Reviews for Philips Hue Connected Bulb - Starter Pack

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

Fingers tapping....

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.

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.

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.

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.