I have tried a lot of different ZigBee bulbs over the years so here is my two cents. All of these are referring to the white spectrum bulbs from these brands as that’s all I buy, no RGB.

The BEST are probably Phillips Hue. I only use white spectrum bulbs not RGB so they are not $50 each, but they are still by far the most expensive.

My favorite are the cheap white label ones I used to buy from Amazon and Home Depot under different brand names for $5 dollars and were clearly made by the same manufacturer. The ZigBee stick even saw them the same. But I can no longer find them. They have an amazing price to quality ratio.

I really like the IKEA Tradfri bulbs but they are by far the most finicky bulbs I have when using a ZigBee stick instead of their native hub. They are fine 95% of the time, but sometimes they get annoying and won’t turn off or respond too slowly, or they just stop responding and need to be powered off completely to reset them.

My least favorite is SengLED. They are cheap but do not act as repeaters so they will ruin your mesh network. I will never buy more of them.

I would also avoid the OSRAM Lightify brand, I think it’s a Sylvania brand. Those have had the highest failure rate for me and it’s clearly because they run insanely hot. They will burn your hands if you don’t shut them off before changing them.

The ikea ones are alright

I’ve been quite happy with my Tradfri Ikea bulks. Got some spread throughout the house. I did have one RGB bulk I got from AliExpress, but although it could do a whole range of colours it just didn’t have the brightness I was looking for. I haven’t tried the Phillips Hue ones though, so they might be better. I just happened to be in Ikea and spotted them, so went for it purely because of the fact I was needing some and walked past them. Had I walked past some Hue ones instead I’d probably have considered going for them instead.

Philips Hue was the best i owned, but Sengled are ok.

Happy with my IKEA bulbs. It’s bang for the buck and you can be pretty sure they won’t set your house on fire since Ikea in general follows good electric design principles (from what I’ve been watching from bigclive on YouTube)

I like IKEA bulbs. I think they’re decently priced.

I personally use the Roku RGB ones that came out last year. It’s like $18 for three of them, total house done for under $100 with three bedrooms and all the common areas. They work well and sync to my home automation service, as well as having a geofence option to turn on/off when entering/exiting the general area of the home.

I lived in a sketchy neighborhood prior and those bulbs saved our ass on a few occasions. People would come to the door, cameras would send an alert and all the lights would go on in an instant. This occured multiple times and it worked as a deterrent all of them.

I also have some of the light strips synced together (there is a party mode with them, but unless you want to have a stroke I wouldn’t use it) and those create a good cohesive ambiance behind my desk and TV.

I will ding them points for the party mode being hellish, and the app not having a dark mode, but they do sync quickly, reliably, and are user friendly to set up profiles and rules for.

Hope that helps as I seem to be the only one not saying the Ikea ones (I have no experience with them so I cannot recommend something I’ve never tried)

Edit: I wrote all this up and then decided to look into ZigBee as I realized thats the main concern of OP. I think this fulfills the functional requirements, but maybe not, so I’ll leave the comment just in case.

In my experience there’s nothing above Hue. Philips makes the best led bulbs out there.

I’ve had decent results with ledvance as well in the sense that they’re robust and reliable but may take some tinkering to get the color/temp right.

My IKEA bulbs are a few years old now so this might be outdated, but I found their coolest setting to be too warm. Phillips hue bulbs fixed that issue but their minimum brightness is too high. Pick your poison I guess.

I have two different kinds of bulbs at my place. I have the IKEA bulbs everyone is mentioning, which have a nice range of hues to them, but actually their connectivity has left something to be desired (sometimes they’d need to be reset). On the other side, I have tunable white 2700-6500k Sengled bulbs that come in a 4-pack. I actually bought 12 of them when I started with HA and I’ve been incredibly happy with them. Highly recommend if you can find them for the price I did, which was $37/4-pack. The only downside to them is that they are a little squarish on top and a bit heavier since they have a glass top (but you don’t notice it when it’s installed). They’re a good brand to check out.

Edit: I can never reply to kbin posters and I see roofus’ point but OP did want a cheaper option. I appreciate looking at the pros and cons but I will still say I’m happy with Sengled bulbs. Bulbs aren’t the only zigbee devices to act as mesh e.g. plugs. Their bulbs might not act as repeaters but they’re inexpensive, unlike Hue, and reliable, unlike IKEA. Do be sure to do a lil bit of your own research OP! You can always buy a couple and decide if you like them.

May I ask why smart bulbs and not smart switch in case you dont need rgb? What happens when you turn off wall switch? Smart bulbs stop working?

I’ve got some from Aliexpress as we don’t have Ikea. They were a bit frustrating to set up, took a couple of re-pairs, but now they are working fine. They have all colors, but non-white is not very bright. I only use it with warm white.