Philips Hue 2.0 Starter Kit review: The biggest name in smart lighting has lots of new competition
The second-gen Philips Hue Starter Kit works with Siri for voice-activated lighting changes.
Today's smart home is a veritable mish-mash of products and platforms, and sorting out what works with what isn't easy. Unless, of course, we're talking about Philips Hue's color-changing smart bulbs, which work with just about everything -- Google's Nest Thermostat, Samsung SmartThings, IFTTT, Amazon Echo, Wink, you name it.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Now, thanks to a new version of the Hue Bridge, they'll work with Apple HomeKit, too. A set of smart-home protocols built into iPhone and iPad operating systems, HomeKit brings voice-activated Siri controls into play -- and keeps Philips Hue firmly at the front of the pack in terms of compatibility with key third parties.
In addition to the new bridge, Philips Hue's $200 starter kits came packaged with updated bulbs, too. Unlike the original bulbs, which didn't shine any brighter than 600 lumens, the second-gen versions went up to 800 lumens at peak white-light settings, which finally hit true 60-watt equivalence.
Then, in 2016, Philips released a third generation of its flagship smart bulb. The $200 starter kit reviewed here now comes packaged with four of them, along with the Hue Bridge. They're a touch brighter than gen two at most settings, they dim down a lot lower and, most importantly, they finally fix the fact the first two generations weren't able to put out true green (the best they could do was sort of a tennis ball yellow).
Bulb-tweaks aside, the chief selling point for Philips Hue is still that it's one of the most well-developed and well-connected lighting brands on the market. Support for Apple HomeKit was a logical next step for the brand (and a first for smart lights at the time) -- later on, Hue went on to announce compatibility with the Amazon Echo Plus, letting Alexa users pair Hue bulbs directly with their speaker, no Hue Bridge needed (you'll still need the Hue Bridge to use the Hue app and all of its features, though).
That, coupled with Hue's wide compatibility with other third-party smart-home systems, keeps Philips Hue on top for now -- but less expensive competitors are starting to close the gap. Most notably, that includes the Lifx Mini -- it also works with Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant for voice commands, it costs less per bulb than Hue and it doesn't require a hub at all. Sylvania sells a color-changing smart bulb that works with Apple HomeKit, too; on the Alexa and Google Assistant fronts, you've got color-changing options from brands like TP-Link, Sengled and Eufy that all cost less per bulb than Hue.
That's a lot of colorful new competition, which keeps the pressure on Hue to keep its platform ahead of the pack. Recent updates like wake-up fades for your Google Assistant alarms and Hue Entertainment, which lets you sync your lights up with whatever's playing on your computer monitor or TV screen, have helped placate power users -- but if all you want are lights that can go purple and green at your next party, you'd be smart to shop around.
Hue again
Philips didn't make any drastic changes to its smart lighting kit for generation two. In fact, I hesitate to call this a second generation product at all. You still get three Hue bulbs and a bridge, and you'll still control them using the same Philips Hue app on your Android or iOS device. Aside from the compatibility with HomeKit, there isn't any new functionality here, nothing you can do with this kit that you couldn't do with the old one.
Of course, the corollary is true, as well. Philips didn't take a step backwards, either. We've seen other products sacrifice some of the tricks up their sleeve in order to fall in line with Apple -- an Insteon HomeKit Hub that only controls certain Insteon products, for instance. There's nothing like that here. Philips managed to get all of the benefits of HomeKit without compromising the core strengths of the Hue platform.
Among those strengths: Hue's open approach to software, which allows third party developers to make their own control apps for the lights, and potentially bring new functionality into play. That's brought about a wealth of apps that work with Hue, and plenty of ways to play with the lights and keep things fresh.
The counterpoint to that approach is that it might have made Hue's team a little bit lazy. Features that have become more or less standard with the competition, like a music sync mode or customizable color cycles, are still conspicuously absent from the Hue app. Instead, you'll have to find a third-party app that gets the job done. That was a forgivable way of doing things with generation one, but for generation two, it would have been nice to see the app get a refresh.
It didn't. It's the same old Hue app you've always used, and you'll still change the color of your bulbs using the same tedious drag-and-drop display that forces you to cover the part of the spectrum you're trying to land on with your finger as you try and land on it. Call it Hue-bris, maybe, but Philips didn't seem to think that the app merited improvement for generation two. I think it did, and I was disappointed not to get it.
Siri gets colorful
All that said, it would be a mistake to brush off the new generation's addition of HomeKit support. With open standards for how smart-home devices should communicate within iOS, HomeKit compatibility makes it easy for other products to integrate Hue controls into their own control apps. That means that you'll be able to program lighting changes that are tied directly to those other products -- lights that come on when you lock your door, for instance.
And sure, you could already do a lot of that by syncing your lights with a master hub like SmartThings' or an automation system like IFTTT -- but HomeKit brings Siri into the picture. Voice-activated, on-demand lighting changes are a natural fit for the system, and a great step forward -- especially given how hard it is to pick out a particular color using the Hue app's color selector. Asking Siri to turn the lights fuchsia is a lot easier.
At the launch of Philips Hue 2.0, Siri could only understand the most basic of colors, but Apple's already given her a vocabulary upgrade. Aside from red, blue, and orange, you can request crimson, teal, and gold, among a score of others. Siri can also understand some modifiers -- "light blue" works, for instance. She can't yet understand anything on the white light spectrum, though: ask for "soft white," "daylight," or "2,700K," and Siri just looks at you funny. My guess is that Apple updates that before long -- Siri doesn't require a full iOS update in order to learn new words.
You'll also be able to use Siri to control your Hue scenes, which let you trigger multiple bulbs at once. Hue scenes aren't programmed in the same way as HomeKit scenes, so they won't work at first. The fix is simple, though -- just go to your Hue's app's settings and select "Siri voice control." You'll see a list of your scenes; just tap the ones that you want to control using Siri, and Hue will translate them into something Siri can work with.
Your other option is to create new scenes using an app that follows HomeKit's scene-creation protocols in the first place. While it might be a little odd to program your Hue lights outside of the Hue app, doing so will allow you to create more complicated scenes that involve your other HomeKit-compatible gadgets. A "goodnight" scene could turn the lights off and lock your door, for instance.
Of course, you'll need to upgrade to the new bridge before you'll be able to do any of this. Fortunately, Hue now offers a "bridge transfer" mode in the app that makes it easy to make the switch. Just follow the onscreen instructions, and Hue will save your existing settings in the cloud, then load them into the new bridge. It only took me a few minutes to get things switched over in the CNET Smart Home, and after doing so, my lights and scenes remained intact. The Siri-powered voice controls worked well, aside from the occasional language mixup (she often hears "Hugh" when you say "Hue," for instance).
There was one unexpected casualty with the switch, though: Hue's integration with the voice-activated Amazon Echo smart speaker, which we already had up and running here at the CNET Smart Home. The new bridge won't currently let the Echo talk to your lights -- Philips tells us that they're working with Amazon on a fix.
About those bulbs...
The new Hue LEDs, now dubbed "Hue white and color," offer more brightness (and a slightly higher wattage) than the existing versions. Whereas the old bulbs could only hit a maximum of 600 lumens, putting them awkwardly in between the 40 and 60-watt replacement level, the new ones go all the way up to the 60-watt benchmark of 800 lumens.
At least, they're supposed to. Turn them on at their default, soft white setting of 2,700K, and they still shine at less than 600 lumens -- same as the old bulbs. The same is true as you cycle through the RGB spectrum. None of the colors get up above 600 lumens. The worst is blue, which only offers 27 lumens' worth of brightness.
Brightness by color
Color | Lumens |
---|---|
Soft white (2,700K) | 535 |
Daylight (4,000K) | 734 |
Red | 140 |
Blue | 27 |
Green | 502 |
Orange | 338 |
Purple | 84 |
Yellow | 540 |
It's only when you dial the bulbs up above that yellowy color temperature of 2,700K toward the hotter, whiter daylight tones that you hit anything north of 600. The brightest spot of the spectrum seems to be around 4,000K. Testing it out in our integrating sphere, the best reading I was able to get was 734 lumens at a measured color temperature of 3,870K. And keep in mind that the color selector in the Hue app doesn't include color temperature readings -- you're really just eyeballing it.
Something else worth considering is color accuracy. After all, if you're going to spend big bucks on color-changing lighting, then it's fair to expect those colors to shine true. This was a nitpick of mine with the original Hue bulbs -- they did fine with reds and yellows but had a hard time putting out accurate, vivid blue and green tones.
Unfortunately, the new bulbs aren't any better than the old ones. In fact, at almost every color and tone it's just about impossible to tell them apart. The green setting is still tennis-ball green at best, the blue setting still has a purplish tinge to it, and the cyan or light blue part of the spectrum still gets completely washed out with white light.
The reason for this all comes down to diodes. Crack a Hue bulb open, and you'll find an mix of light-producing diodes. Red and yellow are both well represented, but you only get two blue diodes. That's why Hue bulbs come in so dim at the blue setting, and also why the blue setting looks a little bit purple: Philips bumps the brightness by adding in a touch of red.
Green is the more obvious problem area. Compare the Hue version of green with what you'll get from a color-changing bulb with a greater number of blue diodes, like Lifx , and the difference is night and day. You can see that exact comparison for yourself in the gallery of images posted above -- from left to right in each shot, you're looking at the old Hue, the new Hue and Lifx. Set to green, Lifx is the clear winner. The same can be said for the cyan setting -- it's a color the Hue bulbs just can't produce.
Again, all of these faults were a lot more forgivable with Philips Hue's first generation. A lot's changed since then, though. Along with Lifx, competitors like iLumi have emerged, along with color-tunable, white-light-only bulbs like the ones you'll find in the Osram Lightify Starter Kit . Philips Hue costs more than all of them. If generation two was an opportunity to stay competitive by either improving the color quality or cutting the price, Philips missed it.
Red light or green light?
Hue's interoperability is still its trump card. If you have a variety of smart-home gadgets, and you want color-changing bulbs that will work with as many of them as possible, Hue can't be beat. If you're an existing Hue user and an iOS user as well, then upgrading to the new Hue Bridge to add Siri controls to your setup is a no-brainer, especially considering that Philips will let you trade in your old bridge for a $20 discount.
But if you haven't bought in with Philips Hue yet, I'm not sure that there's enough here to get you to do so now. At $200, the cost of getting started is still is just as high, and there's really nothing new to get excited about beyond that HomeKit integration. What's more, the competition is starting to get compelling. Lifx offers brighter bulbs with better color quality and an easier to use app that now cost $60 each. With no hub needed, you can control each one right out of the box, meaning you don't need to plunk down $200 just to get started. To me, that seems like the better choice for anyone who just wants to try out color-changing light.