly in the right spots, operating them is just as easy. Each light has a single power button which you can press and the light will come to life with a flash of light and eventually settle on a deep red glow. If that is all you want, you are done. 

However, most of us want full functionality, and for that we need to download the AiDot app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store for free. Each light uses Bluetooth to communicate, and holding down the power button until you see a couple of flashes puts it in pairing mode. Once you have it paired, the app handles all the controls so long as you are within range, about 20 feet in my experience. They remain on when not in range but cannot be adjusted until communication is re-established. Therefore, for ease of installation and setup, I don't see how they could be any easier.

Like so many products we have available these days, the app provides a range of functions and settings with which to individualize your Linkind lighting experience. Whether you have eight lights or 80 – a box comes with eight – you can group them by location, such as patio or front garden, and name each light individually to keep track of them and set their functions. Each light has robust controls allowing you to select from nearly any color from an RGB color wheel or opt for one of several preset dynamic settings. These dynamic settings change the color of the light based on preset conditions of a range of options or unique custom settings you create.

Once you get accustomed to the app, navigating it is a breeze. It allows you to make your house festive for Independence Day or Christmas or simply accent it in solid colors of your liking, although you can change them whenever you like. The preset dynamic options offer a fun way of bringing a bit of attention to your home and for those who want to spruce up your backyard summer barbeque spot, there is a music sensitive setting that adapts the light to music picked up on your phone, which would make quite the conversation piece.

These lights bring an instant level of charm to your home for limited effort. They are easy to install and easy to customize, but they do have at least a few drawbacks.

A consideration no matter where you live is that when stuck in the ground, anyone could (potentially) grab one and disappear with it in seconds. I did not feel comfortable planting one near the street, even though I live in a relatively safe area of town. The lights attached to the walls felt much more secure to me. Regardless, this is something many would need to consider before making this particular purchase.

Another concern relates to lighting needs. These might be a poor choice for security lighting as they are set by default to shut off around midnight, and even if you adjusted that setting, they may not last all night, although AiDot does claim a 14-hour battery life in energy-saving mode. Something like the Ring Spotlight Cam Pro would better serve that function. I did, however, discover that on a couple of particularly rainy/overcast days, the lights failed to illuminate even though the weather cleared up by the evening. Furthermore, I found that a few lights set on maximum brightness mounted in a tree with partial shade throughout the day faded before those exposed to full sun did. With the myriad settings possibilities, they could probably be adapted to most settings given proper consideration.

Search for "outdoor solar lighting" and you will receive endless results of options to ponder in addition to the must-have devices available for your home's exterior. This makes it a bit hard to compare these lights to their peers as the other lights offered come in such wildly different styles with equally different features and functions. Many options are cheap, much like the small accent lights I installed on my shudders just to add some character to my home's curb appeal. However, they merely turn on at night and remain the same white color until they run out of juice. They also provide minimal useful light.

Some of the better looking options you might find online mount on walls or fences with light emanating up and down in multiple colors, which is great for a walking path but does little for highlighting a Japanese maple. Some lights appear to have similar functions but their low price is suspect. Others come with a high price and appear to be stylized to target a certain demographic unconcerned with value. The vast array makes it hard to do a true comparison, but these Linkind Solar Spotlights may be somewhat unique. I suppose it depends on the comparison of what they offer and at what value.

First off, the retail price of a set of eight Solar Spotlights SL5C is $90.98 at the time of writing when purchased from the Linkind store on Amazon, suggesting that this price represents a 30% savings off of the stated $129.99 original retail price. Marketing gimmicks aside, the current price feels to me like good value for money, considering what you get.

Other hardware specifications include 14 preset scenes with support for up to 32 synchronized units in operation. They use Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) technology, which is a solar tech that regulates energy through continuous adjustment to maintain peak power output and charging, achieving efficiency of 89.9%, according to AiDot. The use of RGBTW light output offers a broad color spectrum as well as tunable white spectrum for customization of any color palette. Although I didn't test this, with the Linkind BLE Mesh Hub, you can integrate them with Alexa and Google Assistant. Lastly, an IP67 rating for water resistance ensures that you will have long-lasting lighting without worries of water intrusion killing your lights.

While I had picked up a few little solar lights to add a bit of flair to my home, I had not seriously considered adding any exterior lighting. As a renter, I am limited to what I could or would want to do. I was pleased and even impressed with the ease of installation and setup, and the app continued the pain-free experience through to operation. And after having the lights installed and ready to use, I was blown away the first night when I saw them and how much ambience and character they added to my home. My house is similar to most others in the neighborhood, and this addition definitely adds something unique that really makes it stand out with a pleasing aesthetic.

Although some of my lights did not last to the wee hours on full brightness (likely due in part to the lights' tendency to "intelligently adjust power output based on sunlight conditions" in the name of efficiency), I am comfortable I could make adjustments to use them however I want. Furthermore, they can shut off at midnight and it will suit me just fine anyway. The lights' inability to charge during a particularly cloudy and rainy day was a disappointment given the claims this unit makes for "industry leading" charging efficiency. 

Despite this, the vast majority of the time I tested these lights they charged enough to last at least a full night. Therefore, I can say with confidence that I would endorse SL5C as another outdoor smart gadget worth buying and plan to keep mine cheerfully and colorfully lit for the foreseeable future. Linkind Smart Solar Spotlight SL5C lights are available in multiple pack sizes on Amazon right now with a starting price of $34.99 for a pack of two (on sale now for $24.48).