Bright and Customizable At a High Price

Summary

• The Twinkly Reindeer offers vibrant, customizable LEDs for festive decoration.
• The ornament is pricey at $250, the app can be challenging, but the Reindeer impresses with bright lights.
• The reindeer is durable, looks great during the day, and is worth it if you have other Twinkly lights.

Most holiday decor is pretty static. You flip a switch, and the lights turn on. After testing out the Twinkly Reindeer for several weeks, I can tell you that I don’t plan to go back to “dumb” decorations any time soon. Now if only smart home devices weren’t so pricey.

Price and Availability

The Twinkly Reindeers come in two versions: Stag and Doe. I tested the Stag model, which retails for $249.99. The Doe option is available for $229.99. Both versions can be purchased directly from Twinkly or on Amazon.

Set Up Made Easy

Twinkly sends you everything in a single, compact package, with each item zip-tied together. I recommend being careful when releasing the head from the S hook that holds it under the frame as dropping the piece would pull tension on the cable connecting everything.

After swinging it upward, you hook the head into place using two slots in the neck. All the pieces are already wired together, so you don’t need to worry about connecting any cables.

You also have the option to customize the stag’s antler orientation. It’s a bit hard to see in the above photo, but you can position the antler to either be perpendicular or parallel to the stag’s body. I chose the perpendicular option, as seen in other photos within this review.

The neck connection isn’t completely flush, so expect a small gap between the two pieces. Thankfully, you’ll never notice this once you step back and turn on the lights.

Finally, the box includes stakes that you should use to secure the deer in place if you use it in your yard. The ornament weighs a lot, so it easily tips over if it’s not on level ground.

The Lights Are Bright and Vibrant

Plug in the long power cable, and you’ll be good to get started. After getting the Twinkly Deer up and running (more on that below), I was greatly impressed by just how bright and evenly lit the decoration was. For the price, I expected nothing less, but the reindeer could light up my entire lawn by itself at night. Enable one of the dynamic effects and each design was easy to recognize and looked amazing.

The build materials feel premium and sturdy. A metal frame gives the ornament its shape, but you’ll mostly be looking at the transparent plastic shell that covers the body alongside the 240 individual LEDs (160 LEDs on the doe). It’s a pretty standard-looking design compared to other Christmas lawn decor.

The reindeer is also IP44-rated, so it should withstand most winter weather, including heavy rain.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Twinkly mobile app (available for Android and iPhone). As with most smart home products, it’s necessary to download it to get the lights connected to the internet and operational.

The basic setup process of pairing the reindeer to your account is pretty straightforward. But near the end, you’ll be asked to point your phone camera at the lights and let the app map each LED’s location. You’ll need to run through this process multiple times, walking around the deer and shooting at a different angle each time. If done correctly, you’ll have a 3D model of the ornament. For me, though, the instructions weren’t super clear, so it took me multiple attempts to finish the mapping process.

Finally, you can scroll through galleries of pre-made effects and save them to your Twinkly device. And because you have a 3D map of the reindeer, you can create your own, including hand-drawn designs. The company oddly makes it difficult to find these options, so you’ll need to dig in the app to unlock the decoration’s full potential.

This works better in theory than in practice, but the added options are nice. You’re better off choosing an existing effect and customizing its colors and animation speed to get your desired look.

I should also note that the Twinkly Reindeer works with most smart home platforms as it’s Matter compatible. This means it can be connected to Apple Home, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa with relative ease. Unfortunately, though, you get limited functionality outside of the Twinkly app. At most, you can schedule the lights to turn on and off and set a static color. You don’t have access to any of the other effects.

As someone with a home full of Matter products, I will always appreciate the additional control options. But you won’t be ditching Twinkly’s app anytime soon.

It Looks Great During the Day, Too

My biggest concern was that the metal frame would be too noticeable through the light’s clear plastic casing and look odd during the daytime. Judge the photos for yourself, but I think the stag looks just as good during the day as it does at night.

During the day is also the only time you can really see the deer’s black nose. It stands out from the white frame. The LEDs are so bright at night that you tend to look past the decorative piece.

Should You Buy the Twinkly Reindeer?

Cost is the biggest reason to consider not purchasing the Twinkly Reindeer. Doing a quick search through Amazon, I found a three-pack of lit deer for less than the cost of this one Twinkly decoration. Of course, these don’t offer 3D-mappable LEDs with endless customizations, but you get a lot more bang for your buck.

If you’re all in and have a ton of other Twinkly lights across your yard, the investment might be worth it, especially if you want to match lighting effects. Whether you purchase the doe model, icicle lights, or net lights, you can have every product synchronized to shine the same color or rotate through the same animations. As a standalone product, it’s a hard sell, but as part of an ecosystem, the cost is worth the functionality.