Lighting plays such a significant factor in all of our lives that it shouldn't be
a surprise that one of the first smart home appliance sections was lighting. Now
the company that has been behind the most popular brand of smart lights has
been Philips, with their Philips Hue smart lights. Now I originally got my
Philips Hue lights because I wanted to solve the problem of crawling into bed,
getting ready to go to sleep, and then realizing oh crap,
I left the light bulb on I have to get out of bed go turn that off and then get
back in bed. Now well this isn't like a giant problem to solve, it is still very
annoying when you are curled up in bed ready to go to sleep and then you
realize oh I have to get up again because I forgot to do something.
And the Philips Hue bulbs solve that for me being able to control that from my
smart phone I could just turn them off while I'm in bed and boom! I can go right
to sleep it was just a really great experience as soon as I set them up and
yeah, I'm never going back. Now another reason I decided to go with the Philips
Hue lights was i really liked the idea of being able to wake up to the colors
of a sunrise, and go to bed to the colors of a sunset and with the multicolored
bulbs that came in my starter pack with the Philips Hue bridge as well these,
bulbs allowed me to do that. And it turns out that yes it is much more natural
waking up to the colors of a sunrise over a 45 minute fade, just like our
ancestors did for millennia, then waking up to an annoying sound of an alarm
clock that you just absolutely hate and want to destroy. The colors of the sunset
are typically more red and orange and it really offsets the backlight color of my
phone which you know typically is blue for most people's smartphones. Now a lot
of phones have features just like Apple's a night shift that came out in iOS 9.3
that helps to but just having your surrounding environment with all those reds
and those orange colors, really helps kind of settle you in and just get ready
for bed. Also, I love having my lights on a timer at night, they go out at the same
time every single night so it helps me make sure that I get to bed at a
reasonable hour. So I've been using the Philips Hue app
now for quite a while and you know it's fine,
its not the greatest app in the world, the original app Philips Hue had was great
then they came out with this new version of the app that wasn't as good it was
missing some features from the old app and over time and has finally come up to
parity with the old app. And it does have some nice features in there like the
feature I use the most are the scenes feature where you can set different
scenes with different lights at different brightness levels or colors
you can even use these lights to be romantic and mix things up a little.
They're really great for that as well and it's great to surprise the loved one
going into a bedroom that is hot pink. Now the app also has a feature that uses
geofencing, so it knows as you come closer to your residence it will go
ahead and turn your lights off for you. However, I found this feature to be a
huge drain on my iPhone's battery, so I just decided to disable it. Now out of
all of the nifty features that the Philips Hue lighting system has my
favorite, and absolute most useful feature of all, has been the support for
smart assistants. It just takes the convenience of using these lights to a
whole nother level and just makes Philips you lights in general a absolute joy to
use. Philips Hue lights work with all of the major players as far as smart
assistant platforms are concerned and if you have an iPhone currently, you can use
Siri to control your lights and determine if Siri is adequate enough for
your situation or if it's going to become necessary for you to get a smart
speaker device like a Google Home or Amazon Alexa device. It is so much more
convenient and so much more natural to use your voice to control your lights
then have to dig into your pocket and flip out your phone go through a couple menus
and then turn on or turn off your lights. As far as reliability is concerned with
the Philips Hue lights i've only ever had one defective bulb that just didn't
work but i shipped it back to the company and they gave me a new one it
was still under warranty that was fine. The only other issue I've had with my
Phillips Hue lights is one of my colored bulbs no longer shows a dark blue color,
it just shows a purple color when trying to turn it to dark blue. I would say that
the reliability of the earlier Philips Hue colored bulbs which are all the
ones I have I don't have the later generation ones, the reliability on those
can be just kinda shoddy, but from what I've heard of the later generations of
bulbs if you buy those, you're gonna be fine.
So if you thought about getting in on the whole smart home thing, but are
really unsure about where do I start... getting in on the Philips Hue smart
lighting system would be a really great first buy for anyone's smart home. Now if
you looked up Philips' website and are unsure about which bulb to get or where
the heck to even start with Philips Hue, what I'd recommend doing is getting one
of the starter packs that Philips sells. They're just a really great way to get
started in the Philips Hue ecosystem, especially if you don't really know what
you want. If you want bulbs that change different colors they have a starter kit
for that, or if you just want plain white bulbs that you just want to control with
your voice or with your smart phone, they have a starter kit for that as well. Now
another Philips product I would also recommend getting with your purchase of
your Philips Hue lights would be a switch called the hue tap. Now what the
hue tap is, is it's a switch that works with your philips hue light bulbs, it has
four buttons on it that you can assign to turn on or turn off different lights,
and the best part is it uses no batteries. It actually uses kinetic
energy when you press a button on the switch that sends a signal to your
Philips Hue bridge to turn off or turn on your lights.
Overall I've been very happy with my Philips Hue smart lights.
They make turning off all my lights and turning them on again just way more easy
and I love being able to control them with my voice. I also really can't
imagine not waking up to the colors of a sunrise every morning because I've been
doing it for so long now and I love the fact that I can crawl into bed and turn
off a light without having to check my phone and just use my voice. It's just
been a really great experience. I think if you decide to go for the Phillips Hue
smart lighting system you won't be disappointed.
You'll probably, genuinely fall in love with these lights,
I know that's certainly been the case for me. For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder