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When it comes to breaking developments, it’s not always enough to wait for a press release to find out news, and in the case of Xiaomi ecosystem products, it’s more so the case.

We recently took a look at the Xiaomi Home app (better known to many as Mi Home) and noticed that in the lighting section for the Yeelight Lightstrip Plus, the device states that;

“This product supports HomeKit, and can be paired and operated in the Home app”.

Now before you go out and start buying up loads of Yeelight Light Strips, this would either seem to be a newer product than the ones that are currently available – OR – the current model waiting for a future firmware update. The latter seems to be more viable, thanks to one of our readers, who already has one of these light strips. He has confirmed that when long-pressing on the icon in the Mi Home app, the HomeKit icon is available, although when it’s selected, nothing happens, so we can’t be 100% certain at this point what exactly the state of play is with these products. The Yeelight light strip that is available right now also doesn’t list HomeKit as a compatible option, only Mijia/ Mi Home, along with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa (via the Yeelight app).

As also seen in the last image above, it would seem that the Yeelight 2nd gen bulbs could also get HomeKit compatibility. If this is the case, given the low price of both the colour and tuneable white Yeelight bulbs, they could be amongst the cheapest HomeKit bulbs on the market, especially as these bulbs are rated at 10w and 800lm, which matches Philips Hue in terms of spec.

Add to this the fact that in some listings, the plug and controller look different to the image above, and it’s fair to conclude that they may simply be a different product. Additionally, some available products use the name ‘Yeelight Aurora Light Strip Plus’, so it’s quite difficult to discern the actual differences, should there be any. Having said that, we’ve seen plenty of instances where a product design has changed, with no corresponding change in either marketing materials or in-app imagery.