Twinkly Cluster

Verdict

The Twinkly Cluster is a rope of 400 bright, colourful bulbs, brought to life by smart mapping and a huge range of customisable programmes. At six metres long these lights are great for bedecking a large Christmas tree, but you could install them anywhere you fancy brightening things up – inside or outside your home. With a bulb every 1.5cm, Cluster offers much denser effects than a typical light string – they’re ideal for adding colour and fun to a long, thin space.

Introduction

Almost any string of fairy lights cheers up a drab looking room or garden, but the Twinkly Cluster is for those who want something a bit more impressive. It’s a medium-length string measuring about six metres, clustered with a remarkable 400 LEDs – that’s one every 1.5cm. There’s a version limited to just gold and silver lights, but I’m testing the multicolour design, where each bulb can display more than 16 million colours.

As you’d expect, that level of control requires an app. You can connect to the Cluster via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, applying steady colours or choosing from a wide range of customisable effects. This string is weatherproof, so it’s ideal for use indoors and out, although the supplied mains adaptor does need a bit of shelter.

Design and Features

• High density of small, weatherproof lights
• Compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant
• App missing a couple of features

The first thing you’re likely to notice about the Twinkly Cluster is that it’s very densely packed with LED bulbs. These branch off the main cable about every 1.5cm, with the lights themselves topping off a 5cm long offshoot. Once installed, these short lengths of wire help add a bit of randomness and space to the layout, rather than giving you a closely packed line of evenly spaced lights. That makes them perfect for wrapping around a small tree, but they’re also great to fill out long, thin spaces, such as the gaps under long garden steps.

The lights themselves are small, with an opaque cylindrical lens, so the effect is of small points of light, rather than lanterns or any other shape.

The light string itself is permanently wired to the Twinkly controller, which in turn connects to the supplied mains adaptor. The whole set is suitable for indoor or outdoor use, although its AC adaptor has only an IP44 protection rating. That makes it suitable for damp places, but it should be protected against rain. I’ve mentioned you can buy this set in colour or gold and silver versions, but you can also choose between black or green cabling – again, ideal for trees.

There’s not much control available directly from the Twinkly controller, which has only a single button. Once you’ve draped the lights where you want them, you’ll want to install the Twinkly app and get the Cluster connected. This easy process uses Bluetooth, but it’s best to switch to a Wi-Fi connection thereafter: if your lights are within range of your router, it means you can control them from anywhere you take your phone.

The final setup step involves using the app to map the actual physical placement of each bulb. This is mostly automated and not as tricky as it sounds. It’s necessary so the app can work out where bulbs are, and which ones to switch to which colour for an effect to work.

The Twinkly Cluster can be set to display a single colour, but where’s the fun in that? Explore the app’s Gallery and you’ll find a big selection of pre-programmed displays, each of which you can quickly preview on the string. You can also open the FX Wizard to create your own masterpiece, which can be based on a pattern, sketched with your fingers, or even imported from a GIF.

Saving an effect will store it on the Twinkly controller, which gives you a way to control the lights without the app thereafter – press the button to cycle through the stored displays and turn the lights on and off. These lights work with Alexa and the Google Assistant, and I was able to add and control them in Google Home. As a second-generation Twinkly device they should also work with Apple HomeKit, although I wasn’t able to test this.

Twinkly’s app does offer scheduling, but unfortunately this is limited just to single on and off times. You can’t set multiple on/off periods per day, for example, or have different schedules for different days, and there’s no option to automatically switch on or off around dusk or dawn. And while you can alter an effect’s brightness, you can’t have it fade out or fade in over a period of time.

Performance

• Brilliantly bright, saturated colours
• Excellent effects
• Can be a touch flickery

Set up the Twinkly Cluster, find an effect you like, and it’s impossible not to be almost fully won over. The bulbs are bright, and they have an incredible depth of colour. It’s hypnotising to watch individual points cycle from unfathomable blues, through intense violets to warm oranges and reds.

My only slight criticism is that there’s sometimes obvious stepping between shades, rather than a completely smooth fade. This tends to be most obvious in transitions across the full colour spectrum, where the bulbs have to shift between several completely different colours within a few seconds. Here they seemingly can’t fit in enough shades to make it completely seamless – it’s much less noticeable in effects that use a smaller palette.

I installed the Twinkly Cluster around the central banisters leading up a stairway. The app did a heroic job of mapping this near-spiral arrangement, which proved perfect for some of the more straightforward effects available. I particularly liked Rainbow, which saw a spectrum of colours chasing each other down the stairs.

However, with the lights mostly arranged vertically, there was limited horizontal separation, and two-dimensional patterns didn’t work so well. I experimented by repositioning and re-mapping the Cluster in a coil on the bed, which created a much better canvas.

It’s worth bearing in mind where and how you’ll install your lights. The Twinkly Cluster does a great job of one-dimensional string effects. It’s also great for 2D effects, provided it’s arranged appropriately. However, if you particularly want to make the most of Twinkly’s most impressive 2D effects, you might want to consider an inherently 2D product such as either the Twinkly Curtain or Twinkly Squares.

As Christmas approached, I used this light string to decorate our two-metre tall artificial tree. While it looked great, I discovered that even a six-metre string was a little on the short side to provide full coverage – I would have needed two Clusters to get enough light density for a truly impressive effect. Still, if you do resort to more than one Twinkly product, you can join them in a single display by mapping them together, then applying coordinated effects across them all.

In use, these lights consumed a maximum of 31 watts – about the same as three low-energy light bulbs. This dropped to only just over one watt when they were on standby. Both the power adaptor and the Twinkly controller became warm in use, but never hot.

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