Philips Hue Color Smartbulbs Review

Today, we'll take a look at the Philips Hue Color Smartbulbs, go over the features in the app, and find out why they are so popular. Philips Hue is probably one of the most popular brands of lighting out there.

It seems like everybody advertises that they're compatible with Philips Hue. But what makes them so popular?

Looking at their White & Color Ambiance Bulbs, not only do they have 16 million different colors, but you can choose anywhere from a warm white all the way up to cool daylight. There are lots of color options with this set of lights.

Sky-high specs

These light bulbs have a 25,000-hour lifespan and 100% brightness when you turn the lights on, which is really cool. They are 800 lumens, making them a pretty bright light bulb.

They use 9.5 watts, connect via 2.4GHz connection, and have a Kelvin rating of 2,000 to 6,500. Not sure what those Kelvin numbers mean? Those indicate how bright white it can get or how yellow or orange it can get.

Also, Philip Hue Color Smartbulbs are compatible with both Amazon and Google voice assistants, as well as Bluetooth and Zigbee.

Taking a look at the light itself, it looks like a standard light bulb. It’s plastic, not glass, so you don't have to worry about dropping it. The casing where all the smart components are housed is going to be encased in metal.

The light bulb’s specs are printed directly on the bulb, so if you do lose the box or if you have multiple light bulbs, you’ll still know this important information. I like that they label the light bulbs. If you have a bunch of different types of these, you're going to want to distinguish between them in case you take them out and move them around your house.

Setting this light bulb up is really easy to do:

1. At the very top of the app, you’re going to see the three dots in the top right corner. Tap on those.
2. Click light setup.
3. At the very top of that, click on add lighting.
4. It's going to ask if you want to add it by serial number or just do a search for it.
5. On the light bulb itself, there’s a little barcode—right underneath that is the six-digit number.
6. At this point, you can add multiple smartbulbs if you've got a bunch of different lights.

Now that the light bulb is set up, let’s go through the app and see what these lights can do. The app has a lot of predefined scenes, but you can also create new scenes too.

If you choose Savanna Sunset, it’s going to take colors from that picture and apply it to these lights. I've used other light bulbs—cheaper light bulbs—in the past and you get options of color. There are all the standard pinks, blues, purples, reds, oranges.

I would have to say, using these lights and experiencing these colors, they are truer to color than anything I've used before. I'm really impressed with the colors that these lights are putting out. They're very vibrant.

There is a toggle at the top; you can use that to toggle the lights on and off. Right below that is a slider for the brightness. It’s easy to use these controls to get to everything that you need to right away. Below that you can also create new scenes.

Another really cool thing is the camera icon at the bottom of the screen in the app. Click on this icon, and it has a bunch of different pictures with different color schemes that you can use. Scroll through any of these, and when you select one, it's going to change the lights by the colors that it sees in this picture. If you don't want to use any of their pictures, you can take a picture of your own.

You can also set up different routines for these light bulbs. Standard routines are Home and Away. These both have geofencing built into them, meaning that when you leave the house or come home, you can set up different things to happen.

For example, you can set them so when you leave the house, it turns off all the lights. As you're approaching the house, it can turn on all the lights.

Additionally, there are wake up, sleep, and other routines. You can get very granular about how you want to set these routines up. There are so many cool things you can do with these light bulbs and the app.

Clicking on the Explore area of the app, you will see a section called Friends of Hue, which brings up different apps these bulbs will work with. They work with all the major voice assistants and a lot of different smart home things like SmartThings, IFTTT, Vivint Smart Home, and more. You can also control the lights when you leave the house.

That is a brief run-through of the app and what the app provides and the things that you can do with it. The sky is the limit with the Philips Hue smartbulb system. They offer so many options and work with so many smart home devices. I feel like every product I look at works with Philips Hue, and there are endless possibilities with them.