These smart lights could solve the kitchen cabinet problem

These full-color and tunable white light fixtures fit under your cabinets and can be hardwired or plugged in to illuminate your countertops. The Cync lights are Matter-enabled and work with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple Home, and Samsung SmartThings for smart home integration. I first saw a sneak peek of them at CES 2023 and was excited that this might finally provide a good solution to the problem of smart kitchen lighting.

If you’ve ever remodeled a kitchen, you, too, may have been stymied by the lack of a way to hardwire smart lighting under your cabinets. This was my experience a couple of years ago when I wanted to light up my kitchen countertops by putting smart, tunable white light that I could also dim under my cabinets.

There were no hardwired options for smart LED lights that would work under cabinets. The only options I found were to wire a standard LED light strip to a smart switch — meaning no color changing or dimming, but I could control them remotely and on a schedule — or use a plug-in smart light strip to get the effects I wanted but at the expense of taking up several outlets in my kitchen and having chunky cables running everywhere.

Then, earlier this year at CES, I saw the Cync undercabinet lights set up and working in a mock kitchen, and they looked impressive. They have a wide but slim profile, appearing almost invisible under the cabinet from most angles but giving off more light than a standard light strip. They also have a diffuse effect, which means no harsh pinprick light from the LEDs reflecting off your countertops. I have some samples that I plan to test and will have a full review soon.

Color and tunable white light makes a lot of sense in a kitchen setting. It provides task lighting when cooking or cleaning and can change to dimmable color-changing light when you want a more ambient colorful glow during dinner time or when it’s time to relax.

Cync’s new lights offer all these functions and work with the Cync app, powered by the Savant smart home system. This lets you set the lights on a schedule and add them to scenes. They’re also compatible with smart home platforms for voice control and other features and have physical buttons for direct control.

The Cync Smart Undercabinet Fixtures require 120V AC power and work over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. They come in 12-inch ($59.99), 18-inch ($64.99), and 24-inch ($69.99) edge-lit bars and three-inch diameter puck lights ($84.99). For larger spaces, you can connect up to 10 lights and power them all from one source.