First Look: Hue LED Bulbs Are Your Own Personal Light Show - Wired

Tread lightly. Photo: Alexandria Washburn/Wired

Philips has a new and interesting way to light your home. The hue lighting system uses LED lightbulbs with adjustable brightness and color-changing features. Want to listen to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue in a blue room? All it takes is a quick flick of the companion app.

Each bulb contains 11 LEDs in three different colors, which Philips calls royal blue, red/orange and lime. The lights combine to create up to 16 million colors. (The lime LED controls the important white light.) Philips claims that users can even dial in the bulbs to mimic traditional incandescent lights â€" the holy grail of alternative light sources. That Thomas Edison was really on to something.

With an array of multiple bulbs, you can even assign each a different color to create your own little light show. The app even comes with a series of templates to help you out. These range from the boring â€" the Reading scene sets the lights to an easy-on-the-eyes white level â€" to the exciting, like the Energize template that will supposedly give you more energy. It’s like Red Bull seeping into your eyeballs.

hue app. Photo: Alexandria Washburn/Wired

You can also create your own templates. And any of them can be scheduled to turn on and off at pre-determined times. Scheduling includes the ability to fade the lights up or down over three or nine minutes. Fade up the lights as you wake in the morning; fade them down when you should be going to sleep.

Most of the Scenes were a bit bright for my eyes (full disclosure, I have sensitive eyes), but I was able to quickly tone down the brightness with the app. Each bulb has a default name, so I could quickly determine which one I was adjusting. The dimming and color adjusting doesn’t happen in real time. Depending on the latency of your home network, the adjustments can be as much as a second behind your finger. This can take a few minutes to get used to, especially if you have a wall dimmer that changes the brightness immediately.

Once you do adjust your expectations, you’re golden. You can even adjust colors by tilting the smartphone. Grab a marker that represents the light bulb and move it around the color picker until you find the perfect pink for your Pretty in Pink party.

Users will also be able to manipulate their lights while they’re away. This feature won’t be enabled for a few more days, so you’ll have to wait for my full review to see if I was able to blast my cats with bright red lights from my desk at work.

The light bulbs are roughly the same size as traditional bulbs and fit into any standard socket, but they look a bit like ice cream cones that have been smushed from the top. The only issue will be the lamp shades that sit directly on the bulbs. Those won’t work.

hue connection. Photo: Alexandria Washburn/Wired

The system runs through a hub that plugs into a router via an Ethernet cable. It’s based on the open source ZigBee LightLink wireless standard, which means the bulbs will work with other devices that adhere to the standard. The wireless standard also uses less energy than Wi-Fi. Setup involved screwing in bulbs, plugging in the hub and pushing a button. That’s it. No need to troll home automation sites for arcane how-tos.

It works well, and it’s simple and energy efficient (8.5 watts per bulb at full power). So whats the catch? Price. The starter system â€" three bulbs and a hub â€" will set you back $200 and will be available exclusively in the Apple Store. Additional light bulbs will cost $60 each.

Even standard LED bulbs cost about $20 each, however. The tech isn’t cheap. But the flip side is that the bulbs will last for about 15 years. That’s a lot of light shows.