An LED light strip you won’t want to hide

These days, your options are almost endless for RGB LED light strips. You can pick up an inexpensive set in various lengths for less than $20. However, they’re usually meant to be hidden behind your TV, furniture, or under kitchen cabinets and out of sight.

With Twinkly Flex LED tube strips, it’s just the opposite. These are beautiful LED tubes that allow you to create any neon sign you can imagine, and instead of hiding it, they will be the center of attention in any room or office.

Twinkly’s app-controlled Flex LED tubes (or strings) come in 6.5-foot strands for $100, which is certainly not cheap. That said, Twinkly is one of the best when it comes to Christmas lights, and if you already have Twinkly products, you’ll love the Flex lights and their retro vibes.

While smart lights are great, being able to flex and bend this visually appealing LED tube into any shape you can imagine makes them a great option. Once assembled, you can map the design within the app, create beautiful effects and color gradients, or even sync it to music. Consider Twinkly Flex lights if you’re looking for a stylish room setting or conversation starter.

Installation and box contents

Although the LED tube is thicker than traditional light strips, installation was simple. As expected, it mounts to the wall with some 3M adhesive strips and a few small plastic clips to help line everything up. Twinky provides instructions on the box if needed, but let your imagination run wild and start putting everything in its place. There is also a long power cable and controller.

As you can see above, it comes with four curved plastic mounting clips and 12 more straight clips to help users align the string and create neat shapes. And while this was enough for my “Play” sign, I wish the box had more options, more corners, and a few different angles. I had some great design ideas, but they were difficult with only four mounting clips in the corners.

As for mounting the light on the wall, Twinkly provides double-sided 3M adhesive pads and 16 small screws. You can use either option or a combination of both. It’s worth noting that 3M will probably strip the paint off your wall (it did mine) if you ever decide to change the shape, so I ended up using the small screws. On the other hand, you now have little holes to deal with later.

You’ll also want to find a good place to hang or hide the included controller or perhaps mount it near a corner wall to try and hide the power cord.

Overall, the installation process was incredibly easy and the tube lives up to the name “flexible” and bends in tight curves to allow for various lettering or design ideas.

Twinkly Application Software

The Twinkly Flex LED tube certainly looks good and gets very bright. Once installed on the wall, you’ll want to download the Twinkly app for Android or iOS to customize everything. The whole setup and pairing process is easy, and the app walks you through holding the button on the controller to pair, then it will connect it to your home Wi-Fi network. Unfortunately it only works on 2.4 GHz so I had to switch my phone from my 5 GHz Wi-Fi and start over.

Twinkly’s app isn’t as polished as what you’ll find on Govee or Nanoleaf, in my opinion, and was confusing at times, but the sheer number of customization options quickly won me over. You will find loads of lighting effects, presets, animations, etc. I really like the flag or the breath animations, but each to their own. And as you’d expect, you can quickly turn it on or off or adjust the brightness for any situation.

More importantly, each preset is fully customizable. You can instantly change colors, add various shades, and adjust speed, animation, or effect, making the options truly endless. And if you don’t like any of the presets, you can create your own.

During the app setup process, you will be prompted to point your phone at the Flex tube, and it uses the camera to map and learn your Flex layout. This causes the 192 LEDs to light up individually, then in a row, allowing the app to learn and save your layout. The app will then give you more suggestions that match and work better with the layout. Again, you can choose from the presets, or it will even let you customize each of those LEDs as you see fit.

Basically, you can choose from a wide range of colors, presets, and animations or take full control of the LED tube and go crazy. It’s also nice to be able to save and bookmark specific schemes, which makes it easier to find what you like in the favorites tab.

You can pair the Twinkly app with music and turn any wall into the center of attention at a party, and it works with Amazon Alexa or the Google Assistant, making it even easier to quickly turn your lights on or off. And finally, the app has an option to set up a custom playlist that scrolls through a pre-made list of color effects instead of using the same one all day. This makes it perfect for events, special occasions, holidays or to combine during the day.

Performance and value

In terms of performance, thanks to 192 LEDs and 16 million colors, these lights are bright, vibrant, and easy to use. The Twinkly Flex lights are quite bright, and in my image above, they are quite visible during the day, even at only 75% brightness.

And since the LEDs are in a tube vs. When exposed, Twinkly Flex lights are not only extremely durable, but the lighting effects are not too intense or overbearing. That is precisely what makes the Flex such a great option over traditional flat, clear LED light strips.

I have had several different LED lights, and these are my favorites. Sadly I wish it was a bit longer or more affordable, and it would be great if you could combine two sets into one long tube. Unfortunately, that is not an option.

Whether or not these are a good value is up for debate. You can get other LED strip lights in different lengths for around $20, which makes the $100 price quite steep. However, these are not your typical bland or cheap LED strips. They are durable and vibrant tubes. For what it’s worth, you can get longer options for less from Govee, and they’re not the only ones.

conclusion

Overall I am happy with the Twinkly Flex lights and would recommend them to a friend or family member. They are easy to install, super easy to customize, go on incredibly bright and look fantastic.

Do you wish the Twinkly Flex was longer, had more mounting clips, and was more affordable? Absolutely! However, with a little creativity and determination, and using the other 12 straight mounting clips, I’m sure you can find something wonderful to display on your wall.

If you’re looking to add some retro vibes to a game room or want to create your own neon sign-style wall art, Twinkly Flex is a great place to start.