My fiancee and I just bought two used Brompton P-series foldables this week. Use case: commuting in San Francisco, as well as weekend trips around the Bay Area. We live in SF in a 2-bedroom apartment and don't own a car. I had a locked bike stolen out of a college dorm bike room before, and we like the convenience of having the bike with us 99% of the time instead of locking it outside.
Those Brompton P-lines were expensive even used (around $2000), but thanks to the brand value, we believe that we wouldn't lose too much money if we ended up not liking the hobby and wanted to resell. It's more a question of: do you want to lock up cash and get most of it back when you sell, or do you want to spend less now but lose more on the sale? Typical dilemma with high brand-value products.
What I appreciate about Brompton is there is a well-established hacking culture. This is true for bikes in general, but because the design is so specific, it's great to know there is a strong community on Reddit, YouTube, etc. to get inspired and ask questions.
The Brompton community seems to have no shame in using unofficial AliExpress parts, especially if they are better in some way (lighter, better roller rack balance, etc.). This is additionally true because many official parts are expensive and often out of stock.
There are a bunch of Brompton clones out there, especially copying the old-school C-line. I have mixed feelings about clones in general, especially when they are straight knockoffs. With that said, if I really got into the hobby, perhaps I'd try to hack together an ultralight custom "BrompNot," something like the T-line but customized to my own needs.
One more thing: if you ever take the EuroStar, get a bag for your folding bike! We saw someone almost miss the train in London because they didn't have a bag for their Brompton. I assume this may also apply in some transit scenarios where bikes are not allowed; even folding bikes might be gray area. The IKEA DIMPA bag is cheap and works well for this purpose.
Bedtime Bulb v2 [0]: a low blue light bulb for use before bed, with added near infrared. Now shipping!
Restful Atmos lamp: a circadian bedtime lamp that automatically shifts from energizing light during the daytime to low-blue light at night. Units are inbound, shipping in March.
The Philips bulbs are more general purpose bulbs that would replace your "soft white" 2700K bulbs. I think they dim down to around 2200K. Otherwise, the specs are pretty typical for LED bulbs in terms of color quality, flicker, and dimmability.
Bedtime Bulb v2 starts at 2100K, much warmer, and dims down to 1700K. BBv2 has infrared. The flicker is very low: under 1% at 120 Hz; the best I have seen in any dimmable bulb. It is also designed to dim perfectly with all TRIAC and ELV dimmers (basically, any standard dimmer), which no other LED bulb can claim to do.
Side note: the term "flicker-free" is a total lie, so we stopped using it. I have seen lighting with up to 50% claiming to be flicker-free. Pretty much all lighting has some flicker. The term is just not true.
Yes, the bulb can be controlled with a smart dimmer like the Leviton model we sell on our site, or the Lutron Caseta plug-in dimmer.
These bulbs are not smart and do not have a full RGB array. But what you gain is way higher color quality even at low color temperature (1700K), much lower flicker, and infrared.
Atmos is a smart lamp, and we will get our Matter certification in early 2026. This one is also not RGB, but it has extremely high color quality in the whites and no blue spike. Flicker is lower and at a way higher frequency (32 kHz). We haven't updated the specs on the site yet as we are wrapping the calibration, but the CRI is 98 on the Atmos lamp.
With the Atmos lamp, yes! It constantly makes very minor, imperceptible changes every few seconds. I also developed an app, currently in public beta, for Philips Hue that does this as well [0].
We're working on a Nest-style ML feature for the Atmos lamp that learns your intensity preferences and automatically applies them. And we have a whole bunch smart circadian products we're working on—something for the desk and workspace next.
For Bedtime Bulb v2, not out-of-the-box because it's all analog electronics, but we REALLY want people to dim it gradually throughout the evening. If you want to automate dimming, the Leviton Smart Dimmer we offer on the site will allow you to control it with any of the popular smart home platforms.
Why isn't Bedtime Bulb smart? Bedtime Bulb v1 was our MVP, and we focused on getting the quality of light right over adding any smart features. It turns out, many of our customers have told us they don't want anything smart. So when we made v2, we focused on doubling down on quality of light features: infrared, warm dimming, "Perfect Dimming" (smooth dimming with any TRIAC or ELV dimmer), really high CRI/R9/TM-30, etc.
Smart bulbs are definitely a future possibility, but right now, we have the analog line (Bedtime Bulb v2) and smart line of fully-integrated lamps (Atmos).
It’s a combination of factors: you must reduce both blue light and intensity of light to avoid suppressing melatonin. Just reducing blue light might help a little, but it still suppresses melatonin. Melatonin levels and circadian phase shifts scale with total irradiance even if blue-depleted; basically, dimming the lights is really effective.
That’s why our products focus on both intensity and color change (but we lead with blue light reduction since it’s easier to grasp).
Also, if you look at our specs, you’ll see that we don’t use pure amber or red light; we use very low-blue white light with high color rendering. We have yet to do the study on this, but you can read surprisingly well with our lighting at a very low intensity (enough to make your mom angry that you are hurting your eyes), whereas with lower CRI sources, you would have to make them brighter to achieve the same visual acuity.
There is some emerging research that IR may play a role in melatonin production locally in cells, which is why we added it to the bulb. Early days for this scientifically, but Scott Zimmerman and associated researchers suggest wideband IR may be effective, even if it’s only 20-30% of the visible intensity.
The bulb ranges from 1700K to 2100K (it warm dims)
Atmos ranges from 1800K to 5700K
Maybe not the most obvious, but for both products, it’s in the tech specs under Quality of Light. We try to be very detailed with what we publish there. Thanks!
Bedtime Bulb v2 [0], a light bulb that emits less blue light than other lighting, is finally shipping. It took years to get it right, but we figured out how to make a relatively energy efficient bulb that emits infrared and dims smoothly with any dimmer.
My team is also about to ship Atmos [1], a lamp for the bedside that automatically shifts from higher-blue light during the daytime to low blue light at night.
Still very focused on making light healthier. 3 new products:
Bedtime Bulb v2[0]: A massive improvement over our original Bedtime Bulb, a light bulb meant for use in the evening to reduce blue light. The headline feature is the re-introduction of infrared, which was removed from lighting to make it more efficient, but emerging research suggest it's beneficial for health. After a long wait, this is shipping in 2 weeks!
Atmos Bedside Lamp[1]: A fully automated circadian lamp that automatically shifts in color and brightness throughout the day, helping you prepare for sleep and wake up more naturally. Working on some machine learning features that mimic the functionality of the Nest Learning Thermostat, but for lighting. The first units are shipping by Christmas.
Circadian Mode for Philips Hue[2]: A web app that gives your Philips Hue lights circadian powers, so that they gradually shift from bright light during the day to dim, low-blue light at night. It's way more powerful and easier to use than first- and third-party options from Hue, Apple, and Home Assistant. Just launched this week; looking for beta testers to give feedback!
Working on the Restful Atmos Sleep Lamp, a smart bedside lamp that automatically shifts throughout the day and night for the circadian rhythm, reducing blue light at night and maximizing blue light during the day. There is a machine learning layer that learns your preferences and automatically adjusts the intensity of the light, similarly to the Nest Thermostat [0].
Also, shipping Bedtime Bulb v2 next month. This is a hybrid LED-incandescent design meant for the evening that is the best of both worlds: low blue light, high color quality, perfect compatibility with dimmers, 10x less flicker than incandescent, includes near infrared, low energy use, long lifespan [1].
I am a founder of one company and work in sales. Here's where I'm coming from:
As a founder, if everyone is always DMing you, the knowledge is not shared with the team. You become the bottleneck for everything.
In sales, you end up having the #account-[customer] thread and about 4 or 5 DM groups with different internal people on them for each account. Lots of time bringing everyone up to speed when it could be more unified.
Sure, there are sensitive issues like employee conflict, salary discussions, etc. I'm not saying everything needs to be in the public. But I think DMs as they work in Slack cause more issues than they solve.