Smart lighting — with its modes, color changes, voice commands, and more — is especially well-fitted to the dorm room. As you’re picking out your dorm tech, we suggest you find a smart lamp that you like, too. It can be the perfect addition to your desk, bed, or room as a whole. We can help you pick the right one.
Below are our favorite smart lamps, keeping in mind dorm room budgets and usability. Our top pick is the highly affordable and colorful Marrado lamp, but don’t worry — this list includes something for everyone!
Marrado Bedside Lamp
This Marrado lamp is designed to sit by a bedside and provide … well, whatever kind of light you need. The LED light from this little smart lamp is activated via touch, allowing you to adjust the brightness and the color to whatever you prefer. Turn to your phone, and you can use a Bluetooth connection to play music from the lamp. The sound isn’t that great, but it’s good for ambient music while you’re busy doing other things (or falling asleep). The lamp also runs on an internal battery, making it portable for up to five hours (Marrado suggests taking it outside for an evening date on the grass, which isn’t the worst idea).
Finally, not only is the Marrado Bedside Lamp very affordable, but it also has a lifetime warranty in case of damage, making it well-suited for dorm life. But hold on — we’re just beginning our list, and if you want something smarter, bigger, or brighter, keep on reading.
Wyze Floor Lamp
This Wyze Floor Lamp means business — it’s a focused and flexible light that reaches nearly 6 feet and is designed to provide targeted illumination for detailed work, from studying small text to working on art projects. It comes with Wyze’s PARB bulb, a parabolic aluminized reflector with a maximum brightness of 800 lumens and a color temperature designed to mimic daylight.
While the floor lamp does come with a Bluetooth remote and scheduling options with the Wyze app, it’s a little limited compared to other Wyze smart devices. Note that discounted prices were available for first preorders, but now that Wyze is gearing up for the main release, you can expect the price to increase. Regardless of that, it’s still one for the dorm because it’s under $50.
Philips Hue Iris
The Philips Hue line is packed with smart lights of all kinds, but the Iris is unique: It’s a 570-lumen desk lamp with LEDs that you can set to any color that you’d like, and it has a candid dorm-friendly design that will fit right in your space. You can pick from any color of the rainbow to coincide with your current work, play, or general mood. We particularly like that the design encourages a soft, thorough glow rather than being too bright or diffused.
It’s a smart lamp that’s made for the dorm, and you don’t need any extra bridges or hubs to control it. Obviously, it works best with other Philips Hue smart lights, but on its own, its glow is more than enough to double as an accent light or spotlight.
Govee Aura Smart Table Lamp
The Govee Aura Smart Table Lamp is a bit more refined than the Philips Hue Iris and allows for detailed app controls to adjust the brightness and light gradient. It also allows you to pick from a wide variety of themes if you can’t quite decide what looks best. The 350-lumen lamp also includes animations, with the ability to mimic things like the rising sun, drifting clouds, twinkling stars, and so on.
That makes it ideal for setting the mood, although the Aura isn’t quite as good at normal desktop illumination when it’s time to work or study. Still, if you want a light you can tinker with, this is an excellent choice.
Moko LED Desk Lamp
Maybe you aren’t that interested in showing off your lamp and tweaking colors all the time. Maybe you are looking for something with more utility, but that’s still very high-tech. We recommend this serious LED desk lamp. It’s adjustable if you want to control the color temperature or brightness level to whatever you like to study by, but it also has a lot of unique features designed for the busy student desk.
The Moko LED Desk Lamp includes an extra USB port for charging your phone, but if you prefer wireless charging, then you may like this similar model from Ytech. There are also plenty of rotation options to get just the angle you like, memory functions to remember your brightness/temperature settings, and an option for a three-minute delay until shutdown, which is useful if you’re leaving but still want it to stay on for a little longer. It also has interesting vibration feedback when you operate the lamp and sleep mode, so you know that the touch controls are working.
Geeni Prisma Smart LED Bulb Kit
There’s another smart lighting option for your dorm plans: You could use smart bulbs instead, which allow you to put the bulb in an existing socket and then control its brightness, color, scheduling, and so on. The problem is that these smart bulb kits are often expensive for the average dorm project.
That makes Geeni’s version particularly attractive, as the Prisma Smart LED Bulb Kit is much more affordable than other options while still offering plenty of smart features, including compatibility with Alexa.
Aukey Table Lamp
The Aukey Table Lamp has an attractive price point, simple but elegant design, and handy little touch controls to switch between three brightness levels. You can switch between white light and a color of your choice for different effects. Otherwise, this lamp keeps everything simple while still serving multiple needs. It’s a good choice if you don’t want too many options and prefer rapid touch controls as opposed to using yet another app for your lamp.
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