Reviews for Philips Hue Connected Bulb - Single Pack

Gee whiz, but incredible.

The quality of the application and hardware is very high. The only "issue" we ever had was a loss of connection. The app told her to press the button -- she did -- and it was back in business. No brainer.

We use two bulbs over an aquarium and I have to say it is nothing short of magical. No heat, low energy and natural lighting for the fishies. When we're watching we can enhance the colors of the coral and plants, as well as two rather boring white Angel fish that are now chameleons.

If your rooms have white ceilings and light walls, you can create any atmosphere you want with no guessing. If your walls are painted colors, it takes more trial and error to get color/mood/experience you want.

Lights do exactly as advertised. Multiple colors, brightness, etc. App only works at home, useless. Cannot program more than one day at time. When on vacation, lights go per program one day (presuming App works, which frequently does not). After first day, need to go online to turn on and off.

Now, online program is even worse than App. Can only turn all lights on or off, cannot select different lights to turn off or on at different time. All or nothing (even then lights don't work consistently).

So, when you travel, you have to keep track of time zone difference, remember that difference every day, and (every day) turn all of your lights on or off.

Best part, Phiilips really does not care. Absolutely no support, respond by cut and pasting FQA's to specific question. Answers have nothing to do with the questions. Useless would be a positive review of their support.

Bottom line, cable companies have better systems (maybe not cool lights) but they can do what Philips could not care less to even try to do. BTW, can buy color lights for a lot less and get a lot more support from cable and security companies than Philips.

We purchased 8 lights, they are all coming off line. Hate to see Mac sell and endorse such a bad product. If I could give negative stars, I would.

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.

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.

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.

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

Bought two starters to get enough bulbs. Found out that the bulbs will only ever work with bridge they are shipped with. Single bulbs, once paired with a bridge, are really hard to unpair. This means if your bridge ever dies, your original bulbs won't ever work again, and it will be a huge pain to use and single bulbs. This is what Philips people say when they are being their MOST optimistic. No easy reset.

I plan on returning both my starter packs.

For something to cost this much and be so limited is unacceptable.

This a fine lighting product for those wishing to modernize their home. The lamps themselves are very high quality and emit very pleasing light. As other reviewers have mentioned, the partner app could use some work. Nonetheless, a great product.

The bulbs are great. They're responsive to the imput. The HUE software program is cumbersome at times and difficult to understand right off the bat- but after time you'll figure it out. Also Phillips doesn't have extensive tech support for these bulbs or a step-by-step explanation. I'd still buy them anyways though!