Philips - Hue White A19 LED Starter Kit - White

Bought this for Alexa integration. That part works flawlessly. I can also dim the lights with the phone app. That also works quite well. But here are where the good stops. So this Philips Hue bulbs (4) with bridge is a great starter way to get into home automation. Set up was fairly easy, though you would need to be close to your internet modem or wifi router/ network router to plug in the internet cable. This is where the WEMO switches have the upper hand, where they already have the wifi connection built in and all you have to do is connect them wirelessly to your wifi router. Yes, I understand that the bridge is there for expansion, as you can add quite a few more lights to the same bridge, so the bridge in itself is a separate, private wireless router. But it could be hard to install for some application as you have to be close to your home router and an AC outlet. Putting that aside, the connection stays pretty good. I have the lights in the basement, and the hue bridge in the basement and Alexa upstairs. Alexa more times than not, will detect and control the lights before I go down. When I am in the basement, my only control method is my app, which is also pretty responsive. It may sometimes take a couple of tries to get the right dim or for the light to show up in the app but most of the times it gets it right. The nice thing about is that you can set up scenes, for example if you are having a guest night you can have all of them set bright, and when it is movie time you press a button and they dim to your preset liking. I have mine set up to 1% dim on two of them and off on the other two to create a dark but not totally dark movie experience. All in all, it is pretty convenient and am thinking to add some more bulbs to lamps in the bedroom and livingroom. That is where the good things end. Here comes the 'bad things'. There is no way (haven't found it yet) to remote control the lights away from home. As your lights are on their own hue bridge / router, there is no way to tap into your home wifi from anywhere in the world and turn the lights on/ off or even see if they are turned on or off. This is where the WEMO switched do a much better job. there is a setting that detects when you are away from the lights via the cell phone app, to turn the lights off when you leave home and on when you return, but that part is pretty useless. Also, if you ever lose power or have a power surge, the lights turn on. So if you are away on vacation, your lights are on for the entire day. You can also set a preset program to turn the lights off at a certain time (mine are set to turn off at 1AM every day). But again, it would be nice to see if your lights are on or off. If they incorporate that, then it would be a much better experience. Also, unlike the WEMO which are actually wall switches, you have to leave your lights in the on position all the time. If you ever flick the switch by accident, your lights won't work. So it is best to use them for nightstand lamps in bedrooms and maybe living rooms. I wouldn't use them at point of entries where you need instant light, i.e. when entering your home. There, again, is where WEMO switches win, as you can operate them as normal on/off switches as well. OVERALL: These are pretty nice to set the mood in your room as you can dim them. The dimming feature is what sold me on them, as I needed some dimming lights in my basement. Other than that, it depends how you want to control your lights. Do you want convenience of turning lights on./off from your couch and don't want to get a screwdriver? Then this is for you. Are you a bit more handy and have no problem turning off the power to the house and install wifi switches, for a bit more control on your lights (minus the dimming feature)? Then get the WEMO switches or WEMO plugs. You do get a bit more with this package (4 bulbs and a bridge for about $100), but you get more control with WEMO, although $100 will get you about 2 switches (they are almost $50 each). .

I have tried so many things and returned a few companies products i this learning curve. The HUE lights are highly addictive. At first their point seemed too high for my hobby project that my wife would not accept right off the bat. They’ve lowered the prices and a still pumping out great new products. They are very reliable and very customizable. I love them. I love them I love them. See below for another review I placed about the Google Assistant see just how well the lighting has melded into my wife’s Psyche!!!!! =============••= Yes, “them”. At first I bought one and I bought an Echo also. I kept my Google Home Assistant Speaker and returned the Exho. I have bought 2 of the original style and two of the minis for my home. Couple with my smart switches, outlets and bulbs and with both chromecast to 1 tv and the other to anextra monitor and then 2 of the audiocast to two diffferent high output audio speakers in larger rooms and without an Assistant in those particular my house is coming alive. It’s funny, at first my wife kind of put off and frustrated with me doing this. Now she’s fully onboard, so much that other morning after just awakening she hurting the living to fold some cloths she left on the couch the night beforehand. I was still I bed and I heard her say “Turn Living Room” af few moment later I head her say it again. And then I heard her say “Turn everything on” and I could tell by her voice she was frustrated and I could tell by looking the cracked door that no lights were so. So. I said, the ‘mini’ speaker in my bedroom, “Ok Google, Turn Everything On” and voila the living room, dining room, bed room, kitchen, breakfast, many lamps and the Christmas tree all lit up to the preintendes brightness values. I get up an go toward her and say “Whats Up?” I then say, you gotta say Hey Google or Ok Google first. She said well they came on and I told her I heard and and did it for her from the room. She was irritated that her voice sauce was not tuning on the Lights. I have slowly building my system for about 4 months now. During the period she has become so used to the Speakers and talking to command them that she even thought to just go and Flick a switch or button for any light. She’s used to bossing these rooms around I guess. It was truly very cute and funny. BUT the best part is the feedback. ALL the MUSIC from google play. We have a very extensive Apple iTunes Music Library I have compiled from about 4000 CD and then the stuff we purchase through Intunes. I was actually waiting for the new Apple speaker to show up and that why I don’t have one of the larger model Googles. Apple has not delivered I’m just stick to my Google. Any back to the music. Our purchased library is huge. GOOGLE PLAY is exponentially larger and it rocks. I can come home and say Hey Google play some cool Jazz from the 50 and she will begin to fill the room with all kinds of music and artist I would never even think of. I can ask her to Play Contemporay Christian and she’ll plank all out favorites and a bunch of new songs my local radio stations have not let me hear yet. Wi H google play mynacccount in Yourube is upgraded to Red status. That means no stupid you tube ads and I think higher quality definition. She’ll play YouTube to the assistant and Cast devices in audio and replay the contest on my monitors (better that that echo display) and she’ll play my Netflix, news cast and a ton of other stuff on to my chrome cast. In the morning she tell me about the weather, my travel time and my agenda and reads to me the top headlines. We use the one in the kitchen the most. It is usable from Kitchen Living Breakfast ans Dining room areas with how my house it laid out and where I placed it. A great resource she pull up recipes, set times, and does so much. And now, she able to make phone calls too. The call come from my number so my contact know to answer and still I can use her to call MY phone on those occasions it has misplaced itself. My wife, it know her voice from mine and she can do all the above for her preferences. What I really really really want and am waiting in creating calendar events that tie into my Gmail ( and Apple and Outlook) Account’s and the ability to send voice to text messages from her. And real large on my wants to read and create emails. She say something like, “i’m Sorry I can’t help with that yet”. Come on google. Give it to me. My family came for thanksgiving. They fell in love. On Black Friday I bought a bunch of products to get them for Christmas. They’ll be hooked.

This starter kit gives you everything you need to change 4 lights in your home from lights that require physical flicks of the switch to ones that will be turned on and off with your smart phone. Setting up the physical devices is REALLY easy - plug 'em in and turn 'em on. The Hub (which comes with the kit and is required to operate the lights) can ONLY be connected to your home network (and MUST be connected to your home network) with a physical ethernet cable (not your wifi). The Hub then communicates with your light bulbs through your wifi router to the light bulbs. The light bulbs that come with THIS kit are only white - not capable of changing colors but they can be dimmed through the app from barely on to bright white. So a couple of things that you should know/consider before you go down this route: 1) Again, the Hub MUST be connected to your home network through by an ether net connection. 2) Your lightbulbs must be in a place that receives a wifi signal from your network. 3) You've got to shop around and sort through a handful or two of smart phone apps to figure out which one(s) you want to use .... it's a little painful doing that - I've only used free ones and they tend to be a little clunky and not necessarily straight forward but you'll figure it out. 5) The smartphone apps generally let you "program" your lights to turn an and off at certain times - they're all a little different so if that's an important feature for you check the individual app capabilities. 4) Perhaps the MOST important consideration and something I haven't seen discussed anywhere else. You can no longer use the switch to operate the lights ... you've got to leave the lights turned on and ONLY USE THE APP to turn the lights on and off. So if your spouse or kids or guests don't have the app and/or aren't connected to your network you will be turning the lights on and off. Also, imagine that your TV room has 8 recessed lights in the ceiling all operated by a single on/off switch and you want to be able to turn off the two that are right above the TV providing glare. The good news is that you can do this. The bad news is that the only way to do this is to replace all 8 light bulbs with these $50/each wifi bulbs and program (easy) a scenario that turns the front two off and gives you dim control of the remaining 6 or something light that ... again, the switch must be left on so turn the lights off you'll need to use your smart phone ... no more walking into the room and hitting the light switch to turn them on.

I’ve only had the lights for a few days but wanted to share initial impressions especially for set up while it was still fresh in my head. I purchased a starter kit with 4 standard white bulbs, an additional 4 bulbs and 4 flood lights for outside. Initial set up was easy with HUE. I started with 4 inside lights. Apple HomeKit set up with my iPhone was a not intuitive but I got it done. The four interior lamps worked perfectly and I could control the with Siri. I downloaded the HUE app to see what it could do. It said there was a firmware update so I did it. Everything stopped working. Apple HomeKit wouldn’t recognize any of the bulbs. I had to reset the HUE hub to factory and delete everything from my iPhone and start from scratch. But HomeKit still didn’t work. What finally resolved it was downloading the CORRECT HUE app. I apparently was using a 3rd party app not the Phillips HUE app. Once I did that I was able to set the bulbs up quickly thru the HUE app. It was much more intuitive and quicker than using HomeKit. And it synced itself to HomeKit so I could use Siri. I would recommend starting with the HUE app and then adding it to HomeKit. The app is also more reliable then HomeKit. I installed 4 more bulbs in outside lanterns around the garage doors. HomeKit kept saying connection to the bulbs was lost. I finally fired up the HUE app to see if I could reset something but the bulbs worked perfectly from HUE. Still adamant about using my iPhone and Siri, I did some research to see if I needed a WiFi extender to help bring the exterior bulbs in range. Apparently the Phillips HUE devices do not actually use the WiFi. They use a technology called ZigBee. They act as repeaters themselves via “ZigBee” built into the devices. Learning this, I then installed the outside floodlights which were between the HUE hub and the garage lights. The connection to the garage lights improved dramatically. But HomeKit was still throwing an occasional error while the HUE app was working flawlessly. I purchased HUE wanting to strictly use my iPhone but the more I used Homekit and the HUE app, the HUE app proved to be more reliable and easier to use. If you're an Apple user, don’t be hardheaded like I was initially about not wanting to use the HUE app. It works great. Fortunately it’s the interior lights that are consistently working with Siri which are the one I use voice control with. The outside lights are on a schedule via the HUE app and turn off and on their own.

This is a decent product. Well reviewed and the starter kit gets you underway to "smarten up" your home. Having tried this starter kit for a few months, I am yet to see the practicality behind the huge marketing hoopla - sorry I just don't see it for the starter kit. The Hub setup is pretty straight-forward, but beyond switching them on/off (the starter kit does NOT have colored bulbs) there is little else to do. The brightness (aka lumens) is pretty low for an average sized room - unless you like it that way - you have to use at least 2. This is best suited for people who live in lofts, studios or small sized apartments. The only advantage I see is in the Hue app is that I can plug these bulbs in my driveway and have them switch on after sunset (using location geo-fencing) when I get back home. However, Philips forgot that I need to switch them off too, so I have to remember to get back inside and pull out my phone to switch them off - doesn't make sense! Most other app driven capabilities like (wake up routine - when lights go from 0% to 100% brightness gradually) and go to sleep routine (the opposite of wake up) are NOT supported on these bulbs! The app however allows you to dim the the bulbs to use as night-lamps in kid's rooms. To make things even more "interesting", during setup you have no way of identifying individual bulbs (they show up as 1,2,3,4, etc.) and post setup once the bulbs are recognized and registered on the Hub, God forbid if you want to move the bulb to another room/location - you spend an atrocious amount of time trying to figure out which one you moved (was it 1 or 3, no wait it was 4!). Overall the product is a decent/robust product. I have used these bulbs outdoors in my driveway and they work fine across all seasons. This review is meant to know the full length and breadth of the product. Made me certain that Hue Bulbs are not for me at their current price point. I have had better results using LED bulbs in conjunction with smart plugs/switches etc. like Wemo... and if you are into IoT, alternate options lend themselves much better to setting up routines using IFTTT, Flow, etc.

I bought a Philips hue starter kit on Thursday installed the lights, hooked up the bridge, and followed the instructions on the app to set it all up. By this point all is going well. I could control the lights from the app and from Siri on my iPhone. Ok so now it’s time to try to set up the hue bridge with the “out of home” feature. After many attempts it kept saying that now Philips hue bridge was not found on the network. After double checking and making sure that the bridge was connected to the router right, going into the router settings and making sure everything was set right, trying to contact Philips support several times with no luck, and then checking online forums for similar problems and solutions *which many people had the same issue*. I came to the conclusion that the bridge must be defective, today I took the starter kit back to Best Buy and exchanged it for a new kit. When I got home I immediately hooked everything up again, went into the app and set everything up, but yet again I couldn’t connect it to the out of home feature. So I tried again to get in touch with Philips hue support. Finally I got through to someone, they asked me what kind of internet connection I have, I told them I have AT&T. They came back on the line and told me that their technical department said the bridge will not work with ANY SATELLITE OR CELLULAR INTERNET!!! No where on the box does it say that is an issue, but I now have a $100 useless system. I do not recommend this product to anybody that doesn’t wish to deal with days of headaches trying to make it work, and just to get told that it doesn’t support your internet provider or your equipment. It’s useless and a hassle all well just taking your money.

I purchased this for a relative around Black Friday because at the time it cost just about as much as the two bulb starter kit I purchased almost a year ago. Even just the dimming bulbs in a ceiling fan make a world of difference and being able to adjust everything from your phone while you lazily lounge about is just the way to go. Add in the color and white ambiance bulbs and you have a million different options to really change the look of your place. Our boring white everything, cookie cutter apartment really comes alive with all the different configurations and colors and all the highlights and lowlights of different complementary colors interacting is just cool. The fact that its the most widely supported software wise means it will play nice with almost any other hardware or software you have and gives you the opportunity to do other cool things. For example, I have my Hue lights synced with my Logitech Harmony universal remote hub so when I watch a movie, the hub turns on my TV, receiver, and bluray player, swtiches to all the right inputs, and then dims all of the Hue lights in the livingroom. Then when I turn off the TV, the lights come back up. People may say there are practical uses such as light scheduling for security or whatever but they're just trying to justify their purchase which if it helps you sleep at night you can say the same but Hue is just a cool gimmick. There's no need to make excuses for it. If you've seen the pictures and videos of room setups with the Hue lights and all of the creative places to put them and you think its pretty awesome, then you'll enjoy them. And this is a great way to get started since you'll need the hub UNLESS you opt for, or already own the latest and greatest Amazon Echo which has the hub functionality built in but I can only really recommend that if you already own it as its not cost effective. But just a warning, when you make the plunge you'll be addicted and then all of your lights won't be good enough and you'll have to replace them all.

Very practical applications in my home. I bought the starter kit on Black Friday, and then bought light packs for more rooms on Cyber Monday. I have routines to help wake up the kids and myself at different times each weekday with a 15 minute fade-in. I still use my alarm in case I'm just too tied to get up, but the light fade-in works for me so much better. I have light routines for dusk and for dawn that control which lights turn on and at what brightness. My wife synced her Apple ID to the hub so she can control the lights by name with Siri. She uses her voice every night to turn off the Master lights even though all our smart lights are scheduled to turn off automatically at midnight anyway. When you setup the lights, its actually rather fun naming each light so you can uniquely control each one. My son's light name is Boy. My daughter's is Girl. Others include desk, sink, back door, garage door, his, hers, couch, mantle, landing, even monkey (for the light with a monkey shade). Lights can be grouped into rooms. We have Retreat, Office, Kitchen, Living Room, Master, Blue room, Pink room, etc. We now have an Echo Dot synced to the hub. I love using Alexa to control whole rooms or individual lights. I even created an Alexa voice control where lights in the living room are set to dim when my wife and I are ready to watch TV with our wine in hand. For my birthday in May, I'm going to ask for some Hue in-wall light switch controls to control selected ceiling lights and chandeliers. Thank you Best Buy for offering such an attractive holiday promo that got me to try this stuff out. Ordering online was easy and I was so glad I could pick up my purchase at my Store.