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Late last year, Yeelight introduced their take on LED filament bulbs, following on from offerings from Philips Hue, Wiz, and Ikea, amongst others. Now the Qingdao-based Chinese lighting company are bringing another filament bulb to market, in the shape of the ST64 bulb, which is more pear-shaped and decidedly more retro looking than the more modern A19 shaped bulbs they already offer.

The new ST64 is pretty similar to the Philips Hue version we tested out in 2019 (review), and only marginally less bright; The Hue ST19/64 has a maximum of 7W/530lm, with the Yeelight equivalent capped at 6W/500lm. However, whilst there’s a minor difference in brightness, the larger differences become more appreciable, with the Yeelight model currently only selling on AliExpress for around $17.99, with the Hue being sold on Amazon.com for $24.99 – a big $7.00 difference. Aside from the price difference, the Yeelight variant uses WiFi, with the Philips Hue offering requiring the Philips Hue Bridge for more functionality. The Hue version can work with Bluetooth, which doesn’t require the Hue bridge, but then you can’t expose them to HomeKit with it.

The Yeelight offering also works with the ‘big three’, as well as Samsung SmartThings, and IFTTT. It also gets exposed to the Mi Home and Yeelight apps, so if you want it to work with some Xiaomi Smart Home ecosystem products in addition to HomeKit automations, then consider this a bonus. Some stores in Northern Europe also already have the new ST64 listed, although it appears they don’t have stock at present, unlike AliExpress, although you may be able to pre-order from these stores now (see links at the end of the article).

The basic specs for the ST64 are;

Fitting: E27

Luminous Flux: 500lm

Brightness: 5~100%

Colour Temperature: 2700K

Rated Power: 6W

Connectivity: Wifi IEEE 802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz

Compatible systems: iOS9 or later, Android 4.4 or later

Rated input: 220-240V @ 50/60Hz 0.4A

If you’re not aware of Yeelight, they tend to specialise in lighting and have previously made lamps and bulbs for Xiaomi’s own smart home label Mijia, with the Mi Desk Lamp 1S (review), the Mi Desk Lamp Pro (review) and Mi Bedside Lamp II (review), all of which are HomeKit compatible, as well as their own branded lamps, like the Yeelight Bedside Lamp D2 (review) and the Yeelight Staria Table Lamp (review), both of which are also HomeKit compatible.

EU Stores that have the bulb listed;

Thanks to Sebastian B for the tipoff