Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance LED Smart Light Bulb Starter Kit, 3 A19 Smart Bulbs & 1 Hue Hub (Works with Alexa, Apple HomeKit & Google Assistant)

Philips has been nagging me for a while to upgrade the app on my phone, and -- while youre at it -- get our new super duper hub, it is square. Well, with Samsung jacking everyone over on SmartThings, I figured I would go on and upgrade the Hue too. First, install the new hub. It is square. That is a big deal for some reason. The new hub is super-light, small piece of plastic. It will not stay put. The ethernet cable moves it. And, speaking of the ethernet cable, I was hoping I could remove the old hub and set the new hub in the same place. But NO!. Philips decided to 1) change the power connecter, and 2) rotate the ethernet connection, so I had to pull out the furniture, get behind where the old hub was, install the now power adapter, and twist the ethernet cable over. That was a chore. That cable had a little bit of tension in it, and the no-weight plastic hub promptly flipped over, putting the cable back to the position it was in with the old hub. Disconnect it, loosen up the cable, try again. OK, all that is working. Blue lights all on. To my great dismay, after installing the new app and the new hub, NO LIGHTS FOUND. Yep, first I thought I must have done something wrong (possible, even though Ive installed this and similar systems, but you never know). After checking and rechecking, I installed one of the new bulbs that came with the hub. Presto, 1 bulb in my house found and working. What about the rest? More checking. I power on every light in the house. Still no devices found. I try changing ZigBee channels. No go. Checking the Internet, Google the Oracle, and I found the Great Disappointment. The new hub does not talk easily to the old lights. Philips suggests going to each and every single light to find its serial number and typing in each of those serial numbers to help the poor new super-duper square hub find the legacy hue lights. What a waste of time and horrible design. If you are not totally invested in Hue, go to Panasonic. No hub required. Save yourself the headache and the failed designs of Philips. PHILIPS: you really screwed the pooch on this upgrade you forced out on everyone. Your inattention to design details is deplorable. Your near-complete lack of support for legacy bulbs is unacceptable. You could have done so much better.

I bought this starter kit as a gift for my sister after becoming addicted to my own Hue lights. I was able to go through the setup with her and the whole process from start to finish was quick and easy. Hue lights are awesome, especially when you pair them with the Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. These Hue color bulbs are very bright and vibrant and fit it to any standard bulb socket. My sister and I were having fun cycling through all the colors and most were very vibrant. The only color that seemed off was purple which has more of a pink-ish hue to the color. Sorry fellow purple lovers. Setup: Setup was VERY easy. There are quick start instructions of getting the Bridge and lights plugged in, and the Hue app walks you through the rest. Make sure that you have an open ethernet port on your modem or router, the Hue Bridge needs to be hardwired into your home Internet network. The three bulbs come paired to the bridge already so you dont have to do any setup work unless you have additional Hue products to pair. Depending on your device the Hue app will also help you setup Siri or Google Assistant for voice control. Overall setup was very easy and went smoothly from start to finish. We were up and running within 5 minutes and playing with the different scenes and bulb colors. Apps: The Hue app is great to control your bulbs, but it is often easier to link to Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa for quick voice control, rather than always waiting for the app to open. Other apps can also connect to your Hue bulbs once you setup a Hue account. Downloading additional apps can let you do cool things like syncing your lights to music or use IFTTT to turn on your bulbs when different events happen like getting a phone call, if its going to snow in your area, and tons more. Make sure in the Hue app you also change the power-on behavior. For most people youll want to set them to use the last state. That makes it so your lights wont turn on at 4am when they were already off because of a power failure. Your old light switches: Speaking of power-on behavior, Hue lights may take some getting used to, especially for people who have been using switches for all their lives. For Hue bulbs to work best you need to leave them in a lamp that is ALWAYS switched on. This allows you to control them with whatever app or voice assistant whenever you want. Hue also sells a wall switch that some people might like more if they are accustomed to switches. You would still need to leave your lamp on 24/7 to allow the bulbs to power on; this is something that my parents could not get used to when using smart bulbs. Though less than ideal, if you still want to use your existing lamp switches you can also use the Hue bulbs to just turn on as the last color you set them, but you will always have to manually turn them on and cant use the app to power them on. Conclusion: Hue bulbs are an awesome way to start your smart home. They are perfect for anyone who uses light bulbs...so everyone! Its very fun to customize your Hue bulbs and find the best lighting for you based on your personality, mood, or time of day. The Hue lights are bright and reliable and Im very glad with my Hue purchases.

I assumed this would be a simple, straight out of the box set up. 6 hours later I am returning the product because I just could not get it to work, and I am pretty good with technology and following directions. I downloaded the app. I plugged the hub into the router via the provided cable (should have been my first indicator- that a high end hub could not connect wirelessly). All lights on the hub lit up, I followed the directions, pushed the button (because it should be that simple) and nothing. I spent hours online following the troubleshooting tips and none of them worked. For something that plugged directly into the internet source it should work without a single hiccup. So yes, i’m pretty disappointed because I was looking at setting this hub up to add other Philips lighting devices. I should have went with a different product and would not recommend this product.

I tried finding a solid answer as to what level of white these are and didnt find one, and every video and instruction online was for the RGB and how every Hue bulb could be adjusted.... well... I wanted a pure white light for my living room to brighten things up; the short of it is that you CANNOT adjust the temperature of the white in the bulb at all using the app. I will be returning these as I cant stand how warm the white is that they project. Ill be going with Lifx instead, as they provide clear and precise nomenclature about this.

Pros: I liked the easy set up. Can group rooms or Bulbs Cons: not as bright as cheaper options.

Purchased new but the setup message said previously used and I had to factory reset the hub and bulbs. The transfer from the gen1 to this new gen2 hub did not work.

Good product

integrated well with my cortana and worked great

I had the old version working fine, suddenly stop connecting to the hue account, but still controlling lights in local network... I wrote to Phillips and they told me because it was old I need to buy another...so I did it....but 6 months later and tons of emails! still not working and Phillips never answers with solutions. only call center protocol like send me your serial number and proof of purchase... and them nothing!!!

These things are gorgeous when they decide to work. Pros -Alexa is amazing with them -cheap to run -colors are incredible! Cons -the hub has to have a hard connection, no wifi option that Ive found -synching them to my computer made the lights flicker on and off like crazy and the only way to stop it was to disconnect, unscrew them and hope it worked -the price is super high for a product that has almost no support