Reviews for Philips Hue Connected Bulb - Starter Pack

This is another "great idea" product from a company I admire, however, after setting it all up, I'm a bit disappointed for a few reasons...

1) Price is too high for quality of product. $200 for 3 bulbs and a LAN access point is quite high for adaptive lighting. See my reasoning in point number 2 below:
2) Each bulb only produces 600 lumens. That's not a lot of light per bulb, the equivalent of about a 50 watt traditional light bulb. A 13-watt CFL bulb (60-watt equivalent) bulb on Amazon currently sells for $6.50 and produces 825 lumens. Compared to the standalone hue bulb price of $59, the equivalent CFL is more than 8x cheaper cost and a 38% brighter bulb.
3) The hue iOS app needs a lot of work. The reviews are awful, and the app just isn't very user friendly and well thought out.

For these reasons, I will probably have to return this product. I do like being able to control the on/off state of my light from my iPhone/iPad, but it's just not yet worth the money. Maybe in version 2 it will be worth it, but I would need an updated app and a minimum of 800 lumens (1,100 preferred) to justify buying this.

I never write reviews but after reading the reviews here I was iffy about buying these but went ahead and did so anyways. They are Great. Yes they are pricey, but what from apple isn't? You buying something that is basically one-of-a-kind and that no one else sells. Stop whining. As for the app it is a touch non-user friendly, but for the complaints that I am seeing on here they are lies. There is a color selector (Not just picture matching), its not slow (its your wifi), and people talking about ONLY Apple compatible... Look at your URL. Your on the APPLE STORE. Sorry about the rant to everyone else.

I'm not sure where the reviews about "Not enough light" are coming from. The lights put out more than enough light to fill a room. I have four of them in about a 10 x 10 foot office, and only during the day are the lights on full strength. At night they are always dimmed in one way or another.

For high ceilings, this may be an issue. But for regular rooms they are just fine. Don't be afraid of people who seem to not have enough light. I read all the time for my work--constantly. I do have an elbow spotlamp on my desk for direct reading at night but I always needed that, even with traditional bulbs.

I'm giving this product 5 starts to open, because for an EARLY ADOPTION product it is excellent. We have a solid wifi connection and have none of the delay issues many have reported. A good wifi connection is key. The app and the options really need to be improved over time, but that is expected and I'll amend my review as needed if they don't keep pace.

Finally, they do need to get better about the bases, labeling, and adding zones to groups of bulbs. This product would be a bad mature product if these were not addressed. That said, we're still in the early adoption phase and so far they have heavily exceeded expectations with a beautiful, useful, and imaginative product. Gone are the ugly CF lights and hot incandescent lights that bugged me for years. I can hardly imagine going back to just regular bulbs at this point. It would be like going back to black and white TV.

I can't imagine ever living without these beauty's, they have brought our electricity bill down they have already payed for themselves along with "Nest Thermostat" and their so fun! Dim, control, timers, etc.. You will not regret this purchase.

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.

Very easy to set up and initially really cool. At night they are not bright enough to light up a room. They are more of a toy rather than a practical improvement in your living space. I had them in for a week and took them out cause It is silly to have to swap out Hue bulb with real bulbs just so you can see.

I rated 2, but it could have been 3, depending on what is most important to you below. I won't rehash what others have written, but here are some bullet points:

Good:

> Very easy set up. There are three steps. Simple. Good Job.
> Well made. The lights and base seem like solid, well-made products.
> Cool factor. Nice customer experience. Nice packaging and presentation. You feel like you're about to experience a whole new thing - and you are.
> The lights work well. They are very responsive to the changes you make in the app (just like some of the videos you have undoubtedly seen).

Needs Improvement:

> Brightness. This is huge for me. The bulbs - even at their brightest - are not bright enough. They are good for ambiance, not not nearly bright enough for my small (170 sq. ft.) bedroom/office, in which I have 2 of the 3 bulbs.
> App UX needs work. After a while you get how to use it, but it needs to be more intuitive and faster. Speed is key. More of a dashboard control for quick and easy settings. I'll bet some good UX folks could come up with the "right way" do this app.

How can something be so cool in some ways be so lame in others?

CONS:
1) Bulbs in starter set are permanently tied to the bridge. The bulb are supposed to last 15 years. If the bridge has a problem then I lose $180 in bulbs

2) I have two bridges, one in my home, one in my home office. I wanted to switch my extra Hue bulb from home to office. There was no intuitive way to do this or info on the website. I wrote Phillips tech support and they said, "Reset the bridge and ghost bulbs are forgotten." But wait a second. What if I was using 50 bulbs as it can do. To move one I have to forget 46 (not counting the three permanently tied to bridge).
This is absurd!

Phillips motto is "Sense and Simplicity." I got news for you Philips, all of the above makes no sense and it's not simple.

3) The App is counter intuitive and the script font is useless to actually read.

4) I have two bridges and can't name them. I have to recognize them by IP address. Obviously with only two bridges it's not difficult to remember which is which, but that doesn't make it any less lame.

5) It's only 600 lumens. It's not going to be the primary illumination.

PROS:

1) It is really cool. We have a three paper lantern lamp and my professional artist wife spent a half hour dialing in her perfect combination for holiday party.

2) In my office I find the pre-sets for energize, concentration and relax very useful. Then I created others like red alert.

3) The bulbs are only 600 lumens so they are not going to be a primary illumination if you actually want to see something, but for ambience and accents they are awesome.

I've created great accents in the home theater. Like putting a light behind the wood stove. If I make the light orange you see the silhouette of the stove and the orange light like fire. Very cool.

4) Apps can be fixed so hopefully the non sense and non simplicity will get fixed.

The Philips Hue is a great idea, moderately well executed. The bridge is easy to set up (though it'd be better if it supported WiFi connections to the home network) and the bulbs feel well-made. They definitely output a wide range of colors, and the third party apps available in the App Store are fun novelties. Two things keep the Hue from being truly great.

First is the light output. These bulbs output only 600 lumens each; less than a 60-watt incandescent bulb. I have three lamps in my 8-square-feett office. I installed a Hue bulb in each, but it's not bright enough for comfortable night time reading. This presents a dilemma -- do I add another lamp and buy another Hue bulb, or replace one of the Hue bulbs with a 1100-lumen CFL? The usefulness and interest of Hue comes from being able to control all of the light in a room, so having to rely on other types of bulbs seems inelegant. But in such a small room, I don't really have space for a fourth light fixture. I'll probably wait for Philips to make higher-lumen Hue bulbs, and eventually move these to places where I generally want less light output -- bedside lamps, etc.

The second issue is the Philips Hue app. The user interface is mystifying, as it's based around choosing colors from photographs. I expected to find a standard color palette to choose the bulb colors, and there is one, but it's hidden in a collection of sample photos. The whole experience really needs to be re-thought, making the process of choosing colors and adjusting brightness more of a primary activity, instead of basing everything around a strange collection of pre-set colors.