Philips HUE Bridge NAM

I didn't even want to buy this since I don't have much use for colored lights in the first place, and all of my smart devices are at the switch level anyway, but... I'm also impulsive and technologically silly, so I bought it in order for a computer to interact with them for a specific reason - watching Formula One races through the MultiViewer app. (See pic)The MultiViewer app allows you to watch Formula One races beyond just a single broadcast of the race - instead of just the television broadcast you can also see multiple driver cockpit cameras, track information, position of cars on the track, the leaderboard and tire information, track violations and penalties, and even tune into specific driver radios. Basically it gives you a fully immersive racing experience outside of "just watching the race on tv".In addition to MultiViewer, there's a companion app called F1MV Lights Integration - which is awesome - and well... I simply had to have it. The companion app will take the data being pushed through MultiViewer and use it to control smart lights, so the lights reflect the race conditions such as green flags, red flags, safety cars, fastest laps, chequered flags, etc. In my picture someone had just hit the fastest lap of the race so far, usually indicated with the color purple on the leaderboard. As such the Philips lights changed to purple. The same happens for red flags, yellow flags, etc.Is it necessary? Nah...Cool as hell though? You bet.I originally tried this with the cheaper Govee lights, but although they were wi-fi capable like the Philips, they didn't have the API necessary to work correctly with the MultiViewer system. Those were returned and Philips lights were were purchased instead, and they require the hub to work with MultiViewer. It sucked that I also had to buy a hub to make it all work, but I'm silly and bought it anyway. Through the hub and the app, all it worked flawlessly and painlessly, connected easily, and does what I need it to do.All of it was generally easy to configure, and the app gives you quite a bit of control over a simple light. The lights dim from zero to 100 without issue, and the color range is everything I personally could ask for. (Although maybe others would be more demanding than myself.)All in all it was rather expensive, (compare to the Govee lights and you'll see the price difference!), but I hope that the extra expense means all of it will last a long time with no problems. They were all purpose-bought and they serve their purpose excellently.

I was up to 49 lights on the previous bridge and it had become so slow and sluggish, the app kept losing connection to the bridge, lights would take forever to change and Siri struggled. Swapped over to the pro yesterday, transfer from the old bridge was super quick, resetting up with apple home took a few more mins and then boom. All problems resolved, so snappy! Siri happy. 8k sync box very happy and not crashing like it had been. Plus the new motion zones are crazy good, love walking into the bedroom and the lights go on! This upgrade came just at the right time. I’m a day one user and have had all 3 bridges now, this is a massive upgrade in speed and makes using hue feel like magic again.

I hate that this works so flawlessly to justify its existence but it does so I love it. Let’s see an ai parse that.Anyway. This whole ecosystem works perfectly. It’s stupid expensive and obviously an uberluxury, but it’s also magic, and that alone justifies the price.The integration with Apple Home is the main reason I love it so much. Being able to tell Siri to set a certain mood is the sort of thing we were promised at the outset.The Bridge brings it all together so all the proprietary little guys can get together and chill in harmony. It’s necessity is debatable but the fact that it just works means it’s worth it if you’re gonna invest in a whole house setup.

I have been toying with the idea of getting the Phillips Hue system for my house for a few years now and kept putting it off. But I finally pulled the trigger. The biggest concern I had, and I think most people have, is the price for buying the hub, which you technically do not need for the bluetooth enabled bulbs, but you do need it for other features like controlling lights through the internet instead of having to be in range of your phone or tablet's bluetooth signal which is about 30 feet. The bulbs can be a bit pricey. I bought the candle bulbs for my ceiling fans and they were in the range of $25 a pop for the regular white light ones. If you want the color version, they can be around $50 a pop for that particular bulb. I went with the white lights because I have no need to go all psychedelic, and you can control their temperature to get that nice warm glow which I love and had a hard time finding in a normal LED light. There are cheaper systems out there, but I found with the Phillips Hue system you have access to more apps to control it with, and a bigger line of bulb types for really any kind of lighting solution you need... from light strips, to accent lighting, to regular bulbs, to candle bulbs, to outdoor lighting.... color or just white. I can even control everything through my Android enabled smart TV which is super nice and convenient for me.Installation was simple enough for me. With the hub, you need to plug it directly into a router of some type, either a regular one or your wifi box. I live in a new place where all the rooms have cat 6 Ethernet wall connections so I can easily skip the routers. It took me about 10 minutes to get everything set up and started. For some reason my iPhone did not detect the hub box, but my TV did, but I just manually entered the device's IP address which was given on my TV app and the iPhone app worked just fine after entering that specific IP address. I am not sure why it did that, but I solved that issue in a few short minutes. After I entered the individual bulb serial numbers in the app, it detected them just fine, but the bulbs were located in the same room as the hub. As I purchase more bulbs and put them throughout the house, I am not sure how well the hub will detect them. That is something I am just going to have to try by trial and error. My house and walls are notorious for dampening wifi signal strength. Unfortunately, I currently know of no way to have multiple hubs in one house all operated on the same app. Right now, the apps seem to only let you control one hub and its lights. So, I may not be able to have hue lights in all the places I would like them in the house without having to use multiple apps or devices. I will update my review on this potential issue as I expand my system.But overall, I am satisfied with the Phillips Hue system. There is definitely a lot more room for improvement, but this is a fairly new technology. I find it super convenient because my ceiling lights now can be controlled directly or by a timer system. This is great for those places like hallways and staircases where there are no outlets or places to put lamps plugged into old fashioned timers to light at night. A good improvement idea would be to allow the timers to adjust with the sunset and sunrise actual times since those differ from day to day, month to month, season to season. They are predictable, and to have a system to automatically adjust in correspondence to that would be a solid improvement instead of having to manually reset the timer ever so often to adjust for different sunset and sunrise times throughout the year.