Philips Hue Review
Of all the elaborate app-based gadgets we've seen, Philips' Hue Personal Wireless Lighting system is the most extravagant, yet also perhaps the most enticing. Priced at $200 for the starter kit and solely available via the Apple Store, Hue lets you light up your home with LED bulbs that you can command from afar using the free universal iOS app, tapping into nearly any color in the rainbow.
It really is jaw-dropping to tap your first preset in the Hue app and see the inauspicious white bulbs change to boldly colored tones, quickly transforming the look and feel of the room. But the app offers much more fine-tuned tweaking, letting you pick colors for individual bulbs, snap or use a photo as a reference for color schemes, adjust the brightness of each bulb, and set a timer for a certain motif to pop up during the day.
Light Recipes are designed to benefit reading, relaxation, and more, though you can create your own preset color mixes.
The Hue starter kit comes with three LED bulbs and a wireless bridge, which taps into your Wi-Fi network via an Ethernet cable into your router. The bulbs fit into most traditional household lamps yet reportedly use 80 percent less power than a standard throwaway bulb. Up to 50 bulbs can be connected to a single bridge, so you can theoretically outfit every room of your home with Hue—assuming you're willing to spend $60 per bulb for the extras.
No doubt, Hue is one of the more exciting pieces of app-related tech we've seen to date. Seeing bulbs deliver such a dramatic change of color is arresting, and it's oddly thrilling to be able to tweak them on the fly. Is it practical? That's another subject entirely. While controlling the bulbs via the Hue app is pretty straightforward, the actual app design is a bit cumbersome, and the inability to set recurring timers is a curious omission for now. Moreover, if you turn the bulbs off using a wall switch rather than the app, the color scheme is lost and it defaults back to white light—these bulbs may be smart, but they don't have much of a memory. The 50-watt-equivalent bulbs also don't get quite as bright as cheaper fluorescent ones. And the price cannot be ignored, though the Hue system is clearly a luxury item meant for early adopters. Later models and revisions will hopefully bring added features and more flexibility via different types of bulbs.
Hue's bulbs aren't the brightest, but they sure can set a mood.
The bottom line. If you can stomach the asking price and some limitations, the Philips Hue system is a wildly innovative new approach to home lighting.
Review SynopsisProduct:
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Requirements:
iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch running iOS 4.3 or later
Positives:
Boldly colored customizable lighting powered by your iOS device. Easy to set up and use. Expands to support up to 50 total bulbs.
Negatives:
App is slightly cumbersome and lacks recurring timers. Bulbs lose color scheme when manually powered off. High cost for starter kit.
Original Page: http://www.maclife.com/article/reviews/philips_hue_review
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