Aqara’s New Smart Lights Are Coming for Govee and Philips Hue

Aqara has announced several new smart lights at IFA 2026, and it feels more and more like the company is trying to take on Govee, Philips Hue, and others. Aqara’s new lights are colorful, bright, and can do flashy effects, all hallmarks of those competitors.

All of these new lights can use Thread, Zigbee, and Bluetooth for their wireless connectivity. They’re also Matter-compatible, meaning they will pair with basically any smart home ecosystem you throw them at. Aqara says in its press release that they’re at their best if you use Zigbee to connect them to an Aqara hub—doing so would “unlock exclusive Aqara Home features, including translating voice prompts into multi-device scenes and triggering automated pathway lighting or safety alerts.”

As for the lights themselves, there are two outdoor options—the Permanent Outdoor Lights H1 and the Outdoor String Lights H1. Both cover a white light temperature range between 2,000K and 9,000K, and feature bright RGB LEDs with individual zone-based control that lets you set custom lighting. At Aqara’s booth during IFA, the lights were bright and colorful without being exaggeratedly saturated or harsh.

An Aqara representative demonstrated a sound sync feature that uses a mic on the Permanent Outdoor Lights to let them react to noise, including music. That’s just like products like the last two Govee outdoor lights I reviewed, the Permanent Outdoor Lights Prism and the Outdoor Chromatic String Lights. And like Govee’s permanent under-eaves lighting, these are also installable with included 3M adhesive or screws.

The interior lights that Aqara announced include the Aqara Floor Lamp T1. It’s a 56-inch-tall stick-style lamp, almost exactly like the ones Philips Hue and Govee have sold for years—down to its cylindrical shape with an LED strip facing one way and black backing around the rest of the cylinder. It has a simple flat black base, unlike the tapered canister that the Philips Hue Signe rests on, but otherwise, it would be hard to tell the two apart if they aren’t sitting right next to each other.

Those aside, Aqara also announced the LED Strip T2, a cuttable strip light that ranges between 3 meters and 10 meters, depending on which you buy, and the LED Downlight T2, a self-contained in-ceiling spotlight. The latter of the two is the only one with a different tunable white light range—it goes from 2,700K to 6,500K.

Unfortunately, Aqara hasn’t announced what these lights will cost when they’re released later this year.