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Philips Hue Connected Bulb Starter pack (pictures)

A quick tour through Philips LED light bulb, zeroing in on the iOS app and its various functions.

Rich Brown
Rich was the editorial lead for CNET's Home and Wellness sections, based in Louisville, Kentucky. Before moving to Louisville in 2013, Rich ran CNET's desktop computer review section for 10 years in New York City. He has worked as a tech journalist since 1994, covering everything from 3D printing to Z-Wave smart locks.
Rich Brown
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Philips Hue Connected Bulb out of the box

All four pieces of the Philips Hue Connected Bulb Starter Kit.
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600 lumens

Each Hue bulb is rated to 600 lumens, the equivalent to the output of a 50 watt incandescent bulb.
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Philips Hue Bridge

This little hub links the Philips mobile app to your Hue bulbs via your home wireless network.
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Hue app home screen

This is the first screen you'll see on Philips' Hue app for iOS. Through these presets, or any you might create yourself, you can change color and program settings on the Hue bulbs almost instantly.
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Bulb control

Slide up the tab on the bottom of the home screen for a status check of every Hue-compatible light you have connected. The Hue hub can control up to 50 different light sources.
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Color scheme

Tilt the Hue app and you get this color selection tool, which you can use to assign colors to individual bulbs on the fly.
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Multi-Hue

The Hue bulbs output 2700K white light beautifully, but they can also replicate 16 million different colors in 3200K.
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More colors

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Recipes

Here's where you can make new presets, which Philips calls "recipes." The preset creation process isn't the easiest.
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Timer

"Switch scene" here means "turn the lights off."
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Alarm

The alarm function is similar to that of the timer.
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Geofencing

Geofencing is a new feature that came to the iOS version of the Hue app as of update 1.1. It hasn't made it to the Android version yet.
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IFTTT

You'll find an ever-growing list of recipes on IFTTT that will tie your lighting behavior to various online services and other automated devices.

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