TP-Link Kasa Smart Multicolor Light Strip (KL430)

Joining TP-Link’s family of smart home devices, the Kasa Smart Multicolor Light Strip ($69.99) offers an easy way to add a splash of color to any area of your home. This thin, flexible strip of plastic contains LEDs that emit white and colored light that you can control using the Kasa mobile and with Alexa and Google voice commands. It also offers some neat lighting effects, works with third-party smart devices, and can tell you how much power it’s using. All this earns it our Editors’ Choice for smart light strips.

Design and Features

The Kasa Light Strip is 0.5-inch-wide, 6.6-foot-long strip of flexible plastic with a total of 96 LED clusters. Each cluster contains a multicolor LED and a white LED, and there are 6 clusters per 5-inch section and total of 16 individual color zones. The strip has a typical output of 1,400 lumens, can display millions of colors, and has a white color temperature range of 2,500K to 9,000K. It is rated to last up to 25,000 hours based on 3 hours of use per day.

You can attach the strip to walls, bookcases, and other surfaces using the preinstalled double-sided tape on the back of the strip, and you can cut the strip at any of the 5-inch marks to make it fit into tight spaces, but once you cut it, you can't reconnect the unused segment or use the extension strips mentioned below.

The strip comes with a controller with an 80-inch cord that connects to a male plug on one end of the strip and to the included power adapter. The controller has a button that lets you turn the strip on and off and lets you cycle through the various presets, and it contains a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi radio that connects the strip to your home network, which means it doesn’t require a hub like the Philips Hue LightStrip Plus.

At the other end of the strip is a female connector used to connect to a KL430E Extension Strip. Each 3.3-foot Extension Strip will cost you $24.99, and you can add up to 8 of them for a total strip length of 33 feet, but you’ll be looking at a $269 light strip when all is said and done.

The strip can be controlled with your phone via the Kasa mobile app (for Android and iOS). It doesn’t support Apple’s HomeKit platform like the Eve Light Strip, but it works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands and it supports IFTTT applets that allow it to work with other smart devices.

Once installed, the strip gets its own tab on the Devices screen in the app. The tab displays the name of the strip and the current color and brightness level, and it has a power button that glows green when the strip is on and gray when it is off. Tap the tab to open a screen with a large On/Off  button. Here you’ll find five buttons that you can use to create your own presets with specific colors and brightness levels. Once you create the preset, the button will take on the color characteristics that you specified. Below the On/Off control are buttons for setting brightness, white color temperature, and color. Tapping the Power button brings you back the On/Off button.

At the very bottom of the screen are Effects, Schedule, and Usage buttons. When you tap the Effects button, you open a screen that displays your custom effect buttons and 15 color buttons for selecting various shades of reds, greens, blues, and whites. There are also 14 effect presets including Christmas, Flicker, Hanukkah, Valentines, Lightning, and others. Simply tap any preset to have the strip display the desired effect. Use the Schedule button to have the strip turn on and off and at specific times on specific days of the week, and use the Usage button to monitor the strip’s daily energy usage and total on-time, as well as estimated daily and yearly cost savings (as compared with running a standard 100-watt bulb).

Installation and Performance

Installing the light strip is easy. I already had a Kasa account, but if this is your first Kasa device, you’ll have to download the app and create an account. I tapped the plus icon in the Devices screen, selected Smart Lights and then Smart Light Strip, and powered up the strip. After a few seconds it began flashing green and orange, so I tapped Next and used my phone’s Wi-Fi settings to connect to the strip. After five seconds I was instructed to select my home Wi-Fi SSID and enter my password, and after another few seconds the strip turned white and was connected to my network. It was also automatically added to my Alexa device list. I gave the strip a name, updated the firmware, and the installation was finished.

While not bright enough to illuminate an entire room, the Kasa strip worked wonderfully as accent lighting around my living room entertainment center. It responded instantly to app and controller button commands to turn on and off and to change colors. Alexa integrations also worked without a hitch: I was able to turn the strip on and off, change colors, and activate scenes using voice commands. The color quality is excellent, displaying the full range of whites from warm yellows to cool blues.

My IFTTT applets also worked flawlessly. I created an applet to have the strip turn on with red lighting at 75 percent brightness when an Arlo Pro 3 camera detected motion and it worked every time. I also created an Alexa routine to have the strip turn on with blue lighting at 50 percent brightness when an ADT Blue Outdoor Camera detected motion, and this too worked perfectly.

Conclusions

If you’re looking to add color to a bookshelf, brighten up a bare wall, or create the perfect movie night mood lighting effect, consider the TP-Link Kasa Smart Multicolor Light Strip. It’s very easy to install and can be cut to fit your specific needs, and it delivers bright, colorful lighting and a wide range of whites. The Kasa app offers more than a dozen neat preset lighting effects and lets you create scenes to control multiple Kasa devices at once, and you can use IFTTT applets to have third-party devices trigger the strip. Throw in energy usage reports and Alexa and Google voice control, and you’ve got our Editors’ Choice for smart light strips.