Reviews for Philips Hue Connected Bulb - Single Pack

I read an article and decided to purchase this product over a much more expensive home lighting system. One day later....Extremely Happy! Product was very easy and simple to set up...in Fact my six year old did all of the connections and i downloaded the app. The light output is as good or better than your normal light bulb and the color combination you see and get its just makes it that much better. I installed one on my sons room and tried the gradually dimming feature and it worked on the first try. If you are considering spending over 4K on a full house lighting system....make sure you spend the $199 starter kit and you will be Happy you did. I will be ordering more bulbs as they become available to change the entire house to this new system.

This product is unreal. I've been reading about it over the last few months thinking it was cool, but never planned to buy it. Then I started reading how tough it is to get, and positive reviews started rolling in so I was lucky enough to pick up the last one at my Apple Store...Setting up was as easy as any Apple product, literally 2-3 minutes. The App is incredibly easy and intuitive, you name your bulbs as you assign them to wherever...You can tilt the phone sideways to activate the App to control each bulb individually or use it in portrait and choose a "Scene" like Beach lighting, Concentrate, Sunset, Pencils, Greece....tons of preset mood lighting, or you can choose an existing picture you love and create lighting based on it!! INCREDIBLE. MUST GET.

I set up a system with 7 bulbs today. It works nicely plugged into the AirPort, controlled well from an iPhone 5 and iPad 3 - both on WiFi and 4G.

All in all, I like it so far!

I am very happy with his new product - it's a brilliant idea. bright LED lighting that is controllable from your iPhone/ipad with the ability to change colors.

Don't let some of the initial negative reviewers influence you. It's so amazing to be able to control the hue of a light over a huge range of colors. I use them in my color grading studio because they go to 6500K. No other LED light that I know runs up that high in the spectrum. The set up was quick and easy right out of the box. No fuss and no hassle. You have to download the app and familiarize yourself with it but that doesn't take long. The app is a LOT of fun to play with because you can use your finger to glide around the screen causing your lights to change colors. There are a ton of presets. It's like I like in a new home. Can't wait for the first party to show folks this.

Lights good - App terrible!!! The reviews on this site are very suspicious. I found the app so bad I returned kit to the Apple Store. Looks like a lot of Philips marketing people are spamming this review blog.

First off, this is a really fun and amazing product -- and this is definitely the future of lighting. The ability to load a photograph and change the color of the room with that photograph remotely is nothing short of amazing. Everything works as advertised, but I agree with some of the criticism regarding the included FREE app. I would have given this five stars if the app had been fully thought-out. But hey, it's version 1.0 -- there's plenty of room and time to improve -- and I'm hopeful they will. There looks to be some fun 3rd party apps for the Hue system, but I've only tried the Disco one, which is ok (nothing mind-blowing).

Set-up time was about 10-15 minutes -- I just put the bulbs in, turned the lights on, hooked up the bridge to my Wi-Fi router and followed the directions (you must push a button on the bridge at the prompt). It's pretty simple.

I think the Hue App needs the following:
- Ability to organize lights by room

- Easier method of instantly changing individual light colors (the interface requires that you turn the device sideways to switch to a color picker)

- Better pre-set management -- my kids have already created dozens of photo pre-sets and I'd really like to keep them separate from my own (more sophisticated) color preferences. If you hold your finger down on an icon, it jiggles like other icons in the iOS -- but it is very difficult to re-arrange and organize and there are no folders.

- Overall, the interface could use some expert UI design work -- the hierarchy of information is a bit muddled and frustrating at first. I know there is always a learning curve to new apps, etc. -- but this app is a bit awkward.

- The scheduling interface is blah -- could be much better.

- One crit about the lights themselves: It seems to be difficult to get a perfect, rich blue -- it tends to go toward cool white or purple -- I haven't been able to achieve a perfect blue. Perhaps this could be remedied if we had access to actual color numeric values in the app? RGB = 0, 0, 255 for example.

Otherwise, we are having immense fun with these lights. They really do change the mood instantly, and it's very useful for things like reading, concentrating, relaxing, etc.

Yes, a bit pricey, but you will have a blast. I hope to replace all of the lights in our house with these over time.

Some say you cannot adjust individual lights (different themes) or set schedules on individual lights. This is incorrect. Just tap the theme, hit the pencil tip on the left. This lets you choose the individual bulbs and schedule for those.

Other systems allow you to turn on/off and dim but these let you choose the exact color. it is very nice to be able to tune the white with soft color to give the rooms a very comfortable feel when you are watching tv, etc... The bright white is excellent for reading when needed.

Just install the bulb, press find new bulbs. The bulb will flash so you know which one you are working with then you can give it a descriptive name. Now it is ready to use.

I'd previously rated the starter pack 3 stars because of difficulties getting started with the iOS app. Now that I've customized recipes to my liking and gotten them syncing with the hub, it works reasonably well. The app still needs lots of work -- but the potential of the hardware is so great it's worth it.

My other concern is with the light output of the bulbs -- only equivalent to about a 50w incandescent bulb. I've found that with a two-way bulb adapter, I can use two Hue bulbs in some floor lamps, which results in a really pleasing amount of light. I now have 5 bulbs in 3 lamps for a 100 sq. foot home office.

The reviews of these light bulbs are deeply suspicious. They read like product pimping to me. Who reviews a single bulb rather than the set that comes with the controller? Philips marketing people, I would say. I actually own the product. The bulbs themselves are indeed nice, but not worth $60 as a standalone product. It's the combination with the controller that matters. Read those reviews. As many people note there, the app is deeply flawed. It does indeed allow you to remotely change the bulb colors. That's cute, but hardly game changing. The really useful functionality - like being able to program an on/off schedule - is either non-existent or very poorly implemented. If you want a disco, fine; if you are looking for some home security, this product is not it.

I don't usually write reviews on techie products, but rarely does a product come out that has such a WOW factor. We purchased these for the simple reason that we wanted to control our house lighting remotely, the color thing was interesting, but not a factor in our purchase.

WOW, this product has simply changed our house entirely. The hues are so interesting and warm, the atmosphere these lights create can simply not be duplicated by any other means that doesn't cost thousands of dollars in custom lighting.

The devices installed seamlessly, the applications are absolutely bug free and work intuitively. The ability to create scenes is nothing short of amazing.

From the packaging, to the install to the creating a hue account online, this is one class product. My only advice is to count up the number of bulbs in your house and bite the bullet and order then with your initial purchase. We had them installed about 10 minutes before we went online and purchased more.

WOW