Customer Ratings & Reviews

I don't usually write reviews, but I have to on this product. Philips Hue is truly amazing....I now have 9 of the A19 bulbs and 6 of the BR30 bulbs (15 bulbs and still counting)...I can't stop, BE WARNED!!! THEY ARE ADDICTING!!! I keep adding more and more to my collection. The setup was pretty easy for me, I never had any problem connecting all 15 bulbs into one bridge. This is great when hosting a party, you can setup different scenes, really cool way to enhance or change any mood. My friends loves them, especially when I flipped it to strobe light using "Hue Party" app (seperate app, highly recommended). Another app that I use a lot is "Hue Camera", changes the way you watch television. Hue Camera and Philips Hue lights creates an Ambilight-like effect when watching TV. I always have this on (I use my ipad since the camera needs to be running at all times), when I watch movies or any of my favorite shows, it makes watching tv more fun, watching the room changes color to the ambiance of the scene. You can also setup geo-fencing (I use the Philips Hue apps, but you can also use IFTT), which essentially allows you to have designated lights turn on or off or set a scene when you approach or leave your home. Every time I leave my home, I look forward to coming home. I love coming home, I love seeing my place lit up in my favorite scene I setup. You can also set alarms with sunrise scene, so when you wake up in the morning, it feels like sunrise (this is great especially right now, since I live in WI, when I wake up in the morning, it is still dark outside). I just bought the Amazon Echo, and let me tell you, this works great with Philips Hue Lights. I just tell "Alexa" which light(s) I want to turn On/Off. I don't have to use my phone :) The only downside with "Alexa" is, she can't change the color of light yet! But I'm sure someone is working very hard to change that :) There are so many more you can do with your Hue Lights with all the available apps, the possiblities are endless (some apps that I highly recommend: Hue Camera, Hue Party, Huemote, IFTT), I am sure you will enjoy these lights. With all the good things, bad things always follows, so here it is. Yes, they are expensive, but it is so worth it in my opinion. Yes, there are some issues with Hue lights. For example, some colors like green, brown don't display as brightly as blue, purple or red (but there's a reason for it, too long to explain it here, google it!). But, I'm okay with this because I don't use Green or Brown that often :) When you turn off the switch, it changes back to default color (plain white), it doesn't remember the color you set it to. So, you have to change the color again. Despite some of the downside, I still love my Hue Lights, I'm sure you will love them too!!!

I installed the 3 bulbs in the family room and adjust their color regularly based on what we're doing (e.g., watching TV, reading, etc). The bulbs, hub and iPhone/iPad app works flawlessly. I'm really happy that I finally picked it up because it's a great product compared to some of the others I've tried.

Let me first start by telling you that you are going to get addicted to these, that being said I love them! I first started off with just a few in my family room to set the mood for Movies and evening reading and relaxing. After trying these and finding that they performed exactly as they said I added more to the whole home, the bedroom wakes me up with a soft light in the morning the living room turns on when I want it to also. I did not stop there, I have added nine lights to the outside of my home ( they work fine even in the coldest of temps). When Halloween comes around I press a button and the home has a spooky Halloween look, for Christmas the same and we have programed the house to color to Valentines and St. Patricks day and the Fourth of July..... ok so I did start off telling you that they can be addicting! I use the Geosense to turn on how I want the home to look when I drive in, and also turn off when I drive away. The morning turns on my bedroom lights softly and gradually brightens the light until my alarm goes off, much better way to wake up. I do have a good router and have not had one bit of problem with them working. With the lights on the outside of the house being LED we can set the home to look warm when we are not celebrating and it has dropped our electric bill. Over a year with no problems and VERY reliable means I can give you a thumbs up.

The system is very easy to set up. The bridge is not wireless as the lights are and does require and open wired port on your router. There seem to be no limits to the number of colors you can set the lights to, pretty much the colors of any picture on your laptop, tablet etc. It is very handy to be able to turn on and off for example your bedroom lights without having to get up. The only drawback perhaps is the cost. Other than that, the product does work as advertised.

This review is for the Phillips Hue starter pack for standard bulb replacements. It comes with three standard bulbs that work best in lamps, not canned lighting. These aren't cheap and I've been looking online for about a year to purchase these but I don't think Phillips will allow them to go on sale. Amazon will show that they are on sale, but they are only 30 cents cheaper than regular price, so that is just a trick, blah. I usually buy online but since there is no price difference between online and brick-and-mortar I decided to go to Best Buy and pick it up so I could play with them that day as we were throwing a big party. The bridge installed instantly without issue. All three bulbs showed up on the app right away, but my Bloom that I bought with it required a power cycle for it to take commands. No biggie, since what is an install without a little troubleshooting. One of my lamps is on a dimmer but Hue bulbs only will work if the dimmer is all the way up (I knew this going in) and I may change out the switch later. The native Hue app from Phillips is free on Android (my phone) and iPhone. I don't know about Windows. It comes with a few basic "scenes" but the my.meethue.com has a ton that you can save to your profile and then they come up on the app. Most of my interactions are within the native app. You can set up timers and other fully automated features such as geofencing (haven't tried). I did purchase the third party Hue Disco (for Android) which works great. This strobes and flashes the lights to the beat of music using the smartphone or tablet's mic. My house was jumping with drunk people and it really made the party fun. Huey, another 3rd party app this time free, is fun for movie/TV watching. It uses the phone's camera to pic up the image from the TV and reproduce the colors through the hue lights. There is a delay, so it isn't perfect, but still works great. All in all, if you can afford several hundred bucks to make your house come alive, I would totally recommend this. There are cheaper options, but those don't have the features and ease of use as Hue. I expect that there soon will likely be more competition down the road which could drive prices down. Also, the GU10 (halogen replacement) form factor isn't available in the US as of yet. It might be because the rest of the world uses 220V and we are on 110V, but I hope that they hurry and make them available. A majority of my lights use this bulb and I would be willing to spend a lot more (even if not as bright) to add them to my house.

First off, I didn't really evaluate the energy savings as my reason for buying these. My reason for purchase was purely aesthetic. So for the purposes of this review, that will be my focus. I have had the lights for a couple of months now, so I feel like I have a good idea of their range of use. The Good stuff: - The lights are easy to install (just like a normal light bulb) - The bridge connection works as intended. Plug it into your router/modem and you are all set. - Awesome lighting effects, especially with some of the 3rd party apps - Definitely a lot more interesting than normal everyday lightbulbs - Lots of great color options (some exceptions below) - The lights do not get very warm, so you never really have to worry about burning your hand if you have to change one or move it to another fixture. - An app available from SyFy allows you to set your lights to dynamically change to match movies (see further detail in the "not so good" below) which is a cool option The "meh" - the app allows you to configure colors based on sampling them from a picture in your phone. I really don't see the "fun" in this, because it would be easier to just give me a color palette to choose from. Creative, but not quite as useful as a more simpler option. The other part of this is that it doesn't reproduce the exact color you see on your phone, so the fun of it is lost on the frustration of not quite nailing the color. The Not so good: - I wish it were more clear that the light bulbs do not reproduce every color well prior to purchase. I would likely pay a couple bucks more to get a full range color bulb. Since the focus was creating light bulbs that (rightfully so) act primarily as normal light bulbs, there were some LED choices that leave colors like fully saturated blues and greens out. Red, yellow, white, lime green, orange, purple, and magenta all look great. - The included app is great for turning off groups of lights, and selecting colors, but it lacks the simplicity of use for turning on individual lights. This is really only a small complaint, given that it is only marginally more difficult than getting up and turning on a switch. Would be nice to see individual light controls easily accessible as an option in the app rather than having to set up different scenes, or paying for a 3rd party option. - SyFy app continued: The app is for your phone, or computer. Seems like it would be a good idea to make the app for smart TVs or video game systems so that you can actually use it on your TV rather than a computer / tablet / phone. Would also be great if they had a wider partnership with movie studios. The SyFy app only offers a couple of movie choices. This could be really cool if expanded. My final word: Light bulbs are generally not remarkable. Being able to even write a review about light bulbs is pretty fantastic (because who would review regular light bulbs except if/when they had a problem?). If you read my "not so good" section and aren't put off, then I highly recommend these to anyone. I will be buying them for every light in my home.

We purchased the A19 starter kit along with three additional A19 bulbs. These A19 LED bulbs are our first entry into connecting and smartifying our home. Setup takes less than 5 minutes and is broken down into three easy steps (install lights, turn on lights, connect and link bridge). The default Philips hue app is a little confusing at first but I find it relatively intuitive. After tinkering with it for ten minutes, I was able to control all six of our Phillips hue bulbs individually and in groups. Contrary to popular belief, the bridge does NOT group and control bulbs into threes at a time; you can edit and change that in the scene editor. Yes, it is a pricey "want" item, but if you are in the process of fixing up your home (or connecting it like we are), have some extra cash lying around from your tax return or bonus and want to kick your living space up a notch, the starter kit and bulbs are the ticket to instant satisfaction with no buyer remorse. I'll be purchasing additional BR30 LED bulbs for our track light fixture and a Boom accent light to highlight our shelves and television.

I was excited to get these installed in my arcade area where I was hoping to produce some dynamic lighting -- instead I got some decent lighting. Installation was fairly easy for a tech guy like myself. The range on the hub is a little worrying as it doesn't seem to like going through floors. While I was able to connect to all my lights, there are times I'm unable to remotely control my lights due to lost signal. As you might expect, it's comparable to a wi-fi signal. My biggest surprise and disappointment are these lights simply cannot produce a decent green. There is NO forest green or even just green available. You go from a blueish green to green yellow. The default Hue app is just good enough to do the job, but not much more. Thankfully, Philips hasn't locked their lights down and some 3rd party software really comes through to pick up the slack for a very reasonable price (typically less than $5).

Great lighting for any occasion. From cool to warm whites to any color. I use everything from normal lighting to sports team colored themes. I have some non Philips bulbs that are ZygBee(GE Link), they are $15, that I'm using in some lamps for regular dimmable lights. I'd love to get most of our home set up with these bulbs, accent lights and some of the strips. Side note for guitar players out there.... Regular dimmer switches wreak havoc and create a lot of noise thru amps. The Philips Hue system does not cause any issues! Get some of these in your music room or studio for ambient mood lighting!

These are just plain fun and you can customize them to make your room look different at various times of the day. I currently just have 9 bulbs in my living room. I have programmed 5 timers. There's the sunrise in the morning, skylights at noon, "perfect light at 6, TV mood lighting at 9, and night lights at midnight. These are all set to transition over 30 minutes to an hour and are cool to watch as they do.

So here's the deal... I love that they do warm or cool white light and can also change color to set a mood. The using a picture to program the color is a bit hokey but no big deal. they say a bazillion color options but in reality you will use purple blue or red... Yellow green and orange are not as impactful imho. As a testimonial to how much we like the system we have already purchased 2 desk lamps and a light strip to go behind the TV. We are planning to buy another 3 or 4 more bulbs!

Philips Hue works exactly as advertised, and for around $60 a light bulb it certainly should. I wanted to be able control my lights remotely from my smartphone for home security reasons. There are some cheaper alternatives that would have allowed this, but I was eventually won over by the ability to change and play with various colors schemes. The only real complaint I have is with the Android apps (I can't speak for iOS). So far the apps only seem to scratch the surface of what the full potential of the light bulbs seems to be, and the Philips supplied app is probably the worst of the bunch. Hopefully that improves in the future, but for now it does do what I originally wanted it for.

Sweet colors and a nice long power cord, what more could you want? Oh, it's programmable and you can turn it on or off when you're not home? Sure, I'll take that too! My only complaint is that it's not cheaper. I want Hue in every room in the house!

This set is a great beginning in my home automation scheme. I had them turn on to a warm light in the morning when I get up, shut off when I go to work, then turned on to Christmas colors when I came home. So many possibilities for color schemes and moods! Integration with other apps and products such as Nest and IFTTT is awesome! Only downfall is that the base app is somewhat limite . Could be more powerfu .

For some they might think it is a pricey investment for colorful accent lighting. The way I have configured the lights I have has actually added pretty cool scenes to the atmosphere. I have them turning on certain times and with certain color patterns. Since I can adjust the brightness too I ended up using these more than my regular lights. The cool think is that it can work with other smart home setups so you can get creative when lights flash (i.e. receive text message this light blinks to let me know) This light combination is set up in the living rooms and the bedroom which gives it the most functionality since it can get pretty bright. I have it setup to turn on low in the mornings as a wake up and a even get into a calming mood in the evening. Very pleased.

The bulbs are bright, the light produced is very pleasant and well diffused, and the different lighting channels blend perfectly through the glass diffusion bulb. These are hands down the best quality smart lights I have tried yet. As for the software, the android app I used is a little basic but quite passable. And best of all is that it has links to tons of alternative open source apps that were developed to run the system, including effect generators, alternative controllers, or soundboards. In terms of energy efficiency, the bulbs are also stellar. Obviously you are going to be using a bit more power to run the transceiver than a typical dumb bulb, but with the built in dimmer, geofencing options, and timers the system has actually ended up consuming less power than the previous LED's of comparable brightness I'd had installed. Since getting the starter kit, I've already bought 2 more bulbs to expand my system, and eventually I'd like to rewire the entire house with them.

Very fun to use. Easy to setup. Works on local WiFi or outside the home. Native App could use more features. Even works with my Logitech Ultimate Touch Remote. Wife initially balked at it, but agrees it's a cool device.

I have to admit i was a little skeptical at first. I installed it really easy. Not only can I change the colors on these bulbs, I can control them wirelessly and it senses when I'm in the house or out. Great Job!

Works exactly as advertised. We like the range of colors and the amount of control of each individual bulb. The remote switch is a really good addition to the kit.

I really enjoyed the brightness and colorful lights how it could put on in any room. Unfortunately I needed 12 more bulbs to fill my theater room and at $69 a bulb I just couldn't justify it.... But it is a cold gadget