Hello, my name’s Tom, and this is Proper Honest Tech.
The Philips Hue Dimmer Switch is not new technology by any means,
the original has been out for a number of years now. It’s a low-cost accessory that you can add
to your existing Hue setup to control your lights without the need for a smartphone,
and looking on Amazon recently, reviews of the product have always been overwhelmingly very good.
Philips just launched version 2 of the switch, and as I never picked up the original,
I decided to grab one of these. So in this video, we’ll unbox the unit,
get it added to my setup and get some initial thoughts and impressions.
So, unboxing first, and nothing hugely out of the ordinary here. The device comes in a nice small
box with all of the usual detail and information you’d expect to see on the outside. Opening it up,
you’ve got the switch itself which I’ll put to one side, we’ll have a look at that in just a moment.
The only other two things you’ve got in the box then are instruction manuals, and as ever,
Philips seem to chop down a whole tree for each one of these that they sell. Jokes aside,
it’s a real shame and I can’t help but wonder why they don’t put this kind of stuff
online to cut down on packaging, especially when you know that
all of your end users have to have access to a smartphone, but there you go.
Looking at the switch itself now, it comes in this piece of cardboard with
the mounting bracket in the back. It’s weird, on the mounting bracket there’s this little
piece of plastic that I thought was going to peel off, but actually isn’t attached at all,
it just falls out when you tip it over. On the rear are the usual mounting options, screws if
you want to mount it that way although you’ll have to supply them yourself, otherwise it’s
3M tape. The mounting plate does have magnets, so the remote clicks nicely and securely into place,
meaning that if you want to wall mount this, you’ve always got the option of using it as a
regular light switch, or popping the switch out and having it with you like a remote control.
The switch itself is made of plastic and honestly feels about the way you’d expect it to
for a device that only costs about £17, and I say that in a good way.
I wasn’t expecting Apple quality here, but I also wasn’t disappointed with what I got.
On the rear is a small compartment which can be opened using a coin , and this contains
both the battery and a tiny reset button, which frustratingly I did
have to use when I added the device to my setup, but more on that in just a moment.
On the front, you’ve got 3 buttons, although the middle is separated out into two.
The top button is a power button, the Hue button at the bottom is for cycling through scenes,
and the middle buttons allow you to increase or decrease brightness. The switch is also magnetic,
so it will stick to both the mounting plate that’s included, or any magnetic surface,
so perfect if you wish to put this on a fridge or as in my case, the metal drawers next to my desk.
So, all good so far, now onto setting up, and this is where I faced an issue.
Not a dealbreaker issue, I was able to resolve it all in about 10 minutes,
but it does frustrate me that in my experience,
setting up Hue lights and accessories is never as straightforward as the instructions suggest.
The instructions ask you to open your Hue app, head to Settings and Accessory Setup
and then choose Add Accessory. Click through these screens, and then at the same time
press and hold the Power button on the brand new switch until the LED up top flashes. Problem is,
mine never did that, it just comes on red for a second, and no matter
how many times I repeated the process from the beginning, it never worked for me. In the end,
I had to open the back up, use a toothpick to reset the unit, and then repeat the process,
which did eventually work. Like I say, not a dealbreaker, but annoying for a brand new unit.
With the device connected, you can then head into the settings to establish what
you want your switch to do, and this is where I was really pleased with what I saw. You can
choose the ‘mode’ for the switch, either Scene Cycle which is what I use, or Time based light.
You can then choose which room or zone you want to control using the remote.
I’m using it for my computer desk, which has 4 Hue lights attached to it,
two light bars and two lightbulbs, so it’s really handy now being able to control these
independently of the other lights in the room without having to reach for my phone.
Then you can get granular about what you’d like each of the buttons to do.
The power button for example, a single press will toggle the chosen lights on and off,
whereas holding the power button acts as a kill switch for all lights in the house, if you wish.
Then, for each press of the Hue button, you can choose what scene you’d like to toggle through.
So for example, I might want something a bit fancier than the regular Reading or
Concentrate scenes, and I can choose that here. Response time is immediate, which is
something I’ve noticed with Hue accessories, they respond way quicker than the app does.
And what I really like is that as someone who uses Apple Home a lot,
there are configuration options in there as well, so if I wanted to skip the Hue
app after adding it to the network, I could do all of my configuration in here instead,
and I’ve still got all of the options for the various different button presses.
And that really is it. I’m actually really pleased with it. It’s a simple device,
but it does what it does extremely well, which is all you want from something that costs you £17.
And with it being relatively inexpensive, I can see that some people will buy enough
of these to place all over their home, replacing traditional light switches,
or perhaps just leave them sitting around in rooms like a traditional remote control.
I hope you found this video useful. If you haven’t already seen it, you may also want to take a look
at my Hue Smart Button video, although I’m thinking I’m going to do a comparison video
of the two pretty soon. Thanks for watching, and if you appreciated this video please do consider
giving me a thumbs up, and subscribing to the channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video!