Philips Hue Starter Kit: Review Summary & Guide

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Introduction to Philips Hue Starter Kit

As you’re here already, you probably already know that Phillips Hue Bulbs are some of the best-selling smart light bulbs available. With them you can easily create the right ambience for any situation. Waking up? Going to bed? Need to concentrate? Philips Hue has you covered. They can be adjusted to fit several moods ranging from sombre to full party mode. They also allow different color shades. For example, shades of red include; bloody red, ruby red, and orange-red…not just ‘red’.

The lights can be remotely controlled from either your iOS or Android device, that way, you can decide when the lights in your home come on or off, or you can control them via voice-activated smart assistants or movement sensors, which help in conserving energy.

Philips Hue Starter Kit Features

There are quite a number of Phillips Hue Starter Kits to choose from, depending on your needs.

The standard Phillips Hue Starter Kit has three LED light bulbs, the Hue Bridge, appropriate screws and a dimmer switch (there’s also another kit that has the same contents, but without the dimmer switch, as well as kits that only contain white bulbs instead of the color-changing ones).

The Hue Bridge is essentially the brain behind this group of products. It wirelessly connects between your phone and the light bulbs in your home – all you need to do is connect the bridge to your router

Once that’s set, the bulbs are all connected to each other and do not have to be close to the bridge to receive commands. Even though they are connected, you can, from your smartphone or using voice commands, select which bulbs you want performing any particular function at any given, rather than all the bulbs doing the same thing. With this arrangement, you can have a cozy ambience setup in your lounge and a serious one set up in the study.

You will need the app to set-up and be able to adjust settings when you’re away from the house.

Pros

The bulbs can fit into the regular light fittings so there’s no need for rewiring or special installation. After setting up the bridge, all you need do is follow the simple instructions on the screen and your new lighting system will be ready.

There’s a lot to discover with the Hue App and it’s available both for iOS and Android phones and tablets. You can use it in a simple way to control lights and select pre-programmed scenes but if you’re quite creative, you’ll probably spend some time testing out that claim of 16 million colors available for use

The Hue App works perfectly well with iPhone’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant. When integrated with your smartphone, you can simply tell Siri to turn off the lights in the house, or change the scenes to fit just what you want.

Cons

From our review of the Phillips Hue Starter Kit, the main disadvantage is the fact that it’s quite pricey for a lighting system when considered alongside some of the alternatives. This is a major turn off for some.

Other smart home devices work perfectly well without a bridge, but for the Philips Hue there’s no direct Wi-Fi option, so you’ll have to use a bridge instead. Annoyingly, that’s another plug socket taken up.

Summary

If you need an easy to use smart lighting system and don’t mind using a bridge, then this is a great option. Even though it might seem like a bit of an expensive way to get started with smart lights, the Starter Kit (Bridge, 3 LED bulbs, a dimmer switch) provides a far cheaper option than buying each part individually.

Alternatively, there’s the cheaper 2 bulb kit (both white) that also comes with a bridge, but no dimmer switch, and another starter kit that includes color bulbs but no dimmer. From our experience with smart lighting, you’ll probably want that dimmer sooner or later.