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.

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.

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!

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.

They're better than I'd expected they would be, and I was expecting a lot from them. Pricey, to be sure, but so worth it (also, how much sense does it make that four bulbs and the hub is $139, but an individual color+white bulb is $47? The kit is on sale, mind you, but still... bad math). Setup was trivial. As part of the kit, the bulbs are pre-paired to the hub, so as soon as your hub is online you're ready to start playing. Literally not a hitch here, I had all four bulbs and the bridge up and running in about 10 minutes. As far as the lights, they're phenomenal. Good brightness, an awesome range of whites, and the colors are very vibrant. Allows my girlfriend and I to find a balance of white that doesn't make me feel like I live in a Walmart (cold white), and doesn't make her feel like she lives in a bowl of pee (warm white). The responsiveness is great, but would be an issue with all the 'sync your music to your lights' apps for sure - not quite snappy enough to make that a thing, yet. Combining this with a tap switch, Alexa, and the Philips Hue app makes this the killer smart light setup. "Alexa, make my living room magenta". "Alexa, dim the kitchen by 13%". And it just works. Tap the physical switch, everything jumps into action.The complaints about the hue app seem to be unfounded in my opinion - the stuff people claim to need 3rd party apps for all seem to have been rolled into the official app (with the exception of having one bulb in multiple groups), including adding switches into your notification center on iPhone. All in all, five stars. The only lingering questions are which lights to replace with Hue next, and do you trust your neighborhood enough that you'll put them in your porch lights at $47 a pop?

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!

I really only needed two colored bulbs for the breakfast bar but I also needed the hub so this set just made sense. I have to admit, these things are addicting! As for the breakfast bar, I love being able to change the color and dim them as necessary, which is even easier with my new Echo Dot. I like leaving the breakfast bar lights on dim, usually in some weird color, just to light up the things I frequently use there (essential oils and diffuser, incense, candles, humidifier, and wax warmer). If my hands are full walking into the kitchen (which happens more often than I care to admit) I can just tell Alexa to turn on the breakfast bar. I really didn't think I'd use the colors on the living room lamps much but I do! I've had such fun playing with the scenes and colors! Despite never finding any decent apps to control the scenes consistently, Alexa always does just fine if I just tell her what color or what percentage brightness I want them. I did buy the Thunderstorm for Hue app, which has worked well so far but now I want more colored bulbs so I can have that effect in my bedroom, too. I was relieved to find out that I didn't need a dimmer with these but I guess that's what the free Hue app is for. I'm so spoiled with Alexa now that I can't even IMAGINE having to pull out my phone to control the lights but it's still nice that a dimmer isn't necessary. Since so many people have been asking, I should note that home-installed dimmers do not work with these bulbs- you need the dimmer made especially for these if you want to control them from the wall. Full disclosure: If you don't already have a smart home, or all the crap you need to fake one, this can get out of hand very quickly. You buy these bulbs and bridge, you're gonna want some Alexa-enabled device to control them with your voice. Once you get an Echo Dot or other Alexa-enabled device, you're gonna want the plugs that can control other things around the house. Once you get all the bulbs and plugs you could ever possibly need, you're going to want the motion detectors. I'm not sure how far down the rabbit hole goes because I still want more bulbs and more plugs but I've already got my eye on some other crap so be forewarned!

Adorei as lampadas, e a instalação é bem fácil. Você só precisa ter uma boa internet em sua casa. Senão a Alexa não acha a conexão. A minha estou consertando esse problema. Pq minha casa é comprida. Mas amei a compra, só espero que um dia o preço melhore. Obrigada!

One if the light got fused a minute after I installed. Was nightmare through support, who gave me old model..with bad packaging with filament tear...then again the same old model second time. I had to thank my stars for this pathetic support and stay contended with it. Noone knows how to setup with TV..forget about Dolby Vision. I had to teach them...how to configure Andoid to TV to Wifi. Works with OTT TV content for light senses ..but not with Movies on prime, netflix,hotstar,etc. Has to do with some encoding. For Dolby Atmos, although my Sony TV supports it..the Philip's Hue App ecosystem is poor. You would need an HDMI adaptor for dolby vision to work...but not guaranteed since their support themselves does not know..I was given the number if their head technician..even he was clueless. I use it with spotify music and occasional TV show music/dance programs. Dolby Vision is still a distant dream.

Estuve pensando la compra de este producto durante mucho tiempo, pero estoy bastante satisfecho. El Starter Pack contiene justo lo que necesitas para iniciar tu casa inteligente, un Bridge o Puente que se conecta a tu modem (cable incluido), cable para toma de luz y 4 focos de color. Puedes cambiar las luces a supuestamente 1600 tonalidades diferentes, y se pueden controlar mediante la app de Philips Hue o por voz (personalmente, lo tengo conectado a HomeKit con Siri y es bastante sencillo de usar, responde adecuadamente a comandos como prende o apaga, cambia el color a tal, prende estas luces cuando pase tal, etc...). El precio es elevado, pero si quieres iniciar tu iluminación inteligente, es un buen punto de entrada. Si cambiar los colores no es lo tuyo, también existe a menor precio un paquete que trae luces que solo cambian en tonalidades de blanco y naranja, solo trae 2 bombillas pero contiene también el puente necesario y es muchísimo más barato. Contento con mi compra!

De los 9 focos que compré solo se me ha fundido 1 en 5 años y si los uso para fiestas cambio de colores y todo. Excelente producto, son caros pero valen cada centavo... he probado otras marcas steren basura wiz buenos pero la diferencia de calidad hace que estos valgan la pena, el colores es más bonito y la facilidad de uso es notable.

Aunque ya conozco y disfruto enormemente de los focos Hue, tenía el bridge anterior. Con este kit, además de haber recibido 4 nuevos focos Hue de color de 4a generación, se incluye el bridge que ya es compatible con HomeKit de Apple. Los focos de esta generación tienen mejores colores aunque sean de plástico. Otra cosa importante es que no se prenden inmediatamente si uso el interruptor para apagarlos y prenderlos; es necesario esperar un segundo antes de volver a prenderlos con el interruptor para que enciendan. Eso sí, desde la app Hue o desde Home los focos se controlan, prenden y apagan de inmediato. ¡Vale mucho la pena este kit!