Customer Ratings & Reviews

Pairs well with xfinity. Very reliable connection and a nice easy automation addition

I feel safer having these lights that can be activated while away from home.

Got this to automate lights while out of town. Works great with HomeKit

I am very pleased with my purchase and have greatly enjoyed these lights in my home.

Even though not color lights, the change in hue range is great

These bulbs give off a lot of light. If my kids like them...5 stars!

The ease of using it is unbelievable. Will buy more

This works perfectly with WiFi able to control instantly with my Apple phone.

Incredibly convenient. Helps save energy by turning off unused lights.

Very good product. Our entire family really like these bulbs.

Such a great product and recommend to my family and friends

Great lighting and the kids absolutely enjoy it change different colors.

Love all the features and extremely useful when you don’t have any hands

Never knew how, not only convenient, but fun lights can be.

My kids like the feautures, use as night light, them they turn off as set

I really like this product and the many options you can do. I would have given it a 5 star but not the easiest app to operate.

The lights are great and I love the different settings. Easy to set up.

what can I say, it does what it was made for... light my house.

The Phillips Hue White Ambiance starter kit includes all you need to get started with smart lighting in your home. You get a hub (zig bee compatible), 4 A19 lightbulbs (standard socket), and some basic instructions. Everything is neatly packaged. Setup in theory is simple. The truth of setup is a bit more complicated. The Hub setup involves downloading an application. Once installed you can pair your hub to your phone, and then it should work. I had some initial trouble pairing, and I couldn’t put a finger on the problem. After a few minutes, however, whatever was the problem worked out and I was connected. The bulbs come pre-paired out of the box, so that’s one less step than many other smart products starter kits do. Once the bulbs are plugged in and your light switched on, they will connect. One of the first things you’ll see is a firmware update. Once the bulbs are up to date (they’ll turn off first) you can start creating rooms. Rooms let you group one or more bulbs together. Originally I had been used to naming and setting up devices manually with other products, so there was a bit of a learning curve. You can of course rename the lights, but rooms do a good job and set you up for expansion. They’re also visible to any integration. Speaking of integration, this is where Phillips has a great story. They support not only Alexa, but Google Home and Apple Home Kit. Home kit was an odd experience setting up, as it did a funky dance both on my device and pairing using a code. This was my first experience with Home Kit, so it felt quite a bit more kludgy than Alexa Skills or Google’s device setup. The app itself keeps Home Kit in sync, which seems odd to me, but it’s probably simply the software architecture. Alexa and Google both seamlessly pair using skills after signing into the account you create during setup. You can address rooms, or bulbs directly. In my testing with Alexa, I was surprised the amount of functionality available, including specifying what color temperature setting (cool white, reading, warm etc). Speaking of color temperature - the Hue bulbs in this pack are not fully RGB colors, but rather provide a range of color temperatures from a very warm, near red temperature to a cool white approaching blue light. The range is quite helpful, as it can provide various lighting for various needs and time of days. Being able to switch between the ‘concentration’ recipe and ‘relaxing’ setting can actually make an appreciable difference in your mood. It also has been shown to help you sleep better. Speaking of sleeping - there is a pre-made routine in the app to help you wake up. You can set the lights to gradually fade on for a period of 30 minutes helping you gently wake up. While this seems to work pretty well, I believe I started talking in my sleep to Alexa. I’ve simulated this fade on with other products, but the Hue bulbs do it very well, and have a proper morning color temperature, which is a nice touch. Being able to adjust these setting via voice assistant is pretty amazing as well. Coming back around to the app, it’s actually quite nice. If you want explicit controls, or setup custom scenes, it’s quite easy to work with. You can start with a recipe (pre defined temperature) or customize your settings to your heart's desire. You can then program these scenes to turn on or off at specific times. The ‘routines’ section can take some of the manual work out of the process, guiding you through more common activities, such as waking up, leaving, coming home, etc. Even details like adjusting the brightness are smooth and fun in the app. Truthfully the starter kit brings some great bulbs to the table with the inclusion of a zig bee hub that controls the lights quite well. Unfortunately I didn’t have any other zigbee devices to try out, but the hub definitely supports adding more devices. All in all this is a pretty amazing starter kit.

Great to be able to use Alexa to turn on the lights