Reviews for Philips Hue Connected Bulb - Starter Pack

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

Just bought it an my local apple store. Took less than 2 mins to setup. Very easy to use. Parents loves it

4 of 10 people found this useful

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

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

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

I can't think of any praise that hasn't already been given, so I'll speak to a couple of the criticisms here that a Philips engineer spoke to in a differrent forum. The lights don't go dimmer because that would change their color and Philips wants the colors to stay accurate at all brightnesses. The green is more of a lime green so it's not a true red/blue/green light. This was done to give the beautiful whites produced by the lights.

The software is admittely "basic" but more functionality is on the way and there are already two third-party apps in the App Store with more to come. Developers are writing scripts and web-based apps that run from your Mac or PC to control the lights.

Compared to "normal" high end LED lights, the price is over double but that's like comparing a butter knife to a food processor. All LED lights are very efficient and the amount of electricity costs you save from the moment you turn them on recoups the purchase price (how quickly depends on how much your electricity costs, but one estimate is saving $65US per year). Then multiply that times the 22 or more years they will last. And don't forget the cost of the incandescent bulbs that burn out. They are cheap but think of how many you will buy over 22 years. That alone chews up a majority of the cost of one of these LED bulbs.

Can you tell I like them? :) The kids do too. They love changing the colors and I bought the disco app. It sounds excessive to change the lights, but being able to turn them on/off from another room and to dim them when we're watching a movie or crank them up when we're putting a puzzle together is very cool. Right now my daughter is pretending to sleep and all the lights are very dark/dim blue to simulate night.

I wrote a little script that sets the lights to green and red (for the holidays). Every minute they change to the other color (alternating between green and red). Good silly fun.

Anyway, enjoy!

9 of 9 people found this useful

I installed these in my TV room (20x25') and they are just too dim to fill the space with enough light to, for example, simulate a bright sunny day on a beach, even at their brightest. Otherwise the product works as advertised. I will wait until 75W equivalent (or higher) bulbs become available before expanding my system.

4 of 6 people found this useful

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

Highly Recommended

1 of 5 people found this useful

I have two noteworthy shortcomings of the HUE app that might influence your purchase decision. I might NOT have purchased the starter kit if I was aware of these. I hope that they are corrected in a third party app (as Philip's support suggests) or Philips corrects them in a future release. 1.) The scene alarms (timers) can only be set 24 hours in advance while connected to your home network. You can not create new scenes unless you are on your home network. 2.) Scene alarms are not persistent. After 24 hours away from your home network, the only thing you can do with the app is turn the lights on/off, adjust brightness and adjust light color remotely. This does not replace light timers.

9 of 10 people found this useful