The next piece in Eufy’s outdoor lighting game comes in the form of spotlights. Like Eufy’s smart string lights, these are confusingly also branded with an E10 model number; if you’re investigating one of these products, be sure you’re buying the right one.
The Eufy Spotlights come two to a box, plus a controller, all connected via standard electrical cabling. (In other words, this is not a low-voltage landscape product like Lifx’s smart spotlight, Philips Hue Lily, or Home Depot’s Hampton Bay offerings. While you can control up to four lights on a single controller, there’s no way to buy extra lights without getting an additional control box. The tiny controller (which features a single power button) attaches to a small A/C adapter on one side and, on the other, to the spotlights via daisy-chained, screw-in connectors.
Eufy’s AI mode is on tap to provide a custom lighting design based on keywords you provide.
Specifications
Like Eufy’s string lights, the cabling comes in pieces, with 2.5 feet between the wall adapter and the controller, 17 feet to the first light, and another 10 feet to the second light. (If you add additional lights, they’ll each be connected by another 10 feet of cable.) The lights, crafted from aluminum and sturdy in feel (with IP65 weatherproofing rating), come pre-attached to plastic ground stakes, each 6 inches long. The lights can be removed from the ground stakes, but there’s no way to mount them on walls or hardscape. You can also theoretically use the included 9-inch extension rods to add height to the light, but this is a difficult process that involves threading wire through the rods.
The Eufy Outdoor Spotlights are fabricated from aluminum, with screw-on plastic ground stakes. There’s no provision for mounting them to a deck, fence, or hardscape.
Christopher Null/Foundry
The lights are small but sturdy, and each offers a vertical pivot of 130 degrees, with a thumbscrew that locks the light into place. Maximum light production is 500 lumens, with full color support and white light color temperatures ranging from 1500 Kelvin to 9000K. A power-consumption rating isn’t specified, but I measured maxed-out consumption with two lights connected at about 18 watts.
Arguably the most difficult part of installation is planning where you’ll run the cable. Given the distance limitations outlined above and the need to be near both a power outlet and within range of Wi-Fi, consumers might have a hard time working out a placement that serves their needs—particularly with a maximum of four lights supported. But assuming you do, the hard part is over. Just jam the stakes into the ground, aim the spots where you need the light, and get to work configuring them in the Eufy Life app.
This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart lighting.
As with Eufy’s string lights, you can connect the spotlights via Bluetooth only, or also bridge them to a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network. I had a little trouble with this process when I first tried to set them up. First, you activate a Bluetooth setup routine in the Eufy Life app by pressing the button on the controller—but this didn’t do anything for me, and the app couldn’t find the lights. After a few failed attempts, I restarted Bluetooth on my phone, force-quit the app, and power-cycled the lights, after which I was successful at getting the lights connected. Bridging to Wi-Fi is trivial as long as you’re in range of a Wi-Fi access point.
This in-line puck can turn the spotlights on and off if you don’t have your smartphone handy.
Christopher Null/Foundry
The lights work about the same way Eufy’s smart lights do in the Eufy Life app. You can configure each lamp’s color individually, but any dynamic modes (with colors flowing or cycling) are applied identically to all the lights on the wire. It’s a lot more fun of course to play with Eufy’s 80-plus preset themes, which are no different from those on the string lights, including emotion-centric themes, “healing” themes, holiday themes, and even weather themes. Each theme can be tweaked if you don’t love the colors or if the motion is too slow or too fast for you.
Special features
And as with the string lights, Eufy’s AI mode is on tap to provide a custom lighting design based on keywords you provide. With only two lights to work with, these are a bit more limited than you’ll get with the string lights (I would not say my request for “cheeseburger” lighting was effective), but it’s a fun little feature nonetheless. The “Magic Dice” option is also available if you’re willing to run with a fully random lighting effect. All of this is extremely easy to use, and it’s perhaps the most intuitive lighting control app I’ve tested to date.
The Eufy Life app is filled with fun lighting options.
Christopher Null/Foundry
Eufy’s Music Flow mode, which shifts lighting in time with ambient audio, is still in beta, but it’s at least now functioning, and I was able to test it successfully with the spotlights. It’s fairly limited for now, as you can’t change the colors beyond the preset rolling-rainbow effect and it only works with audio detected by your phone’s microphone, but it’s another “nice to have” feature that will hopefully evolve over time. Alexa and Google Home are both supported for cross-platform control, but HomeKit is off the table, and the lights are not Matter certified.
As with Eufy’s string lights, the spotlight can be paired to a Eufy camera to light up, for example, if a person is detected, but I was unable to test that feature. Stay tuned for Michael Brown’s review of this feature, which he’s testing with the Eufy Permanent Outdoor Lights E22.
Should you buy Eufy Outdoor Spotlights E10?
Unlike the dim Eufy string lights, the spotlights look very good: 500 lumens is plenty to illuminate a pathway or features in the yard, and the light is clear and vibrant whether you’re pumping out color hues or white light, thanks to a translucent diffuser that covers the bulb and provides even illumination.
At $100 for a 2-pack, they aren’t quite the cheapest smart spotlights on the market, but the lighting quality and ease of use of the app makes them worth the outlay—provided you can make the cabling configuration work for you.
Christopher Null is an award-winning technology journalist with more than 25 years of experience writing about and reviewing consumer and business tech products. Previously, he served as Executive Editor for PC Computing magazine and was the founder and Editor in Chief of Mobile magazine, the first print publication focused exclusively on mobile tech. In addition to covering a wide range of smart home gear for TechHive, he is a frequent contributor to Wired, This Old House, and AAA’s Via Magazine.
