Philips Hue Lights Review

Smart lights are one of the best investments you can make for your home. And Philips Hue is the market leader when it comes to smart lights. Let’s take a closer look!

Pros

Responsive

This is one of the main advantages of Philips Hue lights. They come on instantly when you use the app to turn them on. There’s no lag whatsoever. They just work.

Expandable

A single Philips Hue bridge can support up to 50 lights. For most homeowners, that is more than enough.

Scheduling

The scheduling feature in the Philips Hue app is extremely easy versatile.

I have used it to schedule lights to come and off in different rooms when my family went on vacation. This way it was a great security feature.

You can also set the lights to gradually dim at night and similarly light up slowly when you want to get up in the morning.

Triggers

Philips Hue sells motion sensors but given the HomeKit compatibility you could also use third-party devices.

This is also useful for home security. You could have Philips Hue motion sensors outdoors and have indoor or outdoor lights come on, perhaps even in a different color, when motion is detected in certain areas like the front door for instance.

Smart Home Connectivity

Philips Hue supports a variety of smart assistants, including Apple HomeKit.

Cons

Bridge

The Philips Hue bridge is extremely reliable but it’s still an extra accessory and that’s too bad.

I understand that Philips Hue has released newer lights that can be accessed directly and work with various smart home assistants without requiring this bridge. However, Apple HomeKit connectivity still seems to rely on the bridge.

The other thing I cannot wrap my head around is the fact that this bridge cannot be used to control a variety of Zigbee devices even though it runs on the Zigbee protocol. If the company could add this functionality, it would make the bridge much more useful.

Brightness

This is an area where Philips Hue has improved notably. Some of its newer Philips Hue lights offer much greater brightness as measured in lumens. However, traditional lights still have a leg up. If you are looking for maximum brightness, you are going to be making a little bit of a sacrifice in this respect.

Cost

Philips Hue lights tend to be pricier than some of the competition.

However, their energy usage also seems to be less because they don’t need to run on wifi. This is especially important if you have many lights in your home.

And of course, they have a long track record and you can be confident that the company won’t go out of business anytime soon. That’s important to keep in mind when buying into any smart home platform.

Takeaways

If you are just getting started with smart home technology, then Philips Hue is a must-have device.

There are alternatives like smart wall switches but they require electrical work and cannot easily be swapped out. Philips Hue, on the other hand, can be replaced easily. They also give you the option to change colors of course, something the smart switches cannot do.

Ultimately, you cannot go wrong with Philips Hue. The company has released numerous products and is continuing to add new features and expand its ecosystem.