Philips Hue Connected Bulb - Starter Pack

Reviews for Philips Hue Connected Bulb - Starter Pack

Customer Reviews and Ratings

3.5 out of 5 stars

Based on 160 reviews

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    A new approach to everyday lighting

    • Written by from Everett

    I'm impressed. Build quality looks superb. The bulbs are attractive, and importantly to me, the color rendering index (CRI) is > 90, far better than CFLs. That’s even better than most other LED bulbs. Tomatoes look red, not dull. I was delighted that these bulbs gracefully ramp up to full brightness when power is applied, and no warm up time like CFL. Brightness is indeed comparable to 50W incandescent in my testing, just right for my living room lamps. Color is stable through the entire dimming range.

    The iOS software works OK to get started, but leaves me wanting more. I expect it to improve along with 3rd party offerings. Already, I have enjoyed having the lights dim down to a cozy candlelight as my evening winds down, then to wake me up in the early morning with dawn simulation. Tuning the white balance of the lamps for study, reading, or relaxing is great. Other colors are fun, too, perhaps for accents or parties.

    Pricing? The main cost of these bulbs is the premium pure color high-efficiency LED chips and individual drivers. Philips did not skimp here. To bring the cost down and brightness up, they'd have to switch to white phosphor LEDs, which would defeat the purpose and reduce light quality. Remember, with each bulb, you are also getting a wireless network dimmer, on-board flash memory, and tunable color. Compare to other home automation kits paired with dimmable LEDs/CFLs.

    I hope Philips releases additional bulb formats, i.e. for track lighting and recessed cans. I'd also like to see ZigBee compatible accessories for control, such as wireless wall switches to flesh the system out. It’s great that Philips is using open standards for these bulbs and inviting developers to create new ideas.

    12 of 17 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Awesome!

    • Written by from Washington

    Right, firstly the App could do with some work. Mostly intuitive but some basics like setting the timers are very unclear. Tip - you just need to double tap to reset the alarm.

    Other than that the product is awesome.

    Aside from the geekery of the thing I was most amazed is that almost no perceptible heat comes from the bulb. After an hour or so they are just slightly warm to the touch. They must be incredibly efficient.

    But above all this is totally cool. It may be a stretch to pay for them at $60 a bulb but I am sure costs will be recovered over time. But these are LED bulbs with wireless built in, how cool it that???!!!

    I find my self laughing every time I turn on and off the lights.

    18 of 25 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Great as an early adopter product

    • Written by from Foster City

    Yes, they are expensive, not as bright as one may like and the app has room for improvement. But its also a fantastic new concept not available anywhere else. I wired the living room with 10 lights and use a 3rd party app (Ambify) to make them pulse to music. The effect is awesome and great every time there is a party or a playdate in the house.

    7 of 8 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    NEAT!

    • Written by from Tempe

    Great product, my European friends have had LED colored lights for years and was always envious.. now this is a step ahead of those. I do wish the app was more robust however.

    5 of 6 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    A new way to light a room

    • Written by from Vancouver

    I recently bought this starter pack and was quite amazed. The Phillips Hue definately introduces a number of new options to light a room.

    The setup was a breeze - much easier than I expected. I had the whole thing up and running in a few minutes. The experience of creating your online account and tieing it to your home system could be made a bit more intuitive, but it is do-able.

    Really love the light options available, including the programming of the times and which lights.

    My only frustration with the system is it is very photo based. What I mean is that to create a scene (which is basically choosing which lights are used and what colours) you have to select a photo. I can understand why because they want to help you re-create a scene; however, if you are wanting to do something like have lights a certain group of colours for a party, etc., you first have to find a photo that has those colours in it. If you could simply choose, if you wanted, to see a RYG colour wheel and choose the colours that would make it easier to program too.

    10 of 11 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Love the Hue

    • Written by from Salt Lake City

    Just picked Hue up a week ago and we love it. Installation and setup on our devices and iMac was a breeze. The color/lighting combinations are fantastic and endless. We will be expanding from the living room and kitchen into the study and bathroom. Would recommend this to anyone looking to upgrade to LED lighting in the home.

    1 of 4 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Just what I've been looking for!

    • Written by from Boston

    I have seriously been waiting for years for something like this to hit the markets. I don't like audible alarms at all because they tear me out of sleep violently and I feel grumpy the rest of the day. I also haven't been very happy with instant-on lighting solutions because there's so much light so fast. The Hue Connected Bulb Starter Pack comes with everything you need to 'wake up with the sun' (you can dim the lights from dark to full brightness over 3 or 9 minutes), even at 4:30am during winter in a room with no windows! In addition, the diversity of color options means that if you want to do any creative lighting for photography purposes you can do it without dealing with filters or gels.

    I give this product 4 stars rather than 5 primarily because the App that you use to program the bulbs could use a little work. If nothing else, I did not find it intuitive that to set up the dimming function I had to create a new 'light recipe' (who picked that name? And why not a simple 'alarm' setting that is independent of other recipes?). Also, I generally have to reset my wake-up 'recipe' each night before bed, which I find disappointing; I feel I should at least have the option of setting up light recipes that automatically trigger on weekdays (early wakeup) and weekends (late wakeup). The price is also a bit steep and it would be nice to see a higher-power bulb in the future (1000+ lumens), but these are still my favorite light bulb of all time. I would replace every light in my house with these if I had the money. Highly recommended if you can afford them!

    12 of 14 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Lot of Fun

    • Written by from Falmouth

    I bought the starter pack and one bulb and it took me 2 mins to get the starter pack going and then I realised one bulb was changing. Another 5 mins and I had linked the fourth bulb.
    I did have to turn on the fourth bulb in each scene and choose a point for it.

    I am delighted with the system. The software will hopefully be improved. I want to put them in the bedroom also but I can't work out how room by room will be dealt with? The scenes will have to be doubled so that the others rooms settings are included?

    I have 4 LEDs on my bridge and everything over the wifi but not yet managed to link my bridge to the online account?

    That's where the missing star is.

    4 of 6 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Needs recurring scene schedules

    • Written by from Smyrna

    Bought starter kit. Explored features. I don't have a need for colors, but I find different qualities of white to be useful. Would buy additional bulbs if schedules automatically recurred and could vary by weekday / weekend. I personally would prefer a list or grid format rather than individual icons for each scene / schedule.

    4 of 5 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Great Product

    • Written by from El Paso

    this product is great i absolutely recommend for anyone thinking of buying.
    the only reason i don not git if 5 stars if because of the price and the app.
    the app needs work and more features, and 150 sounds more reasonable price.
    the bulb could also have a better price at 40dllrs

    11 of 11 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Waiting for the possibilities... App-Wise

    • Written by from ONTONAGON

    Way cool product! Now that we have addressable lighting...

    How about some extra functions in the way of applications for them!

    Fingers tapping....

    4 of 5 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Awesome concept, takes some getting use to.

    • Written by from St. Louis Park

    So far everything worked right out of the box. I find the custom scenes are a little over powering on the eyes, but I'm sure I have a lot of tweaking to do. Bridge setup was a breeze, and I am amazed at the amount of colors these bulbs can produce! Not much in terms of instructions come, but everything was so simple. Will provide a more in-depth update with more use.

    2 of 2 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Amazing

    • Written by from Chantilly

    This is a truly amazing product. It is very simple to install, and set up. It takes some trial and error to understand how to group lights into separate rooms so that you can control them room by room. The Phillips App is rudimentary, but improvements are clearly around the corner. Given the open architecture position that Phillips has taken, I found another APP call Hue Disco which is killer. Turns a group of lights into a multicolor disco lighting effect based on the music that your iPhone/iPad is listening to (not playing...you need a second source device). Even has a strobe light feature. This is beginning of a new era of home control.

    10 of 10 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Hardware is great...software needs work.

    • Written by from Toronto

    The lights themselves are great. They are pricey, but worth it--I bought 3 more bulbs less than a week after buying the starter pack! I wish they would dim a bit more as the dimmest setting seems bright when coming on in the morning. Wish they could do a bit deeper colours -- the red comes across a bit pink and the green a bit lime.

    The software is another story. It is a great start, but has a LONG way to go--I keep checking the app store hoping for a upgrade. As mentioned by several others, the lack of a multi-day scheduling system is a problem. The scheduling does not sync across multiple devices. For some reason the schedule seems to turn itself off on occasion randomly. I wish you could permanently group some bulbs, rather than need to do it on a Scene by scene basis -- I have two rooms with multiple bulbs and generally dont need my bedroom lights turning on when I change the scene in my living room. You can do it but it is a manual pain.

    Buy this product! I love it and want philips or another 3rd party developer to make the software to make it complete!

    11 of 14 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Love this product! App needs a *little* work

    • Written by from Milwaukee

    I had my eye on these bulbs for about two months and finally bit the bullet to purchase them after seeing an article/video clip in the Wall Street Journal about Phillips redoing the lighting for the Empire State Building in LEDs (its pretty amazing).

    Now I have an empire state of mind for lighting in my apartment. I love this product. Right out of the box I was like, "I don't know about these.." But once you play with them a bit and figure out how to set the mood for different situations, you'll never go back. I've always been picky about lighting and for the past two months I had been wishing I could turn all my lights off at night without leaving my warm, comfy bed. Phillips took care of my pickiness and my laziness. The concentrate setting works great for studying, the relax setting is amazing for chilling out and, well, relaxing. And those are just two Phillips recipes. If you buy these, check out blue rain at night with your girl -maybe after throwing a party with your friends in the Deep Sea setting over some Clapton and Zeppelin, eh? The possibilities are endless.

    My only complaint is that the app is a little shaky sometimes. I'll be reviewing the app in the app store so the developers can get to it.

    4/5 because Phillips shouldn't have partnered with novice app developers.

    4 of 4 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Awesome

    • Written by from New York

    The bulbs are fantastic. Every color you could dream of. And the multi light settings are super cool. Overall system has great great potential. But the app is quite poorly designed. In the future this can only get better and better.

    5 of 6 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Good Concept works well

    • Written by from toronto

    Love the Hue, its cool and works well, creates good ambience and is an easy install, adding additional bulbs is even easier.Can set up timer to have bulbs come on/off automatically
    cons : The iphone app isnt 2 good, not very user friendly and is good for basic stuff, the timer has to be reset everyday and cannot be set up to reccur. The website is also not very easy to use and any additions you make is suppose to sync with your iphone and ipad, but it dosent.The website interface is not easily expalined and the customer support line are not 2 good at responding to emails.
    Overall product is good...they have to work on the user experience.

    4 of 5 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Great concept, awesome product, dreadful app

    • Written by from Novato

    Just adding my 2 cents and agreeing with many.

    The good
    Very easy setup. Had this working in about 5 minutes.
    Lighting from bulbs is gorgeous - changing colors is really fun.
    Setting up localized lighting within a room is something to behold
    Overall it's good value

    The bad
    The app is terrible - badly designed and very frustrating
    You can't change colors of more than 1 bulb simultaneously
    The timer is crude and almost useless
    The app does not allow you to manage individual rooms

    The future
    This system will take off when we get some 3rd part apps
    Potential is amazing
    We need some spotlight bulbs
    Would love to see a 75w power rated bulb versus current 50

    12 of 14 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Note on pairing bulbs

    • Written by from Mountain View

    Just a quick note ... to pair new bulbs or re-pair existing ones, you must have the bulb you want to pair in direct physical proximity to the controller. Within a foot is best. Only then will using the app to find new bulbs work. You may also have to press the button on the controller, although that seems to be hit or miss.

    Once you complete the pairing, you can move the newly paired bulb to the edges of your mesh network of bulbs.

    Just wanted to save anyone else trying to use these bulbs the confusion I went through.

    Great hardware, but the software and instructions need a lot of work.

    10 of 16 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Love it, but you should be aware of problems

    • Written by from West Palm Beach

    Hue arrives beautifully packaged in a truly Apple-worthy box and setup. Setup was easy and fast, and the control software runs smoothly.

    It's loads of fun playing with the free app, and producing lights based on your photos and art. The app is beautifully designed and appears free of bugs or crashes. It would be nice if you could program scene sequences and automatic switching over time. This may be possible to some extent, but it looks inflexible and limited. Fortunately, a public iOS API is planned and that should let us switch and shift to our heart's content.

    I knew this going in, but the bulbs are definitely not as bright as we might like. The full rating of 600 lumens is roughly the brightness of a 50 watt halogen bulb. I can believe this, for the white only. Alas, white is a combination of all colors, so individual colors are much dimmer. Logically, a red light can only be 1/3 as bright as the total red, green and blue. This is unavoidable, of course, but definitely disappointing for anyone wanting anything like the intensity of a 50 watt halogen.

    A related problem is that some colors are far, far superior to others. Hue seems to specialize in red, orange and purple. Even when sampling from bright green photos, I've had a hard time getting any form of deep, rich green. Instead, the green colors look nearly white. Blue seems somewhat better but still flaky in my testing. I hope this is a software problem which can be fixed, since mixed colors incorporating green or blue seem just fine.

    So if you want to create a Christmas display with red and green lights, as I did, you will find wonderful red and washed-out green – not what you're looking for!

    The bulbs are not meant for use in recessed fixtures, but in my testing they work just fine. However, the lack of reflector bulbs makes them even dimmer than you would expect from reading the above.

    Conclusion: Hue is a lot of fun and very well designed and thought out. But with Christmas coming, anyone looking for red and green decor will love the red but not the green. Hopefully a software update can fix this!

    16 of 17 people found this useful

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