LED fairy lights: The best Christmas lights from Twinkly & Co.

For example, if you are looking for smart LED light chains on Amazon, you will find a large number of very cheap China products. In general, nothing speaks against buying such Christmas lights. They’re often even app controllable (albeit with less sophisticated options, like Twinkly) and have a music mode. These should be sufficient for the time being if you just want to try out how you like a smartly lit Christmas tree.

But make sure that the product images are often deceptive – especially with those “throw light chains”, which consist of a few long cords and are intended to save you from having to attach the light chain, which is often annoying. If the picture shows a fully illuminated, room-high tree, then not only a (throw) light chain was used here. We have also noticed that some no-name manufacturers are unabashedly using Twinkly product images. So take a really, really close look here.

For a 2 meter tree you should aim for around 400 LEDs to really shine. We sometimes took the trouble to count the lights in the pictures and found that either 2 LED light chains were used or all lights of the chain could be found on the front half of the tree.

So before you buy, think about how big the tree is, whether it should be illuminated all around, how sparkling the result should be and how important the smart functionality is to you so that you are not disappointed with the result on Christmas Day. When buying inexpensive LED light chains, we would generally not solely rely on the new purchase and would still have a replacement light chain ready to be on the safe side.