What's the hue? It's up to you
Of all the elaborate app-based gadgets
we've seen, the Hue Personal Wireless Lighting system by Philips is the most
extravagant, yet also perhaps the most enticing. Priced at $200 for the starter
kit and solely available via the Apple Store, Hue lets you light up your home
with LED bulbs that you can command from afar using the free universal iOS app.
tapping into nearly any color in the rainbow.
Photos
can be snapped or used as color references for creating mood-specific motifs.
It really is jaw-dropping to tap your first
preset in the Hue app and see the inauspicious white bulbs change to boldly
colored tones, quickly them on the fly. Is it practical? That's another subject
entirely. While controlling the bulbs via the Hue app is pretty
straightforward, the actual app design is a bit cumbersome, and the inability
to set recurring timers is a curious omission for now. Moreover, if you turn
the bulbs off using a wall switch rather than the app, the color scheme is lost
and it defaults back to white light these bulbs may be smart, but they don’t
have much of a memory. The 50-watt-equivalent bulbs also don’t get quite as
bright as cheaper fluorescent ones. And the price cannot be ignored, though the
Hue system is transforming the look and feel of the room. But the app offers
much more fine-tuned tweaking, letting you pick colors for individual bulbs,
snap or use a photo as a reference for color schemes, adjust the brightness of
each bulb, and set a timer for a certain motif to pop up at a specific time.
The Hue starter kit comes with three LED
bulbs and a wireless bridge, which taps into your Wi-Fi network via an Ethernet
cable into your router.
Of
all the elaborate app-based gadgets we've seen, the Hue Personal Wireless
Lighting system by Philips is the most extravagant
The bulbs fit into most traditional
household lamps, yet reportedly use 80 percent less power than a standard
throwaway bulb. Up to 50 bulbs can be connected to a single bridge, so you can
theoretically outfit every room of your home with Hue assuming you're willing
to spend $60 per bulb for the extras.
No doubt, Hue is one of the more exciting
pieces of app-related tech we've seen to date. Seeing bulbs deliver such a
dramatic change of color is arresting, and it’s oddly thrilling to be able to
tweak clearly a luxury item meant for early adopters. Later models and
revisions will hopefully bring added features and more flexibility via
different types of bulbs.
Light
Recipes are designed to benefit reading, relaxation, and more, though you can
create your own preset color mixes.
The bottom line. If you can stomach the
asking price and some limitations, the Philips Hue system is a wildly
innovative new approach to home lighting.
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Hue personal
wireless lighting
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Website: www.meethue.com
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Price: $199 for 3-bulb starter pack,
additional bulbs $60
·
Requirements: iPad. iPhone, or iPod touch
running iOS 4.3 or later
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(+)Boldly colored customizable lighting
controlled by your iOS device. Easy to set up and use. Expands to support up
to 50 total bulbs.
·
(-) App is slightly cumbersome and lacks
recurring timers. Bulbs lose color scheme when manually powered off. High
cost for starter kit.
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