Blog

Oct 30, 2024

The 8 Best Christmas Lights of 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Doug Mahoney and Thom Dunn After another round of testing, we now recommend the Pro Christmas T5 LED Christmas Lights as our top pick. We’ve also added new smart lights and color changing light

By Doug Mahoney and Thom Dunn

After another round of testing, we now recommend the Pro Christmas T5 LED Christmas Lights as our top pick. We’ve also added new smart lights and color changing light picks.

Christmas lights bring a unique glimmering warmth to your holiday season—or your backyard, your favorite dive bar, or really anywhere else, for that matter.

After more than 100 hours of researching, interviewing experts, and testing more than 70 different string light sets, we believe the Pro Christmas T5 LED Christmas Lights offer the best combination of light quality, color accuracy, durability, and availability.

These lights have a color quality that nearly matches that of traditional incandescents, but they’re safer and more durable, and they should last for years.

Reliable and affordable, these seasonal mainstays are good for buying in bulk and as a last-minute purchase—but the light quality isn’t the best, and color choices are limited.

These LEDs offer bright and robust colors, with a unique bulb shape that gives the light an almost twinkling effect. They’re also surprisingly weather resistant.

These warm incandescents nail the traditional look, but they're less durable and less efficient than our pick, and they won’t last as long.

With larger bulbs and a wire that can be easily cut and adjusted as needed, the Pro Christmas C9 Light Line Kit is a versatile, customizable large-bulb option.

With crisp colors and a wide range of preset patterns, these lights offer high-quality hardware without the complexity of smart, app-based controls.

With a broad and bright color palette and plenty of preset lighting patterns, the Govee lights are an affordable way to explore the possibilities of smart Christmas lighting.

With 16 million color choices and a library of customizable animations and effects, the Twinkly lights are incredibly versatile. But they are expensive, and the app could use some work.

These lights have a color quality that nearly matches that of traditional incandescents, but they’re safer and more durable, and they should last for years.

With rich colors, tight wiring, and sturdy construction with a reliable warranty, the Pro Christmas T5 LED Christmas Lights are the best of the best of the plain old standard T5-style mini bulb Christmas lights. These LED bulbs are made with a one-piece molded plastic design that’s resistant to water and dust, and guaranteed to last for at least 3 holiday seasons. They also come in a wide range of color options, including the standard warm white, cool white, and multicolor bulbs, as well as several other solid primary tones and Christmas-y combinations. They are typically more expensive than whatever cheap Christmas lights you might be used to buying at the local big-box store, but we think the quality and lifespan are more than worth the markup.

Advertisement

Reliable and affordable, these seasonal mainstays are good for buying in bulk and as a last-minute purchase—but the light quality isn’t the best, and color choices are limited.

If you just need a big spool of decent-looking Christmas lights for a reasonable price, look for the GE StayBright Mini LED Christmas Lights. GE has been in the Christmas light business since day one, which means these are widely available seasonally, and they do a nice job overall. The wires aren’t quite as rigid or cleanly wrapped as the ones on our top pick, and the light quality isn’t quite as bright or as robust. The multicolor set includes a nice purple bulb—a GE-specific detail that really brings the palette together. The company sells a neutral white light spool as well, with a color temperature that sits right between the warm white and cool white options you get from other companies.

These LEDs offer bright and robust colors, with a unique bulb shape that gives the light an almost twinkling effect. They’re also surprisingly weather resistant.

The Pro Christmas 5 mm Wide Angle Conical LED Christmas Lights have shorter, stubbier bulbs that seem to project a different level of brightness depending on where you’re standing—an almost twinkling effect that gives the lights a nice sense of texture and depth. This unique design also makes them more weather resistant, which is why we (as well as pro lighting designers and other experts we talked to) think these lights are ideal for an outdoor setting. These lights can work just as well inside, too, though you might want to set them on a dimmer switch. Like our other picks from Pro Christmas, the wide-angle lights are available in warm white, cool white, multicolor, and more, and are protected by a three-year seasonal warranty.

These warm incandescents nail the traditional look, but they're less durable and less efficient than our pick, and they won’t last as long.

If you’re not ready to give up the unique warm twinkle of incandescents on an indoor tree, Kringle Traditions Incandescent Mini Lights are our favorites. These mini-light sets emit the warmest overall light, and like our other picks, they have an easy-handling wire. But they use a lot more energy than LED bulbs and don’t last nearly as long—you can expect 2,000 to 3,000 hours of use, versus an average life of 20,000 hours for our pick. That’s just the bulb life, too, not even taking into account how fragile and easily breakable an incandescent filament is.

With larger bulbs and a wire that can be easily cut and adjusted as needed, the Pro Christmas C9 Light Line Kit is a versatile, customizable large-bulb option.

If you want a bigger bulb to brighten up your walkway, patio, or eaves, the Pro Christmas C9 Light Line Kit is a reliable and highly customizable choice. These weather-resistant screw-in LEDs are available in multicolor packages, or warm and cool whites, green or white cords, and can be configured in any order or pattern that you want. You can also cut the socket string to the exact length you need, depending on the size of your space, and add a vampire plug on either end to keep the electricity flowing. Don’t worry—it’s nowhere near as daunting as it sounds. These C9 light lines make for an easy DIY project for any season, and the clips, plugs, bulbs, and strings are all available à la carte as well.

With crisp colors and a wide range of preset patterns, these lights offer high-quality hardware without the complexity of smart, app-based controls.

The Pro Christmas RGBW Color-Changing LED Light Set offers a good range of customizable color options without any complicated smart-home setups—simply plug and go. There are bold solid color palettes, including warm white and purple, holiday-themed color pairings, and even some fun effects such as flashing and fading. You can’t customize the color choices beyond the few dozen presets, but that’s a fair trade-off for a plug-and-go variety light show. You’ll also need to buy a separate remote and controller set for around $20, although you can use one controller for up to 10 strands of lights.

With a broad and bright color palette and plenty of preset lighting patterns, the Govee lights are an affordable way to explore the possibilities of smart Christmas lighting.

The Govee Smart RGBWIC Christmas String Lights come with more than 100 fun and flashy light presets, with a spread of 16 million colors to choose from. Its physical format is more like a rope light, not studded sockets on a wire. This is a different look from a traditional light set, but it’s one you might prefer for predictable spacing or to help prevent tangles. You can sync these with music, or with other Govee sets around your home. The customization process can get a little tedious, so these might not be the best choice for someone who has a very specific lighting vision in mind, but Govee’s basic options deliver bold, bright colors in a range of patterns.

With 16 million color choices and a library of customizable animations and effects, the Twinkly lights are incredibly versatile. But they are expensive, and the app could use some work.

If you really want your home to sparkle and shine for the winter holiday—and maybe for other occasions, too—get the Twinkly Smart RGB-W LED String Lights. With the app’s built-in “mapping” feature, you can even single out individual lights to create custom effects that spiral around your Christmas tree, or your railing, or wherever else you choose to set them up. The endless design possibilities and weather-resistant construction mean you can also keep them strung up all year round and customize the colors to go with every occasion. But they are significantly more expensive than other Christmas lights, and the software still occasionally glitches.

Advertisement

I’ve been writing for Wirecutter since 2017, focusing on home improvement products ranging from heat pumps to neck fans to karaoke machines (what’s a home without one?). For this guide in particular, I’ve tested dozens of different light sets and also sought expertise from a number of professionals over the years who live and breathe Christmas and/or lighting. These included Ben Orr, owner of Northern Seasonal Services, who has been professionally installing holiday lighting in the Chicago area since 2005; Jason Woodward, the director of sales and marketing at Christmas Designers, a retailer specializing in holiday lighting; John Strainic, GE’s general manager of North America consumer lighting; and Anthony Krize, vice president of Nicolas Holiday, the brand-management company for GE’s Christmas lights.

I also consulted with several lighting professionals during the testing process, including Susan Moriarty, executive creative director and founder of the Boston-based creative agency The Soapbox Studio, who has 20 years of experience as an art director, designer, and photographer; Bridget Collins, the assistant lighting and projections supervisor at the Tony Award–recognized Huntington Theatre Company (where I was a writing fellow from 2015 to 2017); and Ari Herzig, another professional lighting and projections designer.

Like all Wirecutter journalists, I review and test products with complete independence, in accordance with our editorial standards. I have no knowledge about the business implications of any of my editorial recommendations. I don’t own any stock or have any other financial interest in any of the companies that I cover (or am likely to cover), and I don’t hold onto any “freebies,” always donating products after I’m done testing them, unless I need to hold onto them for long-term observations.

There are many kinds of Christmas string lights available in various colors, shapes, and sizes. Many people already prefer a certain type, even if they don’t necessarily know what that specific kind of light is called. Through our conversations with Christmas decoration professionals, including Jason Woodward of Christmas Designers and Anthony Krize of Nicolas Holiday/GE Brands, we were able to focus our research on a few of the more commonly popular options:

Once we knew what kind of bulbs we were looking for, we limited our search to non-blinking lights, in the three most popular color options: warm white, cool white, and multicolor. We did not limit ourselves to any specific number of lights or spacing between bulbs, as we’ve found that most people have their own needs and preferences, and most light brands are available in a variety of different options anyway.

We also focused primarily on LED sets, which are more common, more popular, and generally safer and longer-lasting, too. We recognize that some people still prefer the analog radiance of a traditional incandescent bulb, however, so we kept an eye out for these whenever we could as well.

Separately, we looked into several color-changing light sets as well, many (though not all) of which relied on smart-home technology. For these, we were less concerned about bulb size than we were about color options and quality and user experience—which, as you can probably imagine, varied wildly.

When it came time for testing, we wound and unwound each set of Christmas lights and arranged them around our home. This included wrapping them around poles, draping them over railings, then unwrapping them and recoiling them and setting them up again—basically, trying to use the lights as they’re intended to be used. Along the way, we took notes on things like:

We also consulted with lighting professionals and neighbors alike to gauge their opinions on light and color quality: Which lights would they prefer to work with, or live beside, or hang on their own homes? (In previous years, we have also set up lights in professional lighting studios or black box theater spaces, using professional tools and expertise to evaluate color temperature and accuracy.)

Overall, we found that the wire quality has a lot to do with the success of a strand of lights. Some of the tested lights had tidy, close-knit strands of wire, while others were loose and messy. Some wires needed untwisting before use, like an old phone cord, and still others continued to accordion back on themselves no matter how we tried to stretch them out and lay them flat. A good wire means good, reliable electrical connections—and that attention to detail tends to carry over into color quality, too.

Advertisement

These lights have a color quality that nearly matches that of traditional incandescents, but they’re safer and more durable, and they should last for years.

With thick, well-twisted wires and a rich color palette, the Pro Christmas T5 LED Christmas Lights offer the best combination of brightness, quality, and durability. It’s a standard that holds across the full range of color options, too, including warm white, cool white, and multicolor. Add in a generous three-year seasonal warranty and a range of customizable color choices, and the Pro Christmas strands are simply the best option for standard T5-style LED Christmas lights.

The Pro Christmas T5 lights offer the most incandescent-like colors, along with all the benefits of LEDs. From rich, ultramarine blues and kelly greens to robust reds and deep yellows that don’t get washed out, the Pro Christmas multicolor lights genuinely shine, while the warm whites have a radiant glow that evokes the burning filaments that light up your nostalgia. Even the cool whites have a crispness that’s not too glaring or fluorescent. Add in a sturdy plastic casing that can withstand (some) weather and a nearly negligible energy use, and the Pro Christmas lights really cover all the bases.

The thick wiring makes them easier to manage, too. Good wiring goes a long way, and the Pro Christmas lights genuinely stand out. They’re tough and sturdy enough that you don’t have to worry about damaging them when you pull them out of the box, and they’re surprisingly good at maintaining their memory, too. When it’s time to store them for the season, you can roll them into a ball without having to worry about annoying knots and tangles. (Though we wouldn’t blame you if you still preferred to wind or coil them up for storage.)

The Pro Christmas lights are available in a wider range of colors than other LED Christmas light brands. While we focused our testing on the standard white and multicolor options, we also appreciate the fact that the Pro Christmas lights come in a variety of color options, all with the same high-quality luster. You can get a string of solid blues or greens, or even go for a Christmas-y combo like red and green or red and white (warm or cool). The company also sells faceted M5 lights, which are similar in size to the T5 lights, in pink, purple, aqua, and lime.

The Pro Christmas T5 lights are impressively weather resistant as well. Unlike most T5 Christmas lights, the bulbs on the Pro Christmas strands are made from a single piece of molded plastic, which makes it even harder for dirt and water to infiltrate the bulb and damage the circuitry. During our tests, we fully submerged them in a bucket of water, and they continued working perfectly fine for years after that. We wouldn’t recommend replicating that test with your own lights, and you probably wouldn’t want to leave them out in a hurricane or other similarly precipitous event. But generally speaking, these lights can withstand the elements pretty well. The only downside is that, if any of the bulbs do break, you won’t be able to replace them (though the rest of the string will still work).

They also come with classic stackable “piggyback” plugs, so you can string together multiple strands off a single electrical outlet. Like many Christmas lights, the Pro Christmas strands come with a female/input plug at the end of the line, so you can plug several sets of lights together, all pulling power from a single outlet. But the Pro Christmas lights stand out because they also have a stackable plug on the front end with both an input and an output. This allows you to start multiple strands of lights from the same outlet, or use the back input end of the plug to keep sending power to a lamp, or TV, or laptop charger, or whatever else you were planning to use the open plug for otherwise.

If anything goes wrong, the Pro Christmas T5 sets are protected by a three-year seasonal warranty. “Seasonal” in this context means “90 days or less per calendar year.” You can obviously keep them up all year round, but this will unfortunately void the warranty. Still, this is one of the most generous warranties we’ve seen for a product that’s typically treated like something cheap and disposable. And we think that speaks to the overall quality of these lights.

They may cost more than most people expect to spend on Christmas lights. It’s not that the Pro Christmas T5 lights are expensive, per se—it’s that there are a lot of other, cheaper lights out there. Most people will end up paying about twice as much for a Pro Christmas T5 set as they would for other, lesser Christmas light brands. Of course, you also get what you pay for, which is why we think it’s worth shelling out the extra money. If it helps, Christmas specialty suppliers such as Christmas Designers typically offer a bulk discount, which can help you reduce the cost (assuming you need a lot of lights to begin with).

Reliable and affordable, these seasonal mainstays are good for buying in bulk and as a last-minute purchase—but the light quality isn’t the best, and color choices are limited.

GE has been making Christmas lights since 1882; in fact, the company is responsible for the very first commercially available Christmas string light set. With that kind of pedigree, it’s no surprise that even the company’s lower-tier lights offer top-notch quality for the price. If you’re looking for lights to buy in bulk—or you think the holidays are incomplete without a little purple—the GE StayBright Mini LED Christmas Lights in multicolor and white are your best bet.

The GE StayBright lights are widely available without having to worry about shipping premiums. You can find these lights at all the usual online retailers, usually for half the price of our picks—as long as they’re in season, at least. By contrast, our top pick from Pro Christmas typically has limited availability on Amazon; otherwise, you’ll have to go to a specialty holiday seller like Christmas Designers, which could come with added shipping costs, too.

The cable connections offer an additional level of water resistance. Unlike our other picks, which use standard two-prong piggyback plugs, the GE StayBright sets use coaxial-style cables, with screw-on ends for improved watertight resistance. They can still plug into a standard wall outlet. But with the coaxial cable ends, you can screw together up to 25 light strands (according to the manufacturer) without having to worry about water, dust, or an accidental tug pulling the plugs apart.

The purple light bulb is another nice touch you can only find on GE Christmas lights. We’re not entirely sure why GE insists on including a purple bulb on the company’s multicolor light strands. But we’re glad they do. Not only does it help the StayBright lights (and other GE-branded Christmas lights) to stand out, but it also helps to cool down the overall color temperature of the strand, without making it feel any less vibrant or bright.

The GE StayBright strands also come coiled on a spool, which could be handy for storage and cleanup. The wires on the GE StayBrights aren’t as sturdy as the ones you get with the Pro Christmas lights and are more prone to tangling and tearing (though the wires are still much better than what you’d find on other, cheaper brands). But that cardboard-and-plastic packaging spool can help the lights to keep their shape in the off-season. It also makes them much easier to organize, store, and transport overall.

The company offers a three-year warranty as well. This is similar to the warranty you get with our top pick from Pro Christmas. GE’s history and reputation should give you an added sense of comfort, too—the company actually has resources to support the concerns of its customers.

But the GE StayBright lights don’t look quite as nice as our other picks. The colors are crisp and warm enough, but the brightness is more like the sparkling allure of a homey dive bar. Which is to say they’re better for creating atmosphere than actual illumination. These are good, but not great, lights (even with that tasty purple bulb).

They’re not as well-made, either. The wires in particular are thinner than the ones on our top pick, and more likely to tangle and fray. The individual lights don’t look as sturdy, either.

There’s also no option for warm or cool whites. Most white Christmas light strands usually come in at least two different color temperatures, giving you a choice between a warmer, orange-ish white (around 2700K) or a crisper, bluer cool white (around 5000K). But the GE StayBrights are only available in a standard, neutral white. This isn’t bad, or unappealing by any means, but it is different from what you might expect. Some of the packages or online listings might label these lights as “warm white,” but don’t be fooled.

The GE StayBrights aren’t dimmable either. But, as we mentioned, they’re not as bright as our other picks, either, so you probably wouldn’t want to dim them anyway.

Advertisement

These LEDs offer bright and robust colors, with a unique bulb shape that gives the light an almost twinkling effect. They’re also surprisingly weather resistant.

The Pro Christmas 5 mm Wide Angle Conical LED Christmas Lights give off a bright, warm color that is particularly perfect for the outdoors, whether you’re decorating a window box, a tree, a wreath, a railing, or a roofline. Like the standard T5-style lights from Pro Christmas, the wide-angle bulbs are also available in a variety of color options, including warm white and cool white, multicolor, as well as solid single colors, with different bulb quantities and spacings.

The Pro Christmas wide-angle LEDs are even more brilliant than standard Christmas lights. The odd, stubby shape of these wide-angle bulbs gives these lights a distinctive appearance that can really make your tree and yard pop. In addition to the fact that they’re already brighter than many regular LED mini lights, the inverted cone-shaped lens can also emit a different level of brightness depending on the angle from which you view them. Some might even say it creates a natural “twinkly” effect—a nice touch for the winter holiday season.

They’re more durable, too, which makes them a better choice for outdoors. Like the T5 lights from Pro Christmas, the wide-angle LEDs use fully sealed and molded bulbs. There is no separating the bulb from the wire, and thus no way for moisture or grime to work into the socket. The downside of this design is that you can’t replace a bulb if it breaks (although the rest of the string will keep working). Fortunately, the short, stubby design of the wide-angle lenses makes them even harder to break by accident. Combined with the brighter output, the Pro Christmas wide-angle lights are an ideal choice for outdoor string lighting.

Like the standard Pro Christmas LEDs, the wide-angle lights also have stackable plugs, tightly-wound wiring, and a three-year warranty. In our tests, the Pro Christmas lights were easy to unravel and didn’t get tangled up like other, lower-quality lights; in fact, some string sizes might arrive at your home packaged and shipped in a balled-up clump. (We still suggest you show some care when you wrap them up for storage at the end of the season.) And because the LEDs use so little energy, you can connect a whopping 43 strands and run them on a single outlet without having to worry about extension cords or tripping a breaker. Finally, if anything does go wrong, Pro Christmas offers a seasonal 3-year warranty (again, assuming three months of use per year).

But some people might find them too bright, especially for indoor use. These wide-angle lights could be a little overwhelming on a Christmas tree, but we still think they’re a great choice for your railings or other outdoor decorations. If you do want to keep them inside, all of the Pro Christmas LEDs we recommend are fully dimmable with a smooth, steady arc, so you don’t have to worry about stuttering, skipping, or sacrificing color fidelity.

These warm incandescents nail the traditional look, but they're less durable and less efficient than our pick, and they won’t last as long.

If you refuse to lose the distinctive and traditional look of incandescents for indoor use, we recommend Kringle Traditions Incandescent Mini Lights. These lights offer a noticeable difference in color quality—they’re not the brightest, but they have a certain warmth and radiance that even the best LEDs struggle to match. Incandescent lights might not be as durable or long-lasting as our LED picks, but they do have that je ne sais quoi that immediately sparks memories of cold winter evenings by the fire (or the dive bar).

The Kringle Traditions strand is the best choice for capturing that analog warmth of an incandescent bulb. There are a lot of great things about LED sets, but they will never be able to perfectly replicate the starry sparkle of a heated filament inside a bulb. And that’s what you get with an incandescent light like the ones from Kringle Traditions. The color quality has this ineffable analog warmth, thanks in no small part to the fact that, well, it’s literally a heated wire floating in a glass vacuum.

They’re surprisingly well-made, too, with a rigid wire that won’t get tangled. The wires on the Kringle Traditions incandescents were tight and organized, and once we stretched them out, they remained flat and straight with no issues.These lights will never last as long as LED bulbs, but the wiring and the wrapping on these feel sturdy and resilient enough to last for several seasons.

The Kringle Traditions strand is also easier to fix if something goes wrong. If anything does go wrong and a bulb breaks or dies, incandescent lights are easy and affordable to replace: At this writing, you can buy 25 replacement bulbs for about $10. By contrast, most of the LED strands we recommend use one-piece molded plastic lights—which means when they break, they’re broken for good.

But this type of bulb won’t last as long as an LED can. Incandescent bulbs are literally designed to wear out over time, to the point of self-destruction. While an LED bulb can last a decade, you’ll be lucky to get a few seasons out of an incandescent. And that’s assuming that the fragile glass casing doesn’t pop or smash before the filament burns out.

They also use more energy than LED bulbs. Incandescent bulbs use up to 50 times more electricity than their LED counterparts. A lot of that energy gets wasted, too, burning off as excess heat. That might offer some physical warmth to the winter, but it’s not great for your fingers, or those dried pine needles falling off your Christmas tree. And while you can still technically string multiple strands of incandescent lights together (thanks to those handy piggyback plugs), the higher energy use means you’ll be able to connect only about five strands of the Kringle Traditions lights, as opposed to 20-plus strands of any of our LED string light picks.

Advertisement

With larger bulbs and a wire that can be easily cut and adjusted as needed, the Pro Christmas C9 Light Line Kit is a versatile, customizable large-bulb option.

If you want the most robust outdoor Christmas lighting possible—and you’re willing to put in a little DIY work—the Pro Christmas C9 Light Line Kit has everything you need to create a fully customized C9 light display for your home. Instead of being a pre-built, plug-and-go light set, this kit lets you create your own custom strand in any color you want. The bigger bulbs have screw-in bases that are smaller than a standard bulb but larger than that of a candelabra style and allow you to swap in any color combination you want, whenever you want. C9 lights work just as well for summer patio mood lighting as they do for winter holidays. In addition to the bulbs themselves, the Pro Christmas C9 Light Line Kit also comes with an empty socket string or wire plus several vampire plugs (although you can buy all these parts separately as well, for maximum customization).

The faceted bulbs shimmer nicely, too. All of the premade Pro Christmas Light Line Kits available from Christmas Designers have faceted bulbs, with clusters of flattened surfaces that cause the light to reflect in a sort of gemlike shimmer. The facets on the Pro Christmas lights also go all the way down to the base, making them stand out from C9 bulbs we tested from Minleon and Brightown, which had about an eighth of an inch of smooth plastic near the bottom.

These C9 bulbs have the same bold colors and variety as the other Pro Christmas lights we recommend—they’re just bigger. You can pick from the full range of basic colors—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and pink—as well as the standard cool and warm whites, or even mix and match on the same socket strand as you please. (The default kit comes with warm white bulbs.) You can also choose between a smooth bulb or a faceted/textured bulb finish that refracts the light in different directions. The colors aren’t quite as warm as what you’d get with an incandescent bulb, but they’re still bright, rich, and bold, with none of that obnoxious buzzing or blinking that you get from cheaper LEDs. They can also be set up on a dimmer switch without any of that awful flickering either.

The Pro Christmas C9 bulbs are also more weather resistant. Each light is made from a single piece of shatter-resistant plastic, so you don’t have to worry about a gust of wind causing tiny shards of glass to smash against your home. They also have an ingress protection rating of 65, which means they’re dust-tight and able to withstand water jets from any direction (within reason). By contrast, most of the other weather-resistant lights we recommend are simply labeled for outdoor use, without any accompanying IP rating.

They’re slightly more energy efficient than other, similar C9 lights we tested, too. In our tests, we found that the Pro Christmas bulbs each pulled about a half watt of electricity. It’s not a huge difference from the other bulbs we tested from manufacturers such as OptiCore, which used about 0.8 watt, but it’s still worth pointing out. Either way, you get a very bright bulb without using very much energy at all.

You can even cut the Pro Christmas C9 strings to custom lengths and add your own plugs (which you can string together, too). By default, the Pro Christmas C9 string sets come with either a 25-, 50-, or 100-foot socket string, which you can easily cut with a pair of scissors to fit your home more perfectly. Yes, really—just snap the strand, then connect the included vampire plugs on either end, and you’ll be good to go. You don’t even have to worry about stripping the ends of the wire, or wrapping the positive or negative ends around the proper leads—the vampire plugs do all the work for you (they’re friendlier than they sound). If you mess up, or anything changes, you can always add on another plug end and expand your strand from there. Just make sure that the lights are unplugged before you cut into the wire.

Once you’re set with the Pro Christmas C9 socket string, you can swap in other bulbs of any color, any time. We personally enjoyed the faceted Pro Christmas bulbs, which produce a nice twinkling effect, but if you prefer smooth bulbs, the company makes those as well. For an incandescent bulb, we recommend the C9 bulbs from OptiCore; that company makes LED bulbs that are comparable to the Pro Christmas bulbs, too. You can even mix and match or try out different bulbs, as long as you have a C9 socket string to start.

But the idea of messing with electrical wiring can be (understandably) daunting for some people. It’s really nothing to worry about. But if you’re still nervous, Christmas Designers has some handy videos that could help troubleshoot any problems, as well as a dedicated customer support center—another feature that sets them apart from the competition. And if you still mess up, the worst-case scenario is that you just have to make another cut and add another plug end. The Pro Christmas C9 bulbs are also covered by the same three-year seasonal warranty as the company’s other bulbs, which should add to your confidence, too.

With crisp colors and a wide range of preset patterns, these lights offer high-quality hardware without the complexity of smart, app-based controls.

If you want to be able to switch between different color palettes without the hassle of a smart home, get the Pro Christmas RGBW Color-Changing LED Light Set. These lights come with a variety of built-in color presets, including warm whites and holiday specific settings that go beyond Christmas—and miraculously, the colors all look nice, too. But you can’t create your own designs, and you also have to buy a separate remote and controller set to make it work.

The Pro Christmas RGBW lights let you choose from dozens of color options, all with the same bright, rich hues. In addition to solid colors, including red, purple, green, and warm white, there are presets for multicolored patterns, as well as holiday-themed pairings such as green and red, white and blue, and orange and purple (for Halloween). You can even select between a steady light show or one that flashes, flickers, fades, or features other fun effects. Unlike other color-changing light sets we tested, these motion effects weren’t dizzying or nauseating, either; to my surprise, I actually found them tasteful, fun, and not at all annoying.

You don’t need a smartphone or a Wi-Fi connection to change the colors—just plug and play. You can cycle through the options using the remote control, or by simply pressing the button on the side of the plug. In this way, the Full Wave lights offer the same perks as a smart Christmas light set, but without any annoying technology getting in the way.

The Pro Christmas RGBW lights offer the same weather resistance and warranty as the other Pro Christmas lights we recommend. The conical wide-angle bulbs use the same molded plastic design as our other Pro Christmas picks, which means that they won’t let dirt or water into the individual lights. As a bonus, the RGBW lights also use a coaxial plug with a screw attachment to secure additional strands, which offers even more weather resistance than the standard piggyback-style plugs that come with our other Pro Christmas picks. Finally, if anything does go wrong, these lights are protected by a three-year seasonal warranty.

But you do have to buy a separate Pro Christmas RGBW controller set to make them work. The standard controller set costs about $20 and can be used to control between 10 and 20 light strands, depending on how many total lights you have. If somehow that’s still not enough for you, the company also sells a 500-watt controller set that can connect nearly 100 RGBW strands together. Even if you just wanted to use a single light strand with a single controller, the overall package would still cost you less than a decent smart-home Christmas light setup.

You can’t create custom color patterns. This is an understandable shortcoming for something that lacks complicated smart-home connectivity, but it could be disappointing for some people. We think the default options on the RGBW lights should be robust enough for most people though.

There’s no cool white option. There is a warm white setting, as well as a “chase” preset that sends a single bright-white flash racing up and down the light strand. Otherwise, if you’re looking for a nice crisp bluish white, you’re out of luck.

Advertisement

With a broad and bright color palette and plenty of preset lighting patterns, the Govee lights are an affordable way to explore the possibilities of smart Christmas lighting.

If you’re interested in the idea of smart Christmas lights and the myriad options they have to offer, the Govee Smart RGBWIC Christmas String Lights are the best overall option. Unlike our other picks, these Govee smart lights are embedded right in line with the wire, resulting in a flush, smooth lighting strand that can be wrapped around anything without having to worry about the bulbs sticking out like spikes in random directions.

The Govee Christmas lights come with more than 100 designs and a full spectrum of bright, rich colors. The Govee lights have more than 16 million colors to choose from, though the pure/cool whites aren’t great. The hundred-plus presets are organized by moods and occasions, with categories such as “Festival,” “Life,” “Emotion,” and “Relaxation.” Granted, those titles are fairly loose, and all of the presets follow a similar sort of neon party vibe with varying colors and speeds of moving lights. But they’re all fun enough that you’re likely to find something you enjoy, even without digging into the customization options (more on that below).

You can even change the color of individual lights, or sync them up with music. By default, the Govee app is set up in such a way that you can simply click on a representation of any individual bulb on the strand and manually change its color. You don’t even need to deal with a mapping process like on our other smart-home pick from Twinkly—just open the app and tap. Similarly, the music-syncing options work automatically, picking up sound from the mic on your phone (though you can also purchase a dedicated audio sync box if you want to set your display up outside, or somewhere else away from your phone).

The Govee Christmas lights are well-made and weather resistant. These lights have an IP rating of 65, which means they’re dust tight and built to protect against jets of water. That makes them one of the more durable outdoor options we’ve found. The wires themselves are also thick and rigid enough that they won’t get knotted, with enough weight to lie flat when you need them to as well. The Govee lights come coiled on a spool, which makes for easy cleanup and storage. And again, the lights are embedded in-line with the string itself, so you don’t have to worry about any bulbs sticking out awkwardly.

The actual lights are in-line with the string itself, resulting in a smoother, straighter strand overall. Whereas most Christmas lights follow the T5 or wide-angle mold, with the light itself sticking out from the strand, the Govee smart lights are more of a singular rope, with lights placed flush in the middle of the wire. This ultimately makes the strand more maneuverable; if you use it to wrap around a tree, you don’t have to worry about the lights sticking out in all different directions or interfering with the ornaments. However, this might not be what you’d expect from a Christmas light strand.

Govee also offers a lot of different choices for bulbs and string length. We think most people will do well with the standard 66-foot long Christmas string light set, which can be wrapped around a tree or used to line railings, bushes, eaves, et cetera. These lights are available in other lengths, too, all the way up to 328 feet. And if string lights aren’t quite the right shape to suit your needs, the company also sells curtain lights, which can be draped over windows or in doorways, as well as net lights to cover your hedges. These sets each offer their own specialized lighting presets that take advantage of their unique shapes (including some fun holiday-themed animation options), and you can sync them together to move in time with the standard string lights, too.

But the customization options can get a little overwhelming. Technically speaking, the Govee app allows you to do just about anything you can imagine (within the limitations of reason) and some 16 million pixelated colors. In practice, however, the customization process can be a little cumbersome. It’s not that the app is confusing; it’s more that, well, it’s just hard to sort through hundreds of lights with millions of colors, especially once you add in the options for motion effects and the ability to control each light individually. Even if you start with one of the existing presets as a base to modify, you’re still going to need to carve out a good amount to figure out the right way to edit it to get what you want. If you have a specific vision in mind, you might want to look into the Twinkly lights we recommend below; but if you just want lots of different fun, flashy options to control from your phone, the Govee presets should be enough to keep you entertained.

Govee offers just a one-year warranty. This is a much shorter warranty than our other Christmas light picks, but it’s also fairly standard when it comes to these kinds of smart-home products.

With 16 million color choices and a library of customizable animations and effects, the Twinkly lights are incredibly versatile. But they are expensive, and the app could use some work.

The Wi-Fi–enabled Twinkly Smart RGB-W LED String Lights are the most robust and versatile Christmas lights we’ve ever tested. They’re also the most expensive. But if you’re truly serious about Christmas—and maybe other holidays, too—a Twinkly set is worth the cost. With one tap, you can set your lights to mimic the glimmer of falling snow or the swelling of a fire or even the Italian flag (the company is based in Italy; but you can easily sub in a different flag). While the technology isn’t absolutely perfect yet, it’s still pretty impressive and offers much wider versatility than standard Christmas lights or even other smart options.

Twinkly offers simply the most customizable smart Christmas lights out there. It’s hard to get into specifics, what with 16 million different colors to choose from, but suffice to say that the color fidelity on these lights is generally phenomenal. You can choose just about any color you can fathom—or at least any color you can pick out from the color wheel with a carefully pointed finger. There are also pre-programmed light animations that mimic falling snow, fireworks, sliding doors, spirals, and even crazy lines and snakes (a single off-color trail of lights moving through an otherwise solid-colored sea); depending on the effect, you can even customize the speed and brightness of the movements or changing colors, and whether or not the lights stay lit, pulsate, flicker, et cetera. There are some holiday-specific offerings, too, such as pulsing hearts, prancing reindeer, countdowns and fireworks to ring in the New year, and a roving Bat signal for Batman Day (though you’ll probably need several Twinkly sets with perfect spacing and ideal viewing angles if you truly wish to strike fear in the hearts of any superstitious or cowardly criminals).

The setup process is also surprisingly simple and straightforward (inasmuch as any smart-home device can be). The Twinkly app has an option to “map” your Christmas lights by holding up your phone camera to them like you’re taking a picture. You can do this two-dimensionally (if your lights are on a railing, for example), three-dimensionally (all around the Christmas tree, for example), or not at all. The app intuitively identifies which bulbs are where and uses this information to plot customizable animations across your light display; you can even choose one individual light to make a different color from the rest. As professional lighting/projection designer Ari Herzig told us, “You’re not paying for the lights—you’re paying for the software.” They also told us that a similar process on a standard professional lighting board would probably take about four to six hours. But in case, the app walks you through it all step-by-step.

You can even connect multiple Twinkly sets together to create more intricate light shows. While the Twinkly strands don’t have the same single-outlet piggybacking setup as the others we tested, you can still sync several of them to make one big image or duplicate the same image across your yard. Imagine Santa Claus’s sleigh racing across three trees on your front lawn or the striped pattern of a candy cane swirling in unison across every railing.

Like other smart lighting sets, you can also sync the Twinkly lights to music. This option uses the built-in mic on your phone by default. But the company sells a separate music dongle that lets you sync multiple strands with the use of an algorithm that learns the rhythms of a song in real time. Like the rest of the Twinkly software, this is simultaneously imperfect and yet far more impressive than it has any right to be. You probably don’t need to invest in this feature, however, unless you’re really into serious multimedia displays.

Customer service, from Twinkly itself and from specialized retailers, tends to be better. Christmas Designers even has a dedicated Twinkly team to walk you through any setup issues you might encounter. If you do end up purchasing through a big-box store like Amazon, however, Twinkly also has a robust support section on its website. Granted, most other Christmas lights don’t have the same kind of complicated technology that might require more attentive technical support. But it’s still a nice perk.

But the Twinkly lights are wired differently from other sets. Unlike most Christmas lights, the Twinkly lights can’t piggyback on one another to create longer strands. They’re also wired in a Y shape, with the plug extending from the center and the lights split evenly to the left and right from there. This is different from what most people have come to expect with Christmas lights, and it might actually help them fit better on some houses. But it can be difficult to ball them up for storage without tangling the two arms together. If you remember to wrap the two ends separately you should be fine.

The only other downside of this wiring setup is that a truly robust light display will require more outlets. You’ll also need to do something with that chunky power brick.

The mapping technology is so advanced that it can be frustrating. We’ve seen tremendous improvements in this feature since we started testing the Twinkly lights in 2020, but they still glitch out sometimes. For example, the in-app camera gets confused if there are other lights nearby—including other Twinkly sets—and sometimes misinterprets reflections on the glass on a light bulb. Space restrictions might force you to map at awkward angles, too, which also disorients the software. If you map your lights in landscape mode, then turn your phone vertically again, the app sometimes compresses the map into a confusingly squished portrait mode view. You also can’t zoom in to get a closer look at the individual bulbs in a cluster of lights, either. Even with these glitches however, the Twinkly technology is still quite impressive, and it’s likely to keep getting better with each successive firmware update. And once your Twinkly lights are set up, you don’t have to do it again; Wirecutter product manager Samuel Roth has been using the same mapping setup for five years, despite some initial frustrations.

Though the Twinkly lights are rated for outdoor use, they might not hold up in the most extreme conditions. These lights are only rated IP44, as opposed to the IP65 or IP67 ratings that you find on most outdoor-specific lights. While this means the Twinkly strands have some resistance to splashing water and solid objects larger than a millimeter, they’re still susceptible to the elements. Over the course of long-term testing, ours survived for nearly three years outside before they finally succumbed to a tropical storm that short-circuited the adapter plugs. The lights themselves were fine, and we were able to buy a new power supply. But we generally recommend keeping the plugs as far away from water as you can. If you’re really committed to having a cool outdoor light show, you might want to consider the company’s permanent outdoor light set instead.

Some of the animated effects require more lights, or specific shapes, to really work well. Think of each light as a pixel: More of them will give you better resolution and a clearer image. While you might technically be able to apply a moving witch or reindeer animation to the Twinkly setup on your Christmas tree, it might end up looking less like a light cartoon and more like a glitchy internet video from 2003. Some of the preset animations such as “Santa’s Magic Sleigh Run” also work better when they’re arranged on an actual Christmas tree, rather than spread out on railings or walls. (If you do need a Twinkly design for a flat surface or other setting, the company also sells smart lights in other shapes such as square blocks, curtains, and icicles, which otherwise use the same technology.)

The “pure” white color on the Twinkly lights might also leave you with a headache. Tonally, the color looks fine. But it’s also glaring at full brightness, and it flickered or buzzed occasionally when used in conjunction with certain effects (notably with the horizontal flag effect). Luckily, this is easy to avoid: Simply open the color selector in the app, pick a shade of yellow or blue (depending on your preference for warm or cool white), then drag the black-white slider down so it’s almost all the way to the white portion of the spectrum, but not quite. Think of it like making your own custom white tone at whatever color temperature you prefer.

The Twinkly sets are significantly more expensive than other Christmas light options, and only come with a one-year warranty. If you want the most out of your Twinkly lights, you’re likely going to need to invest a few hundred dollars. But we think the cost is worth it for the happiness these lights can bring—just ask the nice old man who lives around the corner and stops by my house every winter to thank me for our ever-changing light display. Still, with that kind of investment, we wish they were guaranteed to last a little longer.

Advertisement

We used to recommend the GE Energy Smart lights in multicolor and warm (more like neutral) white as our top pick, and we still think they’re pretty great. GE’s holiday division has an impressive history within the world of Christmas lights, and the Energy Smart Colorites are some of the best basic LEDs they make, with a five-year warranty to back it up. However, the stock has been inconsistent over the past few years, with the supply-demand ratio bumping the prices significantly upwards at the few retailers that carry them. If you can find them in stock at a decent price, you should go for it. We’ll likely recommend them again once the supply chain settles.

When we first began testing C9 bulbs in 2022, we also looked at lights from OptiCore and Minleon. The OptiCore bulbs were pretty similar to our Pro Christmas picks and would make a great alternative if those aren’t available. The company sells incandescent C9 bulbs that look pretty good, too, so if your heart is set on that analog warmth, then OptiCore is the way to go.

The Minleon lights were also comparable to the Pro Christmas bulbs, but with a slightly cooler color temperature. The faceted pattern on the bulbs also stops about an eighth of an inch from the base, making for a mildly clumsier twinkling effect. Otherwise, they are a fine alternative.

If any of the Pro Christmas lights we recommend are unavailable, Kringle Traditions is another reliable professional Christmas light brand. We’ve previously recommended the company’s 5 mm wide-angle lights and still think they’re a great option if you can find them at the right price, or if they’re more readily available.

We previously recommended the GE Color Choice Multi or Warm White Multi Function LEDs as an also-great pick for people who want color-changing versatility. While they’re still a good option, they’re nothing compared with what Twinkly is offering. A small control box near the plug lets you choose between eight settings: white, multicolor, or both, in a variety of flashing and steady lighting options. However, the colors aren’t as good as what you get with a dedicated white or multicolor string light set; the white in particular is more neutral and bland than warm, and the green is somewhat limelike. And although the lights themselves are generally safe for outdoor use, the control box can malfunction in the wrong (read: wet) conditions. But, if you want the basic functionality of color-changing lights without spending $100-plus dollars, and don’t mind a few more compromises, the GE Color Choice lights are still a safe bet.

In 2021, we tested the GE StayBright Wide Angle Warm White LED String Lights, which are similar to the other wide-angle “fairy lights” we’ve tested from Christmas Designers and Christmas Lights Etc. However, the bulbs are only 3 mm wide, rather than 5 mm, which makes them feel less bright, even though they’re more closely spaced than the other wide-angle lights we recommend. Still, the color quality is nice, and they’re certainly well-made lights, clearly sturdy and backed by a two-year warranty. If you can’t find wide-angle lights you like in stock from Christmas Designers or Christmas Lights Etc., these are a good alternative.

The Brightown C9 bulbs both looked and felt like cheap LEDs that we bought off Amazon, which is precisely what they were. That company sells incandescent C9 bulbs too, but we wouldn’t recommend them unless you enjoy the occasional pop! of a glass bulb randomly exploding.

We also tested the GE Energy Smart C9 String Lights, which were perfectly fine, but that’s about it. The bulbs were the same size as other C9s we tested, but instead of screw-in bases with an empty socket string, the bulbs come pre-attached to a wire on a spool. You can still technically replace the lights, but only with the included GE-brand replacement bulbs that come in the kit. This also means that you can’t cut the wire to a custom length to fit your home either; in fact, we found the wire wrapping to be surprisingly sloppy, especially compared with other GE lights we’ve tested. (In our experience, a shoddy wire tends to be a bad omen.) These lights weren’t quite as bright as the other C9 bulbs we tested, either, although the color quality was still up to the standards we’ve come to expect from GE.

Similarly, the C9 lights from Twinkly were one of the few offerings from that company that we didn’t like. The colors felt too bright and artificial, even with the built-in fading and color picker options. We also think the size and spread of the C9 bulbs make it difficult to really take advantage of Twinkly’s incredible mapping technology. Just get a standard C9 set and save the special effects for the smaller lights.

The warm white GE lights failed after one night of use. We couldn’t tell if this was due to weather, an electrical problem, or a random fluke. But either way, it wasn’t a positive experience.

In 2024, we tested several Christmas lights from Ollny, including the company’s waterproof outdoor lights in multicolor, warm white, and cool white; as well as the wide-angle 5 mm lights from the company, also in multicolor, warm white, and cool white. These were perfectly fine if you need a ton of lights for not a lot of money, but the colors ranged from washed out to glaring, and the wires were easily tangled, particularly on the wide-angle sets. These lights also come with some built-in flashing/strobe effects, but please, please don’t turn them on—for my sake, and for yours.

Christmas Lights Etc also makes a slightly larger version of its outdoor 5 mm wide-angle lights. In our tests, these were somewhat dimmer—the yellow and orange lights were a bit dull, and Bridget Collins, the lighting supervisor at the Huntington Theatre Company, described the white lights as “wimpy”—but they were otherwise comparable.

We tested several white and multicolor sets from Home Accents Holiday, which Home Depot carries exclusively. The incandescent lights were fine but ultimately failed our durability test, leaving a large chunk of the string unlit after we submerged them in water overnight. The standard Home Accents LED Lights produced a nauseating flicker, especially when they moved. The Home Accents Holiday Smooth Mini Super Bright Constant On lights, discontinued as of 2020, glared painfully. Overall, the construction and wiring on all of these lights was sloppy and shoddy, and they just looked bad.

Advertisement

You can find varying opinions on how many lights to use for your tree. In our interview, GE’s John Strainic suggested 100 lights per vertical foot. But 100 lights per foot strikes us as a lot, and we imagine that the result would be a particularly festive tree.

The box that the tested Brite Star lights came in goes a little lower, giving a number of 600 lights for an 8-foot tree (or 75 per foot). And this lighting calculator from Christmas Light Source indicates that 250 to 400 mini lights will light an 8-foot tree.

You have a couple of different ways to apply lights, but one method in particular gets a lot of praise. It involves putting the lights on from bottom to top, doing so vertically, going in and out as you move up. This technique puts the lights deep in the tree and creates depth and a warm interior. You can find more information from Real Simple. (If that approach sounds too radical, you can just do it the traditional way by circling the tree, working from bottom to top.)

This article was edited by Harry Sawyers.

Jason Woodward, director of ecommerce, Christmas Designers, phone interview, October 31, 2019

AJ Krize, vice president, Christmas Northeast / Nicolas Holiday Limited, email interview, September 5, 2024

Ari Herzig, former professional lighting and projection designer, in-person interview, October 5, 2020

Doug Mahoney

Doug Mahoney is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter covering home improvement. He spent 10 years in high-end construction as a carpenter, foreman, and supervisor. He lives in a very demanding 250-year-old farmhouse and spent four years gutting and rebuilding his previous home. He also raises sheep and has a dairy cow that he milks every morning.

Thom Dunn

Thom Dunn is a staff writer at Wirecutter reporting on heating, cooling, and other home-improvement topics. Sometimes his curiosity gets the best of him, such as when he plugged a space heater and a Marshall guitar amp into the same power strip. Pro tip: Don’t do that.

by Thom Dunn

GE’s LED lights are the most durable—and festive—string lights we tested.

by Tim Heffernan

Here’s how to find a long-lasting, low-maintenance replica Christmas tree.

by Harry Sawyers

Here’s how we’d combine a tree, lights, and smart controls to make the ultimate custom Christmas tree.

by Elissa Sanci

Here’s how to hack your holiday setup, from the number of lights you actually need to the Christmas tree stand you can set up with just one set of hands.

Advertisement