Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Justin Tech and I'm super excited today because I'm showing off the Phillips U Christmas lights that are called fta. You really, you really can't say it unless you say it like that. Anyway, I love Phillips U Lighting. I have them all around my apartment, so adding this to a Christmas tree along with all by Phillips HU lights is gonna be super special. So Q Tree, oh, we have a tree right here. Um, we've got a nice six footer. Probably need some water, so [00:00:30] we'll, we'll [inaudible] put some water down below as well, but uh, let's start putting these on. Bobby, can you help me with this? All right, he get, okay, cool. Let's do it. All right, cool. I think that's the take we do.
Speaker 1: The fav string lights came out just last month adding to Phillips use already large catalog of smart home lighting. They come in one length, 65 feet with 250 L E D lights that connect [00:01:00] together using a similar cable to use outdoor fixtures. But to be clear, these lights are not waterproof, which is a bit of a bummer. This one set was more than long enough to fit my six foot tree. I bet that you can even put this on a tree that's another foot or two taller. When you're hanging these, you have to start from the bottom and go to the top and make sure that when you reach the top you don't have too much left over because if you do and you try to put them around the tree lower, it will mess with the gradient feature, which I'm gonna show you in a bit. [00:01:30] It is time for the moment of truth. It is time to plug these in. Osa? Yes. Oh my god, that's so fun and colorful. Oh my god, I love it so much. This is so exciting. I can't wait to test it out. We're gonna put ornaments over this and I need a star, but I don't have a star, but what I do have is a wine bottle, so let's use that.
Speaker 1: Ta-da. It looks really good. I actually love the lights [00:02:00] in the bottle like that. The hue lights connect to the HU app either over Bluetooth or to the Hue Bridge. I personally use the Hue Bridge because I'm able to add all of my lights to that, customize it and get a lot of other features and I can control my hue lights outside of the home. Once the lights are connected, you can place them in any rumor zone and start controlling them. My number one tip would be to give the tree its own room. At first, I set it up to be in the living room, which makes sense, it's in the living room, but I noticed that when I [00:02:30] wanted to control the living room and turn off all the lights, it also turned off the tree, which usually I want all the living room lights to turn off but keep the tree on.
Speaker 1: So what I did was I gave the tree its own room. That way if I want to turn off the living room lights, I can still do that, do whatever I want with those and it won't affect the tree and vice versa. Now let's get into all the customization. There are some new features specifically designed for these string lights. There are three style types for these string lights. There's linear, which creates a gradient using three colors from the top [00:03:00] to the bottom. There's mirrored, which also uses three colors, but creates a gradient from the top and bottom that meet in the center. And then there's scattered, which lets you choose up to five colors and have them scatter all around the tree. You could also double up on colors by dragging them over on top of each other. There are three pre-programmed effects for these string lights, which really isn't that much, especially when you look at competitors like Twinkle that have a plethora of effects that are in some ways pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: [00:03:30] But it's cool to have that option. The first two effects are candle and fireplace. These two were already on the app and can be used with other fixtures. A new one that was added for these string lights is called sparkle. Where the lights, you guess did they sparkle. Now I really love the look of all three of these effects on the tree, but unfortunately you can't change the speed at which they go or the color, which I feel like could be a pretty easy thing to ingrain in the app and it's just not there and it [00:04:00] feels a bit limited overall, I really think that Hue needs to be bringing more effects to their app for these string lights and their gradient fixtures, which by the way, I am coming out with another Best of Hue video. Stay tuned for that. I'll be showing off a bunch of the gradient fixtures and it's gonna be awesome. Aside from those three pre-programmed effects, there are also dynamic scenes and now these are scenes that can play off of any scene that you've created that cycle through different colors. So theoretically you do have limitless scenes with [00:04:30] these dynamic effects.
Speaker 1: And just like all Phillips HU fixtures, these string lights are smart. They work with all the main voice assistants, Google, Amazon, and Siri. So you can do something like this. Set the tree to green,
Speaker 1: Pretty basic but still very cool. Even cooler though, I found a way to activate the dynamic scenes from Phillips U that you create using your voice. If you [00:05:00] have an iPhone, you can create a Siri shortcut to activate a dynamic scene by saying something like this. Start festive and it's going to start my red and green dynamic scene. There you go. Aside from those effects is the ability to sync them with music or stuff on your TV using entertainment areas. To sync music, you need to use Spotify. Spotify is ingrained right in the HU app. On the sync tab you can tap to open Spotify and play a song. Once [00:05:30] the music is playing and you sync the lights, you can adjust the style to a pulse or classic changes the intensity, the brightness and the color scheme. Unfortunately, you can't go in and create your own color schemes.
Speaker 1: There are only a few to choose from and I hope that Hugh includes that in the future where you can use the color wheel to select a few different colors that you want to play with the music, especially if you have a themed party. If it's a holiday, you're gonna want to keep the colors consistent with your other decorations. Now this may sound a bit extra, but you can also sync [00:06:00] your tree with the content on the TV using an H D M I sync box from Phillips Hu. This device allows you to hook up any gaming console or streaming device to it via H D M I and it will sync all that to your TV with the lights. Playing movies also looks great. You can adjust the brightness and intensity of the lights based on what you're watching. If you wanna learn more about the hd, my sync box, I did review that on YouTube so you should go look that up.
Speaker 1: Overall, [00:06:30] I'm really happy with these lights. They sync so nicely into my Phillips to ecosystem and that's kind of why I keep getting Phillips U just for the ease of use in the app. I will say though, they are a bit limited compared to their competitor Twinkle. Twinkly comes in a bunch of sizes and you can link multiple together to get a full coat that work together with the effects. They're also waterproof so you can use them outside. Twinkle does have a lot of customization and a lot of effects that you can download from the app, but [00:07:00] Phillips Hu does have the ability to sync to a TV, to music and to create all those dynamic scenes. So you are getting a lot here. I just, I think for them to be a real contender, Phillips Hu I think they need to be adding more into that effects more than candle fire and the sparkle on top of that. I'd love to be able to change those colors as well. That's all I've got for you today. I do have another Hue video coming out, the best of Hue showing off a ton of cool fixtures and gradient stuff. You don't wanna miss that. Be sure to subscribe to our channel. Click [00:07:30] that bell for alerts and uh, I've got to put on some ornaments, so we're gonna cut this video. I'm Justin and I'll take you later.
