Imagine a world where you can control every aspect of your home wirelessly from your smartphone. The Philips Hue Connected bulb ($199.95 list; 3-bulb starter kit) brings that vision one step closer to reality, allowing you to wirelessly control your lighting. But it's not just about control, it's about customization. The Philips Hue app for Android and iOS is surprisingly powerful, letting you adjust intensity, set custom colors, color combinations, and schedules. There's an undeniable wow factor from the moment you screw in your first smart bulb, but there's also some genuine convenience and utility. Unfortunately, the system is prohibitively expensive at $60 per bulb or $200 for the starter kit with three bulbs. Still, it's the most robust and easy-to-use connected lighting system's we've seen and rightfully earns our Editors' Choice award.
Hue Bulbs and Setup
The Hue bulbs($199.99 at Verizon) are conical in shape, with a glass end and a tapered aluminum body that terminates in a standard light bulb connector. They feel more substantial than your typical light bulb, but are about the same size and virtually indistinguishable once screwed into a socket. Unlike fluorescent or incandescent light bulbs, the Hue bulbs utilize LEDs. Philips rates the lifespan of each bulb at up to 15,000 hours, and despite the Wi-Fi connectivity, claims that each bulb uses 80 percent less power than a traditional incandescent bulb.
With each starter pack you get three bulbs and a wireless bridge. You can add up to 50 bulbs to a single bridge, but keep in mind that starter kit bulbs are permanently tied to their packaged bridge—that means you can only add bulbs to your starter kit using the single bulb packs.
Setup is simple and straightforward, and there's very little networking knowledge required. First you screw in your bulbs and turn them on—they'll light up without a wireless connection like any light bulb. Next you connect the wireless bridge to your Wi-Fi router using the included ethernet cable. Then download the free iOS or Android app and follow the on-screen prompts for pairing the Hue bulbs and bridge with your phone or tablet. To control the Hue bulbs wirelessly, you must leave your power switches turned on. Keep in mind you can still turn Hue bulbs on or off using your regular light switch if you don't have your mobile device handy, but you just won't be able to adjust color or light intensity.
Controlling and Customizing Your Hue
Using the Hue app, you can control and customize the color and intensity of each individual light bulb. This can extend from simply turning lights on and off with your smartphone, or recreating a scene from your last vacation. Philips pre-loads a number of readymade "scenes," like a sunrise, or color profiles, like "relax," which can stimulate desired moods. Each scene is a real picture, and you can even upload your own photos to use with Hue. Selecting a picture brings up an overlay with icons representing each bulb. You can drag each bulb independently to any point on the picture, and the bulbs will then mimic the color of your chosen point. This all happens in real time, so you can watch the color changes and get exactly the tone and intensity you're looking for.
Preset color profiles were hit or miss in my tests. I really enjoyed the "relax" setting, which created a pleasant and dimmed warm light. The "energize" setting, on the other hand, made me feel like I was under the harsh fluorescent tubes of a drab office. You can also control each bulb individually, without using scenes or color profiles, so you can set an infinite number of color combinations and intensities. You can also label each bulb, and control which scenes apply to which bulbs.
Aside from changing the color and intensity of each bulb, you can also set timers and alarms for individual bulbs. I particularly liked this feature, as I could set my bedroom light to turn on gradually before my alarm went off, making for a less jarring wake up call. This feature debuted for iOS only, but is now available for Android as well.
As versatile as the color controls are, the app itself isn't the most intuitive to use. For example, associating specific bulbs with specific scenes isn't immediately apparent—you have to dig down into the editing menus for each scene—and that lead me to a lot of inadvertent color shifts during my tests. Adjusting individual bulbs also requires you to rotate your smartphone into landscape orientation, which brings up a color gradient selection that's otherwise hidden. The closest competitor we've tested is the Belkin WeMo + Motion, which lets you use your phone or tablet to turn almost any appliance on and off, set timers, and even set motion detection rules. It's a bit clunkier, however, and the app could use a lot more work. It also only controls on or off, as opposed to the Hue's ability to control things like color or brightness.
There are also a few features missing from the app that I'd like to see added in the future. For one, presets should be shareable between household members or even other Hue owners. Aside from labels, you should be able to easily group your bulbs by room, instead of manually setting scenes for each room. These aren't deal breakers, but for such an expensive product, I'd like to see Philips expand the feature set of the app.
One of the hidden beauties of the Hue system is its vibrant developer community. The official app from Philips has plenty of features to play with, but there's an ever-growing selection of homegrown apps that expand the functionality of Hue. The Hue software is open source, which is great for encouraging third-party app development. Many of these apps can be found in the Apple App Store, like Hue Disco, which can synchronize your Hue bulbs to music playback. There are also a ton of IFTTT recipes that incorporate Hue, which adds a lot of value to the package. Some recipes include changing the Hue bulb colors to reflect weather changes and blinking bulbs to indicate new notifcations from services like Facebook or Instragram.
The Lighting of the Future, if You Can Afford it
I like pretty much everything about the Hue—except the price. At $60 a bulb, hooking your home up with Hue is a serious investment. You could argue that the 15,000 hour lifespan (compared with the 1,000 hour lifespan of typical incandescent bulbs), which is approximately 15 years of light, and the energy savings make up for the initial outlay, but it's still a tough pill to swallow up front. Pricing aside, the Hue not only adds the convenience of wireless control, but it adds an element of wonder with its ability to easily recreate scenes and moods that were once confined solely to pictures. If I could afford it, I would replace every light bulb in my house with Hue bulbs. We also like LIFX's LED Bulbs( at Amazon), which produce brighter, more vibrant colors and don't require a bridge, but at $99 per bulb, they're even more expensive than Hue bulbs. For its features and flexibility, we give the Philips Hue our Editors' Choice award for connected lighting.
The Philips Hue Connected Bulb system lets you wirelessly control the color and intensity of your home or office lighting, and while it's undeniably cool, the cost of entry could preclude many.
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