TwinklySmart Decorations 400 Bulb LED RGB App-Controlled Customizable Holiday String Lights with Downloadable Light Displays for Indoors or Outdoors

** Update 12/4/20 **I'm adding a star to the review as things have improved. While I am still unable to map a group of curtain lights that are grouped as a scene, I was able to workaround this by making them a regular group and use the 3D mapping feature.3D Mapping is GREATLY improved!They now have a totally new 3D mapping feature that allows you to keep adding images of the scene until it has correctly placed every light in 3D space. It even has all the lights light up green to red to show you exactly which lights have been correctly positioned. I have had to redo mapping a couple times because the server timed out and it didn't finish, but when it does it works VERY well! My only gripe is that there are only 4 programs that are actually 3D. I wish they would add more or give me a way to create my own. Overall though, the 3D mapping is now the best thing in this app and is worth upgrading my rating. Hoping for more stability by next year though.**Update - Year 2**I can no longer map many of my strings that are in a group. The mapping just fails (see picture). Without the mapping function, these are basically just regular lights. Twinkly keeps talking about all the improvements they are making but I wish they would take a break from improvements and make the software work properly. Hope these are usable by Christmas. :S**I've been informed that you CAN delete a device or group by swiping left! Who knew?**Update after a couple of weeks**The app has been updated multiple times and firmware once since I set my lights up. It has resolved at least one of the issues I had (multiple light strings not being in sync after saving an effect to them), but I am still having many other issues like light groups not staying together, and sometimes a string will randomly attach itself to a totally different group, and there's no way to delete a device or group, resulting in having to completely reinstall the app and make all new groups. Of course, I am currently using 19 strings and I'm sure that's making things more complicated than if I had one or two.Overall there are still many bugs, but I can tell they're working hard to rectify them and I can't wait to see how things improve before next Christmas.**Original review**The Good:Geeky Tech. YAY! Really cool tech. The mapping feature is a total game changer. This will revolutionize Christmas light displays...Eventually (see below).Display looks really nice and many of the effects are very cool.Grouping (linking multiple strings to act as one string)is very cool and works well (sometimes).The Bad:Can't string the lights end from end. This means you have to plug each one in individually and that makes for a lot of wires and extension cords needed to use multiple sets.Quality control is not great. Of the 6 strings I have opened so far, one has a dead LED, 2 have bad LEDs (which constantly flicker, distracting from the cool effect), and one set was completely DOA. Glad I tested them before stringing them up.The Ugly:The software is not in line with a premium priced product like this. I was expecting much better designs for the lights. There were not very many effects available (not even close to what I would consider a "ton" as advertised). Most of them did not have very elegant patterns (would have liked more fading between colors and more classy shimmering effects) and the customizations were very limited (and I was unable to edit any of the downloaded ones, even though the website says they're all customizable). Creating new effects was very, very limited. Basically you could sort of draw a picture and do a basic animation, but there were no tools for making any effects like the preset ones, let alone doing anything nicer. It's a real shame to have this much technology in the lights and such a huge lack of good effects to use them with. Twinkly really needs to hire a good designer to help remedy that. I am hoping this will get better, but for now I'll have to settle for effects that are gimmicky, but not really elegant. For context, I am a software designer so I have some knowledge about this stuff, and they really need to up their game in this department or a competitor will come demolish them with nicer looking stuff. There are also frustrating limitations. You can use a mode called carousel to cycle through different effects, which is cool. But it only works on individual strings (not groups of strings), which is not cool, and makes the feature useless for me.Bugs: The app (at least on Android) is very buggy and not intuitive enough, and is lacking in customization options. I have a group of 2 strings on one tree, and mapping them went well. They look outstanding when previewing effects on them, but when I apply the effect so it will run without the app, the 2 strings become out of sync and the whole display looks broken. There's no way to delete a device in the app without uninstalling and reinstalling the app (which deletes all your customizations). There are also many other various bugs with the UI and other features while using the app.All this, of course, can be improved simply through software updates and I expect the experience to get better and better, even with the same hardware I am currently using. The possibly improvements and additions to this product are practically limitless, so I wish the company success and I am pulling for them, but for now, the headache of all the problems is almost too much to make it worth it...Almost.Side note to Twinkly: It would be absolutely incredible to open an "effects store" where people can create and share custom made effects, and vote on the most popular ones for everyone to download and use. This would require much better effects editing ability, but I hope that is in the plan for the future.I'll update this review as things evolve, which I'm sure they will.

Been meaning to write this, but here goes!I'd had my eye on these lights for several years, but finally pulled the trigger this Christmas, and I can safely say this is one of my best purchases on Amazon in the last couple years. I was worried that lights might be too bright, or patterns too corny, but it's all so customizable, even the brightness settings and blinking speed. I was so proud of our tree this year, I've never had one so beautiful.For a 7-8 foot tree I personally felt the 400 count was just right. It was the only one available when I ordered anyway, so I lucked out.Setup was easy, I had to take a bunch of pictures to get the 3D model setup, and it didn't work the first attempt because I had taken too many random angle pictures and it had a hard time compiling them all, less is more, it will figure it out.App on my iphone worked perfectly, never had any issues. Connects to wifi, and I could configure brightness settings, blink speed, pattern whatever I wanted from my phone, then turn the app off, whatever works perfectly!I ended up creating quite a few new color patterns for my tree. I didn't like the fast blinking, fancy ones, but they were cool to try out. Instead I would go to pre-made patterns, slow the speed down a little, dim the brighness just a tad, then change the colors (say to... Christmassy Green,Red,White) then save the pattern. Then open that up, and alter it a couple more times, (say for yellow and white lights) then save that as a new pattern.I'd keep switching the patterns up every couple days depending on moon, usually just slight variations. It was really awesome to have so much control. My little boys absolutely loved it.And then even better, once Christmas was over, I switched off the Christmassy colors, and switched to some slow blinking blues and greens, and was able to keep the tree up a couple weeks longer into New Year without it feeling like Christmas decorations. It felt kind of like it was a "Winter" tree now, and still felt fresh. That was super cool. I actually felt bad pulling it all down in early January, but all good things must come to an end as they say.Very excited to put it up next year.Couple other things, the lights themselves were cold to the touch, so MUCH safer than conventionals, and the quality of the LEDs is top knotch, so I don't have to worry about replacing bulbs or bulbs knocking out my lights. Gosh, I can't believe I had to deal with those crappy regular lights all these years that I'd end up throwing away every couple years. Wow... I love these lights.Get them!!!!

It would have been a five star review, however there was some misleading information shared from the company on other products that led me to this four start review. We originally bought the 225 light set, because on the answered questions the company stated it was enough for a 8 foot tree. However, upon arrival it was clear that on our sparse 7 foot tree it needed a about twice more. SO if you are debating between the 225/250 or 400 for a 6-8 foot tree. GO WITH 400. You will get much better impact and will overall be happier with the lighting on your tree. **Note after purchasing I did find a interactive lighting widget on their official site which shows you how many you should need for your tree height and your desired light amount, do that before you buy!!**App is user friendly, lights look great, lots of preset options for patterns with the ability to edit the spead/color/intensity within each effect. I've always wanted lights like this for our Christmas tree, and so far, I couldn't be happier now that they are finally on!Things to be aware of with this specific product:The 400 light strand needs to be strung from the middle down. I tried it that way, and I totally screwed it up. I then put on from the bottom up and then put any extra light down the back.Don't panic and take the lights off if they look weird at first, map them on the phone app under "LAYOUT"

I must say right up front, its little pricy but so worth it. I won my Christmas tree decoration challenge this year with Twinkly 400 lights set. It blows the completion right out of the water. No one come close to all the light patterns you can have, and the down load more for free. The set up was a little tricky with the Wi-Fi connection, and the App is very easy to use. Nice thing about Twinkly is you don’t get tired of the same old lites on your tree, you just change colours, or even design you own theme. Best part about it is you can add to your set that you already have, and creat something more elaborate. (No chance for the completion). Love It

Have been very disappointed with this product. Ordered two sets, one of which works fine but the other will not connect to our home wifi. Despite multiple attempts to resolve this with online customer service we are still no further ahead. Will be forced to return these if something does not improve.