Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance A19 60W Equivalent LED Smart Bulb Starter Kit (4 A19 Bulbs and 1 Hub Compatible with Amazon Alexa Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant)

I 💕 💗 these lights. I picked this kit up from the Amazon Treasure Truck in December as a Christmas present for myself. I’d been studying the concept & products. Philips is my preferred brand & it’s worth it. The special pricing made this a no brainer. I wish I’d purchased more. It’s definitely more economical to buy a kit with four color bulbs. Hubs are required. I recently got around to setting it up. It was relatively easy. The most challenging thing was plugging the hub into my router via Ethernet in addition to an electrical outlet. The router is not in a convenient location on the upper level however, that spot is apparently great for transmitting the signals. I set up one bulb in the living room & another in my great room/entertainment area on the lower level. The Philips Hue app makes it simple to pair the bulbs with iPhone. It allows you to select from millions of colors. You can set up routines to control lights. The optional geo fencing setup turns on the lights when I approach my home. I hate coming home to a dark house. I’m also using Alexa to control them. It works seemingly via magic...Bluetooth. I named the lights similarly in addition to a smart plug on another lamp. Therefore, my instructions to Alexa must be clear. It is weird to have two systems (TP Link plug on KASA app + the Philips Hue system) but it’s okay. I definitely would not introduce a third application. I contemplated using HomeKit but I don’t have Apple TV & I’m happy with my Echo Dots & Fire Sticks. Keep it simple stupid. The lights give my mostly white walls dynamic color without the commitment. From the street, passers by can see a warm glow. The app has recipes for light schemes (Aurora..., Savannah Sunset, for example) if you don’t want to select colors on your own. It’s cool to mix colors on lamps in close proximity of each other. It’s true you have to leave the lights powered on & allow the app or Alexa to turn the bulbs off or dim them. I’m hoping Georgia Power doesn’t take all my money next month. The other two bulbs will go in my owner’s suite utilizing 3-way lamps. I’m hoping this will be a no drama set up as well. Bottom line, I recommend these highly. It gives my home more warmth & personality. They’re easy to use & amazing. I look forward to expanding my collection.

I am a huge fan of Philip Hue lightbulbs. I have more than 20 bulbs inside my home and another 20+ of the Hue outdoor bulbs to light up my backyard. What I like about these bulbs is the seemingly endless color combinations and routines that can be created to suit your needs, your moods, your whims ... anything you can think of with lighting these bulbs can do. I have attached a video to this review so you can see some of the spectrum of color these bulbs are capable of producing. The Philip Hue app for the iPhone and iPad makes changing colors and brightness as easy as touching a button. I filmed my video with my iPhone in one hand while I used my other hand to change the colors and brightness in the Philips Hue app on my iPad. It is that simple. Let's begin with connecting these bulbs to your wifi. It is quick and easy. I have connected over 40 Hue bulbs to my hub. I have never had an issue connecting to wifi. Once these bulbs are connected to wifi ... they stay connected to wifi. I have had power outages which caused wifi to reboot. No problem. The bulbs reconnect automatically. The app has several color "scenes" to choose from ... or simply use the color palette to create your own color combinations. There are routines that can be set for the lights to come on at pre-set times ... at random times ... to change color ... to shut off ... to dim or brighten. If you can imagine it ... you can use the app to set the routine. These bulbs are also Alexa compatible ... which provides even greater functionality. Want to try visual effects like strobing lights ... simulated fireworks ... a rainstorm ... a moon-lit sky ... just download one of the many third party apps available and prepare to be amazed at what these lights can do. These lightbulbs work wonders on my mental well-being. I find that the greens and soft blues help me relax in the evenings. The cool white tones energize me during the weekday. The warm yellow tones help me wake to a new day. Having used the bulbs for years now I am a believer that colors can positively impact your mood and your mental well-being. I have tried other LED color-changing bulbs (you can read my review of the Sengled bulbs to learn more). There is simply no equal to the Philips Hue lightbulb. It offers countless possibilities and performs flawlessly. I would not buy any other brand of smart bulb. I give a most enthusiastic recommendation for the Philips Hue lightbulb. Five stars!

This kit has everything to get you started. Which includes: 4 Hue color/White bulbs Hue hub with Ethernet and power adapter (Supports 50 devices). Best experience with hub (More on that later) Setup was incredibly easy. Within minutes I had the 4 bulbs installed. Syncing with the app was a breeze. There are a lot of smart bulbs on the market. But Philips was the first. They have the most experience and it shows with their app. Their app makes it easy to create your own presets. It’s very easy and fluid to create rooms in the house. At this point I have the 4 bulbs in my living room lamps as well as 3 hue plays behind my TV. I also have expanded into my bedroom. I have a hue light strip and 2 bulbs there. So I have a separate room setup on the app. The reason why I say the hub is required is because you simply can’t do much with select echo devices. Sure you say say a specific color, but you won’t get to create specific colors and your customization abilities will be severely hindered. Pretty sure you can’t use the app either (Might be wrong). Supposedly each bulb acts as a repeater in the home from what I hear. Which means that if your hub doesn’t reach a far away bulb, the nearest bulb would send a signal to it. If this is indeed true, consider it a good thing. You can set a timer when you are away from home. Say good bye to those old school timers! You can also set a sleep schedule. The lights can gradually dim as you fall asleep. And they can gradually light up as you wake up. I never bought the dimmer because brightness can but adjust via Echo or app. Also suggested is to leave your switch always on. When the switch is off, it loses connection to the hub. So the bulbs can be off, but only draw a very small amount of power to retain the connection. Overall I will only buy Philips products. Sure there are cheaper options as Hue is pretty pricey. But you can’t beat something that always works. I feel like Hue products will be supported long term. Updates are constantly getting pushed out to the bulbs and hub. One more thing. These are not recommended for dimmer fixtures. Although I have heard it working for some people. I haven’t really bothered to try it myself yet. So I say give Hue a chance! It will give you a way better ambience!

The most advanced colored and white light system ever, and it does impress! Sure, there's a little bit of learning curve in setting it up and configuring. Usually it's a breeze. Just plug the hub into the router, press the button and then wait for the thing to connect to all of your lights. Using the Phillips app you then assign lights and rooms. All that went exactly as planned. Once I tried to add the Phillips plug-in to my Google Home Mini, it adds perfectly fine, but then still wasn't working with voice commands at first. So I dug around the internet and found that people were having the same problem. They said that they figured out that if you have somebody else sharing and linked to your Google Home Mini, they too must have their Phillips app linked properly with their Google Home app on their Android device. So just repeat the process as you did for yourself and voila! Lights on presto! The system is imperfect and prone to minor issues such as occasional linking imperfections, and occasionally the Google Home won't work seldomly. But really, this thing is pretty damn awesome! You can watch Star Wars in red and blue for example! It works both with the Phillips app and using voice commands partnered with the Google Home and Amazon Alexa devices. But it's not necessary to work, if you just want to use it without voice commands. But if you do decide to, it's a very inexpensive addition considering the Google Home Mini's and Amazon Echo's are going for $29. The beautiful thing is that there's barely any configuration involved, and not a lot of training for it to work well with turning on and off the lights, changing colors, etc. If you got some disposable income or just a strong love of changing the mood, I'd say it's a fun investment. Lights are rated for 15000 hours or up to 15 years, whichever comes first, and I even read it can help some people who get winter blahs and SAD. So check them out, we're having a ball! I hear you can sync it with music and movies as well. I'm going to go learn more about that! Have a nice day!

This is pretty good! I bought these for my mother's home so she could get her first Smart Home experience with her Amazon Echo. So far I've tried out a few different RGB lights, and the Hue is the best yet. I found the set up easy, the pairing worked effortlessly, and the Android app works wonderfully. The Echo can turn these off and on and set brightness based on the "Room" groups you create in the app, or even independent bulbs. The app worked reliably and the color changes were set quick and easy as I could expect. I was able to pair my phone, and her phone, and her Samsung tablet to the hub without trouble. Over all the lights are nice. The color is great, 3rd gen is the charm with every color emitted being very close to what I picked in-app. I saw no flicker when dimming, or while dimmed, and the bulbs updated with the new settings within a second. They even fit in a lamp that has that wire loop that clips to bulb. Now the cons: The hub is actually just a bridge in networking parlance. You can use it to control lights, but as I did some digging it cannot hub a complete ZigBee network. So if you want other smart home devices like smart in-wall switches (to control your conventional lights), sensors, alarms, or plugs or whatever you are gonna have look for another hub to mainline your network. That said the Hue hub is reported to play nice and work as a bridge with the likes of Samsung's SmartThings hub (which functions much more like a router establishes a WiFi network.) *The reset button is on the back of the hub, meaning if you mount it, you have remove it should you ever need to run a reset. *I found the lights a little dim. 800 lm is not a lot of brightness and sadly Phillips doesn't make a brighter Hue bulb yet. It would be great to have 75 and 100 watt equivalent bulbs. *Lastly, price. The kit is a good value, but the stand alone RGB bulbs are only sold in sets of one and at a pretty eye-watering price for a bulb. So if you want to, for example, outfit a 12 light chandelier with RGB's its going to probably cost as much as the fixture itself. It would be really nice if Phillips would sell sets at a discounted unit price. There is definitely no doubt about it, this is a luxury product at this early adopter phase.

Got this off the treasure truck on a great deal. These were my first smart light bulbs. Having had them for months now, I can understand why people started overhauling their houses with these. They provide plenty of light for our rooms on white setting, that was important to satisfy if they were going to be in main rooms. We have two in floor lamps in our living room, and two in a ceiling fixture in our bedroom. The color options are fantastic in the living room. Watching movies with scenes set, or even just dimmed to a single color really enhances the experience for me. I watch a fair amount of movies, having the dimmed lights in general is a necessity. Adding color to the general landscape extends the experience, and makes it easier on your eyes when focusing on the picture in comparison to a dark room. There are various capabilities Phillips adds to help automate your home (turn on when you get home via gps, turn off when you leave, sunrise, sunset, color changing on intervals, etc) which ate cool to play with. The most useful was turning the lights on when I got home, I kept thinking I forgot to turn them off when I left because it was so reliable. I had to turn off that feature because I kept waking up a napping wife. The integration with Amazon Echo is fine for on/off but we use the app for any color customization. It can handle small things like "set [color]", but you leave much of the functionality on the table if you don't use the app. All in all, great product.

Hooked on home automation, thanks to Phillips Hue. All I needed was ANOTHER addiction, thanks guys! Seriously though, a great product. Setup was fairly simple for native functionality. These lights also tie in seamlessly to your voice assistant of choice (I currently use a Google Home Mini), using the app or IFTTT. Setting up advanced functionality for custom voice control is a bit tedious at times, but well worth the effort. There is only one small irk, but not enough of one to dock a star. The Phillips Hue App is very good, but often does not refresh on the page with all of the switches. For instance, if I voice command some of the lights in my home, the page with all of the switches does not reflect this. Mostly, I must close the app, clear it from RAM on my phone then reopen it to receive correct switch positions. 90% of the time I use voice commands, so as I stated earlier it is not a huge deal. Going with 5 stars on these. They are expensive for color, not so much for white. The software is pretty well-thought-out. The voice commands, once set up correctly, function great. No buyer's remorse here!

Updated as of 2020: In my original review I said I was going to return them. I never did return them though. I stuck it out (mainly due to laziness. I didn't have spare lightbulbs at the time and I figured I'd go to the store and change them out next time they stopped working but soon after there was a few updates and they luckily got much more responsive) and after some firmware updates these have come a long way. They work incredibly well, they're incredibly responsive at all times, there's no problem reaching them or getting them to respond, and the UI of the app itself is extremely well integrated including a widget with my favorite combinations on my iPhone XS' home tab. It has also integrated to Alexa so my original hope/goal of rendering the light switch obsolete indeed came true. I haven't touched my light switch since 2018. As an added bonus I'm a gamer, and my entire setup is Razer controlled. Razer has also added the ability to sync the peripherals and Philips Hue lights together through their Synapse software. I don't use that often, but the ability to is there and the few times I've tried it were really fun. So yes, this has been a 5 out of 5 purchase and I'm glad to have gotten them. I can control them through my phone's widget, the hue app also on my phone, my voice by using alexa, or my computer by using synapse. It is responsive every time and works without delay. And they're still going strong years later. They can dim and brighten to a degree, go through every color, work in sync with each other or display different colors and brightness individually and affect ambience heavily. The original review is below, as is the picture attached, but remember they've updated tremendously since I posted my initial review and I'm mainly keeping them for archival purposes but with all the firmware updates since then the original review holds absolutely no value and I've changed it from 2 stars to 5 stars. ===================================== ORIGINAL REVIEW PUBLISHED ON JUN 4, 2018 BELOW ===================================== Title: It works great - when it works at all Rating: 2 out of 5 stars I was hoping this would make my light switch obsolete. But the lights are often “unreachable”...when turning off the lights is impossible while laying in bed, then this product has failed its purpose. Guess the tech isn’t quite there yet. Picture posted. 4 lights. All unreachable. Btw. Changing “channels” does nothing to fix it. Not for me anyways. 1 month of constant problems that this product did not grow out of. I’ll be returning this in the morning.