Smart Home

Review: Innr Outdoor Smart Pedestal (OPL 130 C) – Garden pedestals

Review: Innr Outdoor Smart Pedestal (OPL 130 C) - This article present a detailed review of Garden pedestals introduced by Innr.
4.4/5 - (46 votes)

Review: Innr Outdoor Smart Pedestal (OPL 130 C) : Although the winter months have arrived and the garden lights, with the exception of the Christmas lights, may not be on often anymore, it is still useful if you can properly illuminate the walkways around the house. In this review we look at the Innr Outdoor Smart Pedestal Lights (OPL 130 C), which are small pedestals with which you can illuminate a border or walkway.

Innr Outdoor Smart Pedestal Lights

The Innr Smart Outdoor Pedestal Lights are pedestals (poles) for the garden with which you can illuminate a border or path. You control the pedestals via the Innr app, Philips Hue or another platform that supports Zigbee lamps. In addition, the lamps support voice control via the Google Assistant.

The outdoor lamps support up to sixteen million colors, offer a brightness of 215 lumens (each) and consume 4.5 watts per lamp. Because a 3-pack of the lamps is controlled via one control box, they can only be operated as a group. So the bases cannot be individually adjusted. You always set the brightness and color for the entire set. You can expand the set to a maximum of five lamps. In addition to a plinth, this can also be the Innr spot for outside to be.

The pedestals have been made to be protected against dust and resistant to hailstones and heavy rain showers. The garden lighting therefore has an IP65 certificate for water resistance. The total height of the OPL 130 C plinth is 40 centimeters, of which 27 cm is above the ground. Three lamps can be set up at a distance of two meters each. The cable length between the 24-volt adapter and the first lamp is also two meters. The cable length can optionally be extended to a maximum of 35 meters.

The package with three Smart Outdoor Pedestal Lights (OPL 130 C) is available for 159.99 euros. The OPL 130 CP extension set with one base costs 39.99 euros.

Design

The Innr Smart Outdoor Pedestal Lights (OPL 130 C) with a visible height of 27cm and a diameter of 6cm are quite narrow and small pedestals, but they look neat and sleek. No bells and whistles, simply a sleek pole for the garden with a matte black finish. They are protected against wind and weather, but put them well in the ground because at 225 grams they are not the most robust models.

The build quality of the posts is fine, but here we see and feel a clear difference with the much more expensive products from Philips Hue. The Hue Calla pedestals for outside, which are sold for just under 300 euros (per set of three), feel a lot firmer and more robust. They are also slightly larger and thicker. The Innr lamps are lighter and appear more fragile, although it is certainly not bad quality. The columns are made of partly plastic and partly aluminum.

Assembly and installation

The assembly and installation of the Innr Smart Outdoor Pedestal Lights (OPL 130 C) is a piece of cake. You plug and turn all connections together so that you have one long light line with three lamps, you put the lamps with the earth pin in the ground and you hide the cables under the sand or grass. The bases do not work on 230v but come with an adapter so that they work on 24v. That is just a bit more convenient and safer for the garden. That does not alter the fact that you have to be careful with raking or shoveling when these cables are in your garden.

In addition, the adapters and cables as well as the lamps themselves are resistant to weather influences and can therefore be placed anywhere in the garden without any problems. However, the plug must be connected in a dry place. Note that the connectors are not compatible with connectors from other brands. So you cannot physically link an Innr plinth to a set of Hue Calla plinths. It is also important to mention that the plinths cannot be mounted on a stone or other surface.

Once put in the sand, the pedestals are quite sturdy. The 2 meters between the lamps was just too little to place them under each espalier, so we hid the spots between the plants. With the Innr Outdoor Extension Cable you can increase the distance between the lamps, but that will cost you 15 euros per lamp.

Installation and use

The installation of the Innr Smart Outdoor Pedestal Lights (OPL 130 C) is exactly the same as all other Innr lamps that we have tested. Since the lamps use the Zigbee standard you have plenty of choice. You can link the lamps to the Innr app itself, although you also need the Innr hub for that. You can also link the lamps to your Philips Hue system, for which the Philips Hue Bridge is also required. It is also possible to link the lamps to a smart home controller that supports Zigbee, such as the Homey hub and the SmartThings hub. We have opted for installation using the already installed Hue Bridge.

Installing and adding the Innr spots and light strip is just as easy as a Hue lamp. You connect the lamps, put the plug in the socket and open the Hue app. Then let you search for new lamps. It may take a while, but then the new bulbs will appear in the list, you can change the names and place them in a specific room. Since the Innr lamps are now placed in the Hue app, they can also be operated as Hue lamps. So you can place them in a scene with Hue lamps or simply choose the color via the Hue app. You can also operate them with the Hue remote control or sensors.

The use of Innr lamps in combination with a Philips Hue system is very user-friendly and has hardly any restrictions. The only thing that is not possible is to use the lamps via Hue in Apple HomeKit and use the lamps in combination with Hue Sync. The Innr lamps respond just as quickly as Hue lamps and can display just as many colors.

If you use the Innr plinths together with Philips Hue lamps in the garden, you must keep in mind that the Innr lamps are operated per set (per controller) and can therefore display one color per set. Unlike Hue lamps, they cannot be individually controlled. The maximum brightness of the Innr lamps is also lower, which can cause a difference in color when you operate them together with Hue lamps (for example in a scene). If we place the Innr bases in the app at exactly the same color and brightness as the Hue Calla bases, the colors do not match exactly. You have to play around with the brightness and surrounding colors to get exactly the same color. The brightness of the Innr plinth must be slightly higher than the brightness of the Hue Calla lamp in order to achieve the same color with the same brightness.

Quality and comparison to Hue

Looking purely at the Innr Smart Outdoor Pedestal Lights (OPL 130 C) itself, there is little to criticize about the quality. The only thing that may leave something to be desired is the build quality, in particular the sturdiness and robustness of the lamp. In terms of lighting, the lamps do exactly what they are supposed to do, with a large color range that matches the Philips Hue color range. You can dim the lamps from 0-100 percent and the operation is very simple. The Innr plinths are great lamps to give your border some mood lighting or to illuminate the walkway in the garden.

Nevertheless, important differences can be seen when we compare the Innr Smart Outdoor Pedestal Lights with the Hue Calla pedestals. First of all, of course, the price: 160 euros for a set of three compared to almost 300 euros for a set of three. That’s a big difference and explains a lot. The Innr bases offer 215 lumens per lamp, compared to 640 lumens per Hue Calla lamp. Depending on the goal you have with the lighting, this difference is important. With a higher brightness, the Hue Calla lamps can illuminate more and provide more light in deeper gardens or on larger surfaces. On the other hand, if you are not using the Hue Callas at full strength, then that extra brightness is not really necessary. In addition, you can operate the Calla bases per piece, while the Innr bases must be operated per set. Do you value scenes where lamps all show different colors? Then the Innr lamps are less suitable. Finally, there is also a difference in the way the lamps give light. With the Innr bases it is clearly visible that the LEDs are located at the bottom of the lamp as the lamp gets darker towards the top. The Hue Calla lamps provide even light, both at the bottom of the plinth and at the top. One is not necessarily better than the other, it is more a matter of taste. Also a matter of taste is the difference in dimensions. The Innr plinths are a lot slimmer and slightly smaller than the Calla plinths.

The Innr Smart Outdoor Pedestal Lights are therefore not as premium as the Hue Calla pedestals and are less flexible in use, but if they meet your requirements despite the limitations, they are a great and much cheaper alternative. We are very pleased with the color rendering and the brightness of 215 lumens per lamp is more than sufficient for illuminating a part of your garden or walkway.

Conclusion

If you want to add some atmosphere to your garden and do not want to spend too much money, then you really cannot ignore the Innr Smart Outdoor Pedestal Lights. Just like the Spot Lights from Innr the pedestals are an affordable, user-friendly and well-functioning alternative to the expensive Philips Hue lamps. Those lower prices do come with some limitations. For example, you cannot operate the lamps individually but only per set, the brightness is a lot lower than the Hue alternatives and the build quality is slightly less. If those points are not important for your intended use, then we can only recommend the Innr Smart Outdoor Pedestal Lights. The lamps provide beautiful, dynamic light, can be connected to numerous platforms / systems and are installed in no time.