This Costco Find Can Upgrade Your Outdoor Lighting






Costco is a great place to pick up all kinds of attractively priced finds, some of which are hidden gems, and some of which are customer favorites. The Koda Outdoor Wall Lantern is a bit of both, since it’s currently an online exclusive that in-store customers won’t know about, but it’s still consistently well reviewed by buyers. At the time of writing, it has amassed more than 2,300 reviews on the retailer’s website, with a commendable average rating of 4.7 out of five stars.

It’s available in two colorways, black and bronze, and it’s an affordable way to upgrade your outdoor lighting since it retails for $59.99. The body of the lantern is built from aluminum, and so it won’t rust, and an LED bulb is included so there’s no need to buy one separately. However, if you’re not a fan of the LED bulb’s appearance, you can choose to swap it out for a 60W incandescent bulb, since the lantern is compatible with both bulb types.

A single lantern delivers 800 lumens of illuminating power, and it will switch on and off automatically when its built-in sensor detects darkness and daylight. A motion sensor also enables the lantern to turn on automatically when you walk by. Koda says the included bulb should last up to 25,000 hours before needing replacement. As standard, all of Koda’s hardwire lights are covered by a five year warranty, and if you want to return the item to Costco, you can do so at any of the retailer’s warehouse locations.

Reviewers are consistently impressed with the lantern

There are some items at Costco that might look appealing at first glance, but reviewers say to steer clear of them. The Koda lantern isn’t one of them, with more than 1,900 of its roughly 2,300 total reviews giving it a five-star score. Some reviewers have noted that the bronze finish on the lanterns appears more of a purple-tinted brown in certain lights, but most were still happy with their appearance. Others claim that the finish of the lantern body can make the lanterns appear slightly plasticky at close range, even though they’re made of metal.

Many of the negative reviews allege that there can be some quality control issues with the lanterns, with some reviewers reporting a lifespan that was much shorter than advertised for the bulbs or sensors. However, these reviews form only a tiny fraction of the overall feedback from buyers, with most buyers being satisfied with the lights’ appearance and functionality. 

Once you’ve finished upgrading your home’s outdoor lighting, it might also be worth investing in a set of security cameras. Costco sells a wide range of cameras, many of which sport reviews that are just as consistently positive as the Koda lanterns.





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ZDNET’s key takeaways

  • Amazon is reportedly developing a new Fire Phone.
  • The previous model had several issues, including an inferior app store experience.
  • Under new supervision (and with more experience), Amazon can do better this time.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I certainly didn’t have “new Amazon smartphone” on my 2026 bingo card. As it turns out, according to Reuters, the retailer may be developing a new smartphone, internally known as “Transformer.” 

Those familiar with the industry will instantly draw parallels to Amazon’s previous smartphone effort, the Fire Phone from 2014. Appropriately, that phone ended up as part of a fire sale about a year later.

Now, in 2026, with no fewer than five phone brands in the US — Apple, Samsung, Google, Motorola, and OnePlus — Amazon faces a lot of competition. In fairness, it also has two fewer platforms to compete against. In 2014, Windows Phone and BlackBerry were still very much part of the smartphone conversation; these days, not so much.

The AppStore problem

But there’s one mistake Amazon made in its first effort that will absolutely torpedo its chances at succeeding — the Amazon AppStore and specifically the decision to forego Google Play services. Google is simply too valuable in too many lives to not support the platform. Oh, and the Amazon AppStore is terrible.

Also: What’s right (and wrong) with the Amazon Fire Phone

It has admittedly been a few years since I last inventoried the Amazon AppStore, but when I last checked, the Amazon AppStore was a wasteland of half-supported or unsupported apps, with two notable exceptions. Finance, home control, and communication apps were either absent or had not received updates for years prior.

The only apps in the Amazon AppStore that remained up to date were productivity apps (largely powered by Microsoft) and streaming apps. Those two categories work very well on the cheap, underpowered hardware that Amazon usually launches, and that’s fine. A coffee-table tablet is a nice thing to have lying around.

A spark of hope

Amazon Fire Phone

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But a phone is another animal entirely. If a tablet is a device to entertain, a phone is a device for everything else. One of the key reasons Windows Phone failed was its lack of an app ecosystem. The Senior Vice President of Devices and Services,  Panos Panay, is very familiar with that saga, so I’m hopeful that he will make the same arguments to the powers that be at Amazon. 

Honestly, if there is anyone who I think can pull off an Amazon phone revival, it’s probably Panay, who understands design and product development better than most, and to be perfectly honest, he’s my absolute favorite product presenter.

Also: Amazon Fire Phone review: Not a great smartphone

Of course, all of this is early days. This phone is being worked on internally, and even Reuters reports that it could get the axe long before it sees the light of day. Personally, I’m intrigued by the idea, but I sincerely hope that Amazon doesn’t make this the shopping phone it tried to build in 2014. 

If Amazon just wants to make a nice, well-built smartphone, with a skin that pushes Amazon content to the fore, I’m fine with that. But leaving Google behind is a mistake that Amazon cannot afford to make again. Fool me once, and all that.

So, if this phone is to have a chance at success, it needs to embrace Google services so it can be a phone that everyone can use. Amazon has the brand power to make a phone like this work, even up against juggernauts like Apple and Samsung, but it needs to approach this correctly, lest it end up in yet another Fire phone fire sale.





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