EZVALO Under Cabinet Kitchen Lights, 5 Pack of 5300K...

Most Helpful Review

"I wanted some underlighting in the kitchen for the surface areas but rent so can't fit any permanent lights.These seemed the best I could find for the price, and the added remote control gave me hope of adding them to my smart home so that they can be controlled with Alexa.They're bright, thin and stylish. They're magnetic but as the cupboards I wanted to fix them to are wood I used some m3 tape. I wasn't aware there were metal plates with adhesive already in the box as they got stuck in the box when I tipped everything out, which would make it easier to take them down to recharge.Like another reviewer, my remote control just wouldn't work. The instruction book is extremely small and uninformative; most functionality and buttons aren't mentioned at all.I removed the plastic tab separating the battery from the remote but the remote didn't work. I took out the battery to get look at it, put it back in, the remote still didn't work. The instructions don't make it clear which mode the lights need to be in for the remote to work on/off/auto. I tried all 3 (on/off/auto) on all my lights, nothing. On the verge of returning everything I managed to find another cr2025 battery and put that in the remote and it worked. I then tried the old battery once more, and that worked. I've now been using the original battery for a couple of days without issue. I'm really unsure why the remote and original battery refused to work.So I can now confirm the remote works when the light is in either auto or on modes.With the remote working, I am still perplexed with how things are meant to work. By default the lights are either permanently on, or come on with moment and turn off after 20 seconds, which is incredibly short. Only really good if you're walking past, but useless if you're staying in the area. The instructions only mention "before use pull out the plastic sheet", how the on button works, the off button and the cancel button.The day and night mode buttons only differ in that motion will only trigger the lights in the light level are lower than 30lux. There are brightness buttons which are self explanatory.But then there are timing buttons. With lm, 15m, 30m, 45m, 60m. I can't understand how these are meant to work. I tried using the 60m on all of them to have the lights stay on for an hour after motion. But sadly it seems that they only stay on for a longer time that once and then revert back to 20 seconds afterwards. So this means that without having to manually control the lights by turning them on as "always on", or turning them on by remote and settings a time for that specific time. The lights will always turn on for 20 seconds at a time, and I find this to be this is fairly useless.Now, regarding smart home control: I have Alexa as well as an Aqara Hub which lets you control remote control (IR) devices. I added the lights as an Aqara custom device, and can now control the lights in my kitchen with the Aqara Hub. However, whilst the device shows up in Alexa as I have them linked, Alexa will not turn on or off the lights, so in order to control the lights I must use an Aqara routine.So to work around this, I set an Aqara automation using a separate Aqara Presence Sensor to detect presence and when detected, turn on the lights and set the timer to 15 minutes. Then the automation will send the remote control IR signal to the lights to turn them on and immediately set a 15 minute timer before they turn off. This seems to be working well so far.The lights are advertised as having around 50 hours of battery, but in reality a fully charged light lasts a few hours at most. To work around that I've now ordered so usb cable to plug them in.Edit: I have now realised that the remote control it signals for these lights control other devices in my home. So sadly I'm not sure I can settle with these using the workarounds of repeatedly triggering a longer timer on each detection of movement after all."