I've Been Using Smart Home Gadgets For 11 Years: Here's Why Philips Hue Is My Favorite Choice (2024)

I’ve been using and testing smart home devices since I first installed my Nest Thermostat in 2013. And since then, I’ve used a wide variety of smart home products from different brands. Here’s why Phillips Hue is my favorite smart home brand.

1 A Wide Variety of Lighting Options

While the original Philips Hue lights were standard bulbs designed to fit in a lamp, the lineup has definitely grown. You can now choose from almost any Hue lighting source imaginable. The brand has outside lighting like string lights and security lighting to go along with an amazing amount of choices for inside your home.

You can find unique choices for indoors like a 3D printed lamp with a Hue bulb, a floor lamp, or even portable options that use built-in rechargeable batteries to provide light anywhere you want. It’s possible to use a Hue option for pretty much anywhere in your home. Even if you’re new to the Hue lineup, you can find several starter kits with multiple bulbs and a Hue bridge.

2 The Hue Bridge Helps Cut Down on Latency and Other Issues

Compared to other smart lighting options, the Hue Bridge is unique. It’s a needed component to control your Hue lighting system.

The small box attaches to your home router and uses an additional power plug. It acts as a communication hub to all of the lights so you can communicate and interact with the lights no matter where you are. You just need an internet connection and the Hue app for your iOS or Android device. You can control up to 50 lights in your home with a single bridge.

Installing the Hue Bridge takes just a few minutes. It can be purchased separately or available in a starter kit. While some smart home users shudder at having to worry about additional hardware, the Hue Bridge is definitely worthwhile. Along with unlocking additional features like custom lighting scenes, the Bridge helps take care of something you might have experienced when using smart home products—latency.

Have you ever pushed a button on your smartphone app or used a voice command to a smart speaker to turn on or off a light, and it takes significant time for the light to act, if at all? That’s latency. I’ve used Hue products for more than a decade with the bridge, and can’t remember a single latency issue. That includes me using lights outside, where Wi-Fi sometimes struggles to reach.

3 It Works With Every Major Smart Home Platform

If you’ve ever searched for a new smart home product, the first major question you usually need to ask is if the product will work with your smart home platform. While Apple HomeKit, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa are all popular choices, many times a device will only work with a single platform.

Thankfully, that’s not a problem with Philips Hue lighting. You can integrate into all three major platforms and even less well-known options like Samsung’s SmartThings. That makes it a great choice no matter how you want to control your smart home.

4 Ready for Matter

While the Hue lineup is ready for the smart home of today, it’s also ready for the near future of smart home technology—the Matter protocol. While Matter currently is facing some short-term challenges, it is shaping up to be a long-term good thing for the smart home.

If you don’t know, Matter takes the friction out of smart home devices. Instead of needing to use a certain platform and compatible device, Matter-compatible hubs are available from Apple, Google, and Amazon and can control any Matter device. Thanks to the Hue Bridge, all of the Hue products are Matter-compatible.

5 There Are Options for Every Budget

When some users talk about Philips Hue, they think that they’ll be spending more compared to other smart lighting solutions from competitors. While that might have been true a significant time ago when Hue only offered color-changing bulbs, that’s no longer the case. Since the brand continues to expand, there’s truly something for every price range.

You can now find many lighting options that only offer shades of white for less. Many bulbs can also connect via just Bluetooth so you won’t need to immediately purchase the bridge before diving head-first into the ecosystem.

6 It Has a Great App for Control and Customization

Let’s face it, many times control apps from some smart home manufacturers are so poorly designed and confusing, they are usually deleted after setting up a product. But that’s far from the case with the Philips Hue app.

Even though the app isn’t perfect, it’s easily my favorite smart home controller app. Along with the best way to add a new light to your system, or start from scratch, the Hue app makes it easy to control a whole home full of smart lighting with a Hue Bridge or just Bluetooth. You can group lights into rooms or zones to make controlling easy. Also, make sure to head to the app if you have any of the most common problems with Philips Hue bulbs.

And that’s far from all you can do with the app. You can create a unique atmosphere with popular, custom-made scenes like Arctic Aurora or Savanna Sunset to use with the lights in a specific room. You can browse by category and even customize your own scene from the start with custom colors and brightness.

7 The Brand Offers More Than Just Lighting

You might not know it, but the Hue brand is more than just lighting. It’s also complete home security. You can purchase indoor and outdoor cameras and contact sensors to keep watch over your home. And the technology is integrated with the lighting system as well.

With a contact sensor, when your front door is opened, all the lights in your home can automatically turn on.

The Hue app is the place to go to see recorded video, personalize camera settings, and fine-tune notifications from the security products. Adding security to the robust lighting brand makes sense and is a great way to take even more advantage of the great ecosystem.

As you might have noticed, I’m a huge fan of anything and everything Philips Hue. It’s one of the best smart home brands out there, and for good reason. With a huge variety of lighting options, you can truly make any home shine with smart lighting.