The AwoX StriimLight B-10 sounds crazier than it actually is. It’s a lightbulb, and it’s also a Bluetooth speaker. You screw it in, pair it to a device, and stream music to an 8W LED lightbulb. The light socket powers both the speaker and the bulb, so the latter has to be screwed into a socket for the speaker to work.
This is a better lightbulb than it is a speaker. It produces bright and warm-looking 3000K light that resembles the output of a fluorescent tube. It’ll screw into any E27 Edison mount, and we had successful results with three different lamps in the WIRED New York office.
As you’d expect, the speaker is not very good. A single 2-inch, 10W mono speaker in the middle of the LED lamp kicks out mediocre, bass-bereft audio. But those shortcomings are forgivable as the StriimLight leans heavily on gestalt principles.
Pairing it to a device is a simple process: You turn the bulb on, it beeps twice when it’s discoverable, and then you find the “StriimLIGHT” on your device’s pairing menu. Turning the lamp on and off restarts the discovery process if you have trouble finding the bulb in its Bluetooth menu; it’s basically a hard reboot of the bulb.
One little perk is that the StriimLight comes with its own remote control. The included plastic watch-battery-powered clicker is made of plastic, and lets you turn the light on and off, turn the speaker volume up and down, and mute the audio entirely.
Unlike your average lightbulb, this one begs to move around a lot. You’ll want to screw it into a socket on the porch, in the bathroom, or in the bedroom so you can listen to some music wherever you happen to be. But the StriimLight heats up pretty quickly, and you need to let it cool down for a minute or two before unscrewing it and carrying it around. After initial setup, we used it for about 20 minutes (both as a light and as a speaker) before wanting to take it out and test it in another lamp. Both the speaker grille and the bulky construction underneath it were very hot to the touch. So it’s portable, but only after a cool-down period.