If you’re looking to inject some extra personality and atmosphere into your surroundings, there is always the classic companion of mood lighting. The only problem is, up until now the options have been kind of lame, both aesthetically and technically.
There are lava lamps, but those are really only good if you’re looking for the “I may have walked into a stripper’s basement” sort of mood. There are those lamps that look like windows, but they’ll run you thousands of dollars (for installation alone) and much like your average dimmer, you’re ultimately selecting between moods of “bright”, “bright-ish”, “dark” and “cataracts”.
While there is obviously stuff in between, few non-fixed lighting options provide a creative and broad set of moods, even fewer actually transform the environments in which they’re placed, and then you’re almost entirely out of luck if you’re also looking for a widely-integrated, technically compelling solution. That’s why it’s not hard to be pretty impressed with what Elgato has done with their Avea Flare wireless LED lamps.
It almost makes terms like “mood lighting” and “ambiance” seem a little understated, especially when you can choose from an incredible variety of moods – there are 10 at the moment, each with their own brightness and vividness settings – like, Mountain Breeze, Fairy Woods, Caribbean Sea, Calm Provence and Northern Glow, the last of which actually makes the environment around you look like you’re under the Aurora borealis.
And that’s the novel approach: with the Avea Flare, you are transforming your surroundings to make it feel like a new place, and as it does in real life, the place dictates the mood.
Not that the supporting technology isn’t just as impressive. First of all, the lamp can connect to your Android phone, your iPhone, your iPad or even your Apple Watch. So it doesn’t really matter what kind of device you have, as long as it’s not a flip-phone and it has Bluethooth, you should be able to manage your moods.
The Avea Flare is also portable from a number of different perspectives; it can last more than 8 hours on a single charge (no chords or dock required), once a mood is set the lamp does not need to remain connected to your mobile device, and the unit is IP65 water resistant – that means it can handle getting hit by agua coming in at the strength of “water jets”. In other words, you won’t need to freak out when it gets caught in a little rain.
You can even connect multiple lamps to each other and they’ll coordinate to create a more immersive lightscape.
And of course, what would intelligent lighting be without helping you get your lazy carcass out of bed; the Flare has a built in “wake-up” light scene that you can pre-set to act as a visual alarm that gradually and gently tickles those lazy eyes of yours in the morning.
Luckily, the Avea Flare lamp won’t let your bank account go dark either. You can snag one for only $99.95. They also have a “bulb” option that you can snap into existing light sources, offering similar functionality to the Flare in a fixed position for only $39.95. The Sphere is yet another option in their line that again offers similar options to the Flare, but offers a different decorative aesthetic.
Lao Tzu, the famous Chinese philosopher once said, “There are many paths to enlightenment. Be sure to take one with heart.” But now that the technology is available, you should probably be sure to take one with some badass functionality too. The Avea Flare is a pretty good option.
