Gadgetory

Philips use newest LEDs don't change colors but they do change color temperatures offering a variety of white light tones ranging from warm candle light glows at one end of the spectrum and cool bluish white daylight tones on the other now along with two of those bulbs and this handy physical dimming switch the $130 starter kit comes with the second gen Philips hue bridge that bridge lets you sync the bulbs up with apple homekit which means you can control them using Siri voice commands like this hey Siri turn off the test bulb okay good test off is off my main problem with these lights is that they aren't as bright as you might want Philips labels them at 800 lumens which is about what you'd get from an ordinary 60 watt bulb but if you check the specs online you'll see that you only get that level of brightness at the 4000 K color temperature setting and that is not the bulbs default setting when you turn it on it's about 2700 K and at that 2700 K setting you only get about 450 lumens a 40 watt bulbs worth on top of that when I tried to find that 4000 K 800 lumen setting in the ocean of pixels that the app gives you the best I could get was about 600 lumens that's less brightness than you'll get with color tunable competitors like the lifx white 800 the C by GE sleep LED and the stack LED downlights one other quirk that bugs me Siri doesn't have a vocabulary for that white light spectrum so if you ask her set them to soft white or 2700 K she'll just look at you funny she has no idea what that means you have to instead set up a scene in the hue app that includes color temperature changes and then run that scene all that said the white ambience LEDs work as well as other philips hue bulbs which is to say that they're reliable and fairly easy to use and at thirty dollars per bulb they're also twice as affordable as use full color LEDs and they enjoy the same wide range of third-party compatibility I just wish that on top of all of that you got a little more brightness for your buck you