Bridge 2.0 (Works with Alexa), White. Smart Home Lighting System

Excellent . Been using for more than 5yrs. Excellent. Best. Reliable. Great

I bought this along with two of the bulbs separately to use with Amazon Echo... and boy am I glad I did. It's just so cool to be able to remotely control your lights, and is surprisingly more useful than you would think. The installation process was easy: Plug in the equipment, turn it all on, download the app, press a big button on the bridge. If you have Amazon Echo you just install that skill and discover the devices, that was it. Like I mentioned in my Amazon Echo review my son is a light sleeper and refuses to turn his bedroom light off. With this I can either leave the light on and slowly decrease how strong the light is or i can ask Alexa to turn the lights of later when I am sure he is asleep. My stairs are particularly creeky so if i walk upstairs to do this he wakes up easily. It can also be used to keep your home safe whilst you are away at work or on holiday. You can set the lights to come on at a particular time so it looks like you are home when it is dark, or away. This to me is a winner. The lights themselves are as bright as any other 60W bulb on the market, but are slightly longer that normal bulbs so factor this in if you have enclosed light fittings and check your measurements. They are also insanely expensive for some of the bulbs (between £15 to £25 and upwards depending on the bulb) but are they worth it, to me yes they are... especially if you have Amazon Echo as it really expands the experience. I'm not rich but love my tech and got some parts of the kit as a gift from family and can appreciate the cost on these (but they do last 25000 hours + which is a plus). On a side note you do not need to buy a starter kit to get the bridge to work if you are a first time user, you can start off by just buying this and then buying the bulbs separately if that's cheaper for you. I have read elsewhere people saying you need a starter kit and that this is just for upgrading from the V1 bridge, that is incorrect information On the whole with the price taken in to consideration I would still recommend this.

Have purchased my first Hue light a 2m colour striplight (v4) snd a Hue bridge (v2). This was for my 10 yr old daughter's bedroom and she is very happy and excited. Pros and technicalities: Ovetall Very easy, simple and convenient setup. Easy to integrate with Alexa. Great product from Philips Hue. 5 stars You Must have downloaded P Hue app (Android, iOS) before installation. 1. Plug Hue bridge into power source 2. Attach bridge with rj45 cable to your network or router. 3. Open app on phone. It automatically detects Bridge, then updates it. 4. Beware it takes quite some time to update! (approximately 15 min) 5. Attach striplight to power 6. Search for Hue lights in app. 7. App detects striplight (very easy, first time, no lag, smooth) 8. Once integrated, it can be named whatever you like. Jojo, rattle, bindi, we settled for Griffin! App now updates Striplight (expect another 15 min to complete it). 9. App integrates with Amazon Echo Alexa seamlessly and works smooth with voice commands. 10. You can name the Room and lights in that room, so I guess you can add as many rooms (as you can spend) and lights in each room. (Total 50 with each Bridge as per manual). 11. You can set scenes and ask alexa eg: 'turn savana sunset in room 1', Perfect 12. You can set routines, timings when light to come and go with sunset and sunrise etc etc Cons and ideas for improvements: 1. Slightly less user friendly for complex settings ie setting routines and grouping lights in each room and then the whole house. It could be improved by adding icons instead of too much prose, (like somfy TaHoma app) 2. Voice commands for Echo: It wouldn't work if you say 'Set Savanna sunset Scene in Room1', instead you have to be Specific and say 'Turn Savanna sunset in room 1'. 3. Setting routines could be simplified: one example is you want lights control to be activated at night time commwncing with sunset and switch off with sunrise. This could be more user friendly in the Hue app as current a bit complex set up. Finally the price of the Hue lights is ridiculously HIGH, you pay a premium, (though no doubt Hue lights are amazing!). Probably it is due to lack of competition but in modern era soon expect other competitors with at par quality of lights and app to get into the ring... can Amazon start making its own colorful lights?!

Positive: The colours are good. The set up is very easy. The light is very customisable. Good size. Gets very bright. Negative: The single button at the back feels like a cheap component. It has almost no click and it feels like I am pressing into a marshmallow. I am concerned about the wear and tear of this button over time since it felt mushy since day 1. I have to use this button to light because sometimes the app can't connect to it when the light is turned off. This is not a deal breaker but I think worth mentioning on a product which charges more than other competitors on Amazon.

This is an expensive venture, which goes without saying, really. You need the hub plus each of the lights you want. If, like me, you don't have B22 fittings, this makes for exceptionally expensive bulbs. Great experience though. I couldn't merit knocking the rating down to 4 stars due to the price because this is a given when you chose to go for the Hue line. I'll reserve my details of the other products to the review pages of the respective products, notably the Philips Hue Personal Wireless Lighting 2 m Lightstrip Plus LED Kit (Includes 1 x 2 m LED Lighstrip Plus, 1 x Power Adapter), Works with Alexa and bulbs ( Philips Hue White Ambiance Personal Wireless Lighting LED E14, Edison Screw bulb, Works with Alexa [Energy Class A+ ]) For the box itself you get one srew mounting hole on the back. Don't mount it on the wall first as you'll need to sync it up with the app before hanging it on the wall. The app tells you everything you need to do to set up the system, other than plugging it in. I was interested to see that the network cable was 2-pair, rather than the standard 4-pair. Evidently it doesn't need as much. I opted to use the cable that came with it, though a standard Ethernet cable works fine. The whole process it pretty seemless - just plug it in and follow the guide on the app. There's not much else to say about it, really. Overall, very pleased with the purchase, albeit an expensive venture. If you dont need automation or voice commands, consider getting RGB LED strips and/or dimmer switches as they're far, far cheaper than Hue.

A great addition to my hue system, looks like a permanent candle in my living room, and bonus it can be unplugged and used on battery!

Much better than I thought it would be. It’s really good quality price of kit. I think it’s glass, and I thought it would be plastic

Having used and discarded a few so called smart systems thanks to the tragic side of my early adopter failures I eventually ended up using Philips Hue. And by far its the best system out - with one caveat which, is the way the app is programmed isn't immediately intuitive. Once you understand it, it works well, but one has to understand the way in which Philips have created the system and their logic. Anyway, the basic idea is to fit this bridge or hub unit so that it can connect to the web which, is where it runs from being interfaced by the app on your phone or tablet. The hub then controls wirelessly the various lighting around your house - as long as you make sure they are switched on of course. The range of the hub is very good and compared to the likes of LightroomRF and Samsung Smart Things - both of which I have - the Philips Hue Bridge has the best range. That does not mean it covers my house because it's a bit larger than most and more importantly when I renovated it I used foil backed plasterboard thus creating a bit of a Faraday cage in various places. Doh! So I have three of these bridges and that's another winner over the likes of LightroomRF which does not allow this. You can fit many bridges so that dead spots can be covered effectively. It's not quite ideal on the app as you have to switch between bridges each of which is used to program the lights within it's zone of influence but of course once set up with routines you can forget about it anyway. Seamless integration with Alexa and that means voice control of your lights if you have some that you don't leave set on a routine. Overall a superb system.