Minimalism at its finest
Smart appliances are the future, and we will not be surprised if some of these smart home products reach our shores. Luckily for us, some of Xiaomi’s smart home products can be purchased at SmartFuture. While they are still working towards becoming an official Xiaomi retailer, we shared our top picks from their store.
I myself went back to SmartFuture, and decided to purchase the Mi LED Desk Lamp. Aside from being a smart lamp (you can control it via MiHome, which I will explain later in this article), the Mi LED Desk Lamp is one beautiful piece: No wonder it won Gold at Germany’s iF Design award this year).
Let’s do a quick unboxing of Xiaomi’s award-winning lamp!
The box is typical Xiaomi, with a minimalist look, along with an image of the lamp.
Aside from a Gold at the iF Design Award, it also won the Good Design Award in 2016. No wonder it is one of the top-selling products in SmartFuture, as the staff told me.
Unboxing the lamp, you have only three items: An instruction manual (which in Chinese), the power adapter, and the lamp itself.
The bottom of the lamp has anti-slip pads and a few technical details about the Mi LED Desk Lamp. Branded as MiJia (which is Xiaomi’s line of Smart Home products), the lamp is rated at 6 watts, with 42 LED lights rated at 0.15 watts each. The LED lights are adjustable for brightness and color temperature–from 2700K to 6500K. It is also rated for 100-240 volts, giving you less worries on whether you will plug it into a 110 or 220 outlet.
The Mi LED Desk Lamp’s base has a plastic outer shell and a metal core. Other than that, the lamp is made of metal, evident with its two rods and its joint. Save for the orange wire connecting the lamp, the Mi LED Desk Lamp is dominantly white, adhering to Xiaomi’s minimalist approach to its home products.
You only have one knob on the Mi LED Desk Lamp. You push the knob to turn the lamp on or off, then you turn the knob to adjust for brightness. To adjust for color temperature, you push the knob down and turn it according to your desired light color. Pretty simple, if you ask me. At least I’ll not get lost from its Chinese instructions.
The Mi LED Desk Lamp comes with a rubber clip, which you use to safely lock the lamp when not in use, or when you are transporting it.
You have your power adapter at the back of the lamp’s base.
The power adapter is pretty straightforward, design-wise. You’ll be needing a plug adaptor for this since it uses a Type G plug.
Light control through your phone
Now for the fun part: One of the selling points of the Mi LED Desk Lamp is that it can be controlled through your smartphone using the MiHome App (available for both Android and iOS). Before you set up your Mi LED Desk Lamp, you need to create a Mi account. Once you have a Mi account, make sure that the Mi LED Desk Lamp is plugged in, and that both the lamp and your phone is on the same WiFi network. After taking those steps, MiHome will set up your lamp until you are brought to this page at your MiHome home screen:
From here, you can control your Mi LED Desk Lamp through your phone. Aside from being able to turn off/on the lamp, you can adjust the lighting based on your preferred settings. You have Reading (which sets the light to a cool tone), PC (which sets the light to a warm tone), Custom, and Favorites. There’s also a Pomodoro mode, which makes the lamp adjust the lighting for a preset time to remind you when to take a break. Yes, it is THAT smart.
Under Favorites, you have a variety of lighting presets. These include Sunrise, Sunset, Concentration, Night Reading, Flash Notify, and Candle Flicker. The latter two settings are rather gimmicky, but it shows the different ways you can use the Mi LED Desk Lamp.
At Php 1950, the Mi LED Desk Lamp is a great buy if you want to get a feel of how smart appliances work. Aside from being a beautiful piece, you can tweak the Mi LED Desk Lamp to suit your daily needs.
