Published on Nov. 19, 2024
The Twinkly Smart Christmas Tree makes holiday magic look easy. Here’s what our product testing team had to say after testing the tree for themselves.
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Christmas lights? Check. Stockings? Check. Smart Christmas Tree? Are you unfamiliar? You won’t be for long. We tested the popular Twinkly Smart Christmas Tree to see if it’s worth the hype (and the price). Our product testing team at Family Handyman ordered, unboxed, assembled and tested the 7 ½-foot tree.
Before ordering your Christmas tree this year, here’s everything you need to know, especially if you want to create extra holiday magic with an app-controlled, smart Christmas tree.
The Twinkly Smart Christmas Tree is a pre-lit artificial Christmas tree—an Aspen Pine, to be exact—with multicolor RGB lights. The Twinkly app controls the lights and lets you choose and design lighting effects through your phone. The preset lighting effects include options like rainbow, snow and fireworks light patterns.
“There are literally dozens upon dozens of preset customization options—different color combinations, patterns and animations,” says Product Testing Manager Annamarie Higley. “It might be a little overwhelming when you open the app to all the flashing colors and lights. But it’s also kind of fun to go through all the options.”
With so many lighting options available, you can select a preset pattern and then, beyond that, adjust its speed and brightness, combine patterns and animations, or completely start from scratch and layer a bunch of different colors and patterns over each other. The possibilities for unlocking peak Christmas magic are endless.
Here’s a breakdown of the Twinkly Smart Christmas Tree’s specific product features.
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Pros:
Cons:
The 7 ½-foot Twinkly Smart Christmas Tree is 90 inches tall and 51 inches in diameter. Our product testing team measured the tree at 90½ inches and found it to weigh more than 50 pounds despite the product description indicating it weighs just 33 pounds. About 15½ inches stand between the floor and the bottom of the first branch—plenty of room for presents from Santa.
According to our testers, setup is conveniently a one-person job. Even moving the box (before opening) is easy. The entire tree took only 15 minutes to fluff! The lighting process is easy, too—just plug in and go.
The Twinkly Christmas Tree’s quick-set power pole makes assembling each pre-wired section of the tree a breeze, no hassling with extra wiring or messy cords.
The Twinkly Smart Christmas Tree is pre-lit with 390 smart RGB LED lights. RGB lights combine red, green and blue hues to create millions of color options. So, no color is off-limits when it comes to your holiday tree experience. You can choose classic warm white options with a subtle twinkle or bright rainbow colors with a flashing effect and just about everything in between. You can even sync the lighting display with music. The lights also turn on and off with a convenient foot petal, so Christmas magic is literally just one step away.
Our testers described the needles on the tree as a combination of “plasticky and papery.”
Product Tester Sheri Kaz says, “It’s a darker green color, which is nice but solid and uniform, so the tree loses a few points for realism there.”
“The tree is pretty full,” Sheri adds. “The lights are nice and bright, but it feels like there could be some more spread throughout the middle and bottom sections.”
Our team noticed minimal drooping with this tree and very little shedding. They suggest the Twinkly Christmas Tree should hold up for many holiday seasons to come.
The Twinkly app lets you customize lighting effects, sync your display with music, set timers for automatic lighting and more. Let your Christmas creativity shine by designing a custom light show. Build your own animations from scratch or use pre-set templates throughout the season. Using the playlist feature, you can even set up multiple scenes and switch between them.
Take your Christmas party to the next level by syncing your Twinkly lights with music. With the addition of the Twinkly Music USB dongle, the Twinkly app can make your tree lights dance to your favorite holiday tunes.
With the Twinkly app, you can set timers to turn your smart lights on and off automatically. Schedule your Christmas tree lights to turn on with your house lights at dusk or program them to only light up on certain days. Whatever you decide, you won’t have to think or worry about manually turning on your tree lights.
Our product testing team unboxed, assembled and measured the Twinkly Smart Christmas Tree in the studio, where they fluffed it until it was full and presentable. That process was timed. Our testers ensured the product was easy to set up while also noting minor discrepancies regarding size between the product listing and real-life measurements.
Our testers also lit the tree, which involved downloading, registering and pairing the tree with the Twinkly mobile app. From there, they tested all the settings and functions to evaluate the app’s user-friendliness, compatibility and capabilities. Despite initially being a little overwhelming due to the sheer volume of lighting options, our product testers found the Twinkly app user-friendly and intuitive. If you’re looking to set up more than one tree model in the Twinkly app, you may first spend some time setting up the app. Our team did. However, once they got through the initial troubleshooting, the app could easily manage more than one unit.
Our team outfitted the tree with a collar and ornaments to ensure that the branches could withstand standard-size ornaments. They also swept and collected any needles that were shed during the assembly and disassembly process. The Twinkly Smart Christmas Tree shed virtually no needles and was easy to put up and take down.
Our Product Testing Lab put the Twinkly Smart Christmas Tree through rigorous testing and collected approximately 275 data points testing Christmas trees ahead of the holiday season this year. In total, they spent an estimated 60 collective hours testing Christmas trees, including researching, sourcing, intaking and testing. They also spent time photographing the Twinkly Smart Christmas Tree so you can see how it looks under real, natural lighting without any photoshopping tricks.
The tree works by using the Twinkly app to control the lights. From your phone, you can map the location of each LED light on the tree for custom lighting effects, choose from pre-programmed modes and create your own lighting effects. You can also set timers for your lights, group multiple Twinkly products together so they act as a single display and use voice control through Amazon Alexa or Google Home.
The Twinkly Smart Christmas Tree retails for $840 on Amazon.
With more than 600 reviews on Amazon, the Twinkly Pre-Lit Aspen Pine Smart Christmas Tree earns a 4.5-star rating.
“This is my first ever artificial tree and I have to admit it was a tough choice. Like most, I’ve enjoyed the ritual of going and getting a tree, the smell of fresh pine, and having the feels over a good pick at the tree lot,” says verified purchaser Ty Carriere. “This year was different. I’m an empty nester now and it didn’t feel the same getting a tree by myself, plus though I love the smell of pine throughout the house, I hate the clean up after. So this year I decided to get an artificial tree and I’m really pleased with this purchase!”
“[The] light patterns are controlled through presets on the connected box or a phone app and are extremely customizable (no literally, I can draw what patterns I want on the tree and how they are animated on my phone, it’s brilliant),” Ty adds. “Scheduling when you want the lights to come on and off through the app and even which patterns at what time. Looks great!”
“I was skeptical getting this tree online at first because of some of the reviews on the lights not working properly when connected,” says five-star reviewer Elicia, “The app was a bit frustrating to work with at first but once we found the directions everything was a breeze. I’m so happy with how you can change the lighting colors and effects from glow to twinkle…”
While it is a sizable investment, our testing proves the Twinkly Smart Christmas Tree is worth the splurge if you want to up your Christmas game this holiday season with a smart Christmas tree. Our team made positive remarks about the Twinkly app, too. In fact, many smart Christmas tree brands—like the coveted Balsam Hill Blue Spruce—use Twinkly for pre-lit, smart options.
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The Twinkly Smart Christmas Tree retails for $840 on Amazon.
