Philips Hue review: Lamp with 16 million colours at your fingertips

The Internet of Things is the next buzzword in today's world and Philips Hue takes you one step closer to this reality. Philips's latest offering, the Hue, allows you to control the lightbulb through a smartphone.

The starter kit shared for review included three LED bulbs along with a Hue Bridge, a power cable and a LAN cable. The box had fancy packing with instructions on how to set up the Hue.

The first thing I had to do was to connect the router bundled in the box with the Wi-Fi router placed at home using a LAN cable. After that I replaced the Philips LED lamps in the existing lamp holder and installed the Philips Hue lighting app on my Android smartphone. The app instantly searched for the Philips router and paired with it. Only after it was paired was I able to control the Hue LED lamps.

Using the app, you can either select from the preset modes or change the colour and the brightness of the bulbs as per your need.

Preset modes include sunset, pencil, deep sea, Kathy, relax, concentrate, beach, etc. Selecting the preset mode instantly changes the colour of the lamps. It allows you to monitor lights, adjust brightness and turn the lights off remotely, but only when the app is connected to the Hue Bridge.

Interestingly, the colours and brightness of these bulbs can be changed and controlled individually. Apart from changing colours, it also has a feature to set timers and alarms that would change the lighting before you get up in the morning. The Philips Hue Connected light bulbs actually put 16 million colours right at your fingertips.

However, while testing, the app did freeze on me a couple of times and I had to force shut the app.

The Philips Hue is a fancy colour changing LED lamp that can completely change the look of your office or home. While only three bulbs are bundled into the starter kit, one can pair up to 50 bulbs to a single bridge. But the expensive price tag is something I am slightly worried about as Enrg and Cube 26 both offer similar lighting at a much lower cost. Yet another concern I had with the Hue was its constant pairing with the Bridge that has been connected through the LAN cable.

Bag it or Junk it: A great colour changing solution but comes at a price.
Price: Rs 16,995
Rating: 4/5
Plus: Colour changing lamps
Minus: Price