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Why Philips Hue Smart Lights Are Worth Your Money

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Philips Hue bulbs are leading the way in smart LED lighting. You can make them glow in various colors, automatically turn them on whenever you pull to your driveway, or even color-wash your wall to match the TV’s output when watching a movie. These are just some of the cool features of Philips Hue light bulbs.

Nonetheless, are they worth it? This is the million-dollar question that many people ask themselves!

Is Philips Hue Worth It?

Before we look at are Hue bulb worth the cost, it is important at looking at the benefits and uses of smart homes in your home and how they can be worth your investment. Below is a list of how smart bulbs can be used and benefits:

  • Automated to turn on and off when needed
  • Come on when away to act as a security feature and deterrent
  • Lights come on when you come home from work in the evening
  • Night light
  • Adjust the brightness and color to set the mood at home or in a certain room
  • Light up your garden with color and beautiful lighting 

To establish whether the Philips Hue light bulbs are worth it, we’ll have to look at the pros and cons of these bulbs:

Build and Design

Just like with plenty of smart lighting systems, as a company, Philips Hue has built the intelligence and dimming capability into its range of bulbs. While it makes the bulbs relatively heavier compared to dumb LED models, it’s possible to fit Hue bulbs to regular light fittings. It means that you don’t need to fix any wiring. The lights are always ready for use at any time, provided you leave your physical light switch turned on.

Choice of Bulbs

Hue has expanded and developed over the years with now a huge choice of not only bulbs, but also light strips, indoor and outdoor lights and switches and sensors.

  • Different fittings
  • GU10 Spotlights
  • Candle Bulbs
  • Filament Bulbs
  • Outdoor lights
  • Sensors
  • Switches
  • Entertainment Lights and light strips

App, Features and Control

With a brand new system, the first thing you need to do is to set up the Hue Bridge. It plugs into the home network through an Ethernet cable. Once you connect it, you need to fire up your HUE app and then follow on-screen instructions in order to detect your Bridge. After connecting, follow the simple instructions to add your bulbs.

You can order added lights into rooms, which also acts as groups. By doing all this, it’s possible to turn all the lights off or on in a single location quickly.

Philips Hue has worked extremely hard to boost its application. The result is that using the bulb is now much easier and faster as compared to when the system was launched.

The app enables you to turn lights off or on or utilize the slider to set the lights to dim level. For sure, it is an incredibly responsive system.

The Difference Between All of Philips’ Hue Light Bulbs

Motion Sensor and Switches

Philips Hue bulbs feature a set of new motion sensors and switches. Its Tap Switch is an intelligent device, powered by kinetic energy by pressing four buttons. You can mount on the wall or remove it from its housing and utilize it as a remote. Through the Hue app, it’s possible to set which scene each button triggers.

While the Tap Switch might be neat, it does not offer fine control over the lights in your room. To be on the safe side, it’s better to use a battery-powered dimmer switch.

Google home, HomeKit and Alexa

Most if not all voice assistants support Hue. Much of this can be attributed to its popularity. Google Home, Apple HomeKit and Alexa (through the Amazon Echo) support all work in almost the same way. Through any of these systems, it’s possible to utilize your voice to turn a room or light off or on. Through the systems, you can also be able to set the dim level. Nonetheless, there are some notable differences in each of them.

For instance, with Alexa, you can activate scenes, which you’ve programmed. However, you can’t direct it to change the light color. On the other hand, Google Home does not support scenes but allows you to individually change light color. Apple HomeKit enables you to activate scenes and change light color, nevertheless, it’s only for those that you make inside the Home application.

Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance A19 60W Equivalent LED Smart Bulb Starter Kit (4 A19 Bulbs and 1 Hub Compatible with Amazon Alexa Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant)

    How to Use Philips Hue at Home

    As the Hue ecosystem has been developed now over so many years there are now Hue bulbs for just about every fitting, from LED spot lights, to your stand and bulbs and also candle bulbs too. Basically every bulb in your home could be changed over to a Hue bulb!

    Mood lighting 

    With the full range of colors they can be set at you can easily change the mood within a room with the Hue bulbs, for a romantic evening in, to a bright light for reading, or the room lit in your sports team colors as you watch the action with your friends. Whatever the mood you can change the lights to suit.

    Night light

    If you get up in the night to go to the toilet, or get a glass of water you don’t want to turn the lights on and have them on at full brightness, by using these bulbs you can ensure they come on so they are dim, enough to see where you are going yet not bright enough to wake you up completely. This is great when combined with the motion sensor.

    Office lighting

    When working in your office you will want the lights on the brightest setting, but in the evenings when it is dark you may wish to dim them down, make it a little more relaxing or warming which you can do with the Hue bulbs.

    Ambiance Lighting

    With smart LED lights with several fantastic color effects, Philips Hue provides incredible mood lighting choices. allowing users to create the perfect ambiance anytime. Some ambient light options include soft white light, warm-to-cool white light, as well as white & colored light, each suitable for a particular mood.

    Smart Secure Lighting

    Furthermore, Philips Hue smart lights can help contribute to your home security. You can set your lights to come on at night after certain intervals(regular or irregular), fooling any potential intruder that you are home even when you are not.

    Daily Activity Lighting

    Additionally, you can adjust your Philips Hue lights for every task you undertake from morning to evening, day, and night. Whether that be reading, cleaning the house, fixing things here and there, there is a perfect light to boost your morale with this product.

    Smart Outdoor Lighting

    What’s more, the Philips Hue smart lighting system can dramatically transform the look of your patio or any other outdoor space with magnificent lighting effects. Arctic aurora, tropical twilight, the emerald island, and bright are some of the breathtaking lighting effects options you can choose to make your yard look like a section of a fairytale land with a touch of a button!

    Entertainment Lighting

    So you love gaming, watching movies, dancing, or doing any other activity for fun? Whatever entertainment activity you love, this smart lighting system will make the experience more exciting with the right type of lighting.

    Turn your rooms into a disco with the Hue bulbs, combined with apps such as Hue Disco you can have all your lights changing to the beat of the music, great for kids and adult evening parties too.

    With a properly set up smart lighting system, you have endless possibilities at your disposal using this product. One fantastic thing you can do with your smart lighting setup is to set color scenes to match any weather condition in your area! This is thanks to various weather-related services such as Weather Underground, which the app has access to. 

    For example, you can create a bright sunny day with clear blue skies or a magnificent evening with a beautiful blend of orange colors of the sunset! Besides that, you can recreate a dull gloomy afternoon with greyish hues or thunderstorm-marked evening with a dull hue alongside occasional bright white flashes inside your house.

    What’s more, the Philips Hue IFTTT( If This Then That) app integration offers a very special feature that enables you to select a picture on your device and mirror the colors so that your room looks fantastic. The list of things you can do with the Philips Hue smart lighting system is pretty much endless. Your creativity is what matters!

    Other reasons to buy Philips Hue Bulbs

    The following are some of the other pros of buying these bulbs from Philips Hue:

    • The bulbs offer you thousands of color choices within a single bulb (over 16 million colors right at your fingertips)
    • Users have the ability to change the intensity and tone of white light
    • You can use several third party applications to connect the smart lights
    • It’s possible to connect to Siri
    • Energy bills might go down
    • Impress your guests with your bulb’s additional features
    • Enjoy home lighting that gives off your desired vibes

    Downsides to the Philips Hue

    While Philips Hue light bulbs most certainly boast amazing benefits and world-class features, cheaper, easier and more practical options exist. Here are some of the reasons why you might consider other bulb options:

    Cost

    For those that want to install these bulbs, the primary thing you require is a Starter Pack. The pack has a bridge and three light bulbs to connect them together wirelessly. As you need a bridge which acts as the hub for the bulbs it is better value to buy a starter kit than the bridge on its own.

    The bulbs are not cheap and you need a hub which adds an extra cost, hopefully over time the cost will drop down, there are cheaper alternatives to the Hue, however there are pros and cons to those too.

    You need a Bridge

    Unlike other smart home lights you need a bridge with the Hue set up, this is what tells to the bulbs to change when you adjust your phone, unlike others where your phone would talk to the bulbs directly when you turn them on and off.

    Downsides to having a bridge is that it is another device you need to keep plugged in, and it also needs to be wired into your router using a ethernet cable, the bridge cannot connect over wifi as it doesn’t;t have this option.

    Final Thoughts

    Smart bulbs such as Philips Hue are certainly worth it. Of course being a website devoted to these build and set up we would say that, however the options and creative uses for these are wide open.

    The price is one thing that is difficult to justify and certainly a big negative, however which never option you go far smart bulbs are still currently on the pricey side.

    Hue maybe at the top end however it is well built, has a huge range of apps available to use, and also a lot of extra hardware, such as switches, sensors, lamps, different bulbs and fittings as well as cool light strips.

    Overall the Hue is pricey, no arguments there, however when it comes to smart bulbs and set ups the Hue system has a lot to offer and as smart bulbs become more and more popular the price will drop. The key is the ensure you start your set up on the right platform and Philips certainly have that.

    The Philips Hue smart lighting system is a wonderful lighting solution for homes and even businesses. Apart from being used as an intelligent lighting solution, this system can also be used to create a lot of awe-inspiring effects like weather and so on in the room. All it takes to exploit this product the best way possible is creativity and understanding how it works. 


    Founder & Editor

    Mike is the founder of Hue Home Lighting, a huge Hue fan with far too many lights, covering home and garden. A smart home gadget addict and also enjoys the odd bit of DIY

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    One Response

    1. Peter Jones

      Thanks for this. I was just about to put down some money on a Phillips Hue kit to do some of the things I need and then I realised the bulbs have a huge disadvantage for the way I need to use them.

      In many cases I’m going to want to use light switches manually as well as have them triggered by events and time schedules but obviously if I turn off a light switch say at the end of the day because I don’t need it on, any of the defined conditions are not going to work until I manually turn on the switch again.

      It seems obvious but I really don’t want to control lights from an app literally every time say I walk out of a room. I know I could use a motion sensor but that’s using a different solution isn’t it?

      What do most people do?

      Reply

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