Philips is About to Offer More Bang for Your Buck With Their Philips Hue Smart Light Starter Kits

Philips has brought a few bright ideas with them to IFA 2017. After pioneering smart lighting with their app-controlled Hue lights in 2012, Philips has slowly but surely made them cheaper while introducing some tasteful fixtures. Both trends are continuing at this year’s show.

Going forward, Philips will include four of their A19 bulbs in starter kits for all three levels of their bulbs — White, White Ambiance, and White and Color Ambiance. Those kits will be $200, $150, and $100 respectively, so it looks like the additional bulbs won’t be affecting pricing too much. The kits combine the smart bulbs with a bridge unit that connects to a smartphone, allowing you to control the lights remotely.

Philips’s two new fixtures, as usual, look like they’re coming straight out of Ikea. The Philips Hue White Ambiance Cher Suspension fixture is a thin, curved suspension lamp that Philips suggests would go well over a kitchen table, while the Philips Hue White Ambiance downlight is a fixture designed to replace existing recessed light fixtures.

Philips is also announcing that the White and Color Ambiance version of the candle-shaped bulb that they introduced earlier this year will be available in October for $50. Pretty awesome if you want your mood lighting to look like a flickering green flame!

Philips Hue has come a long way since just being a bunch of lights you can control with your smartphone. Since the introduction of smart lighting, we’ve seen some pretty neat features become standard — it’s now possible to adjust light intensity and temperature, or simply automate both settings to change along with the time of day or the amount of ambient light. Philips has also put together some pretty neat preset lighting scenes in the past to complement video games, movies and TV shows. With the addition of color bulbs, it’s become possible to change the color of your lights to anything at any time, too — what seemed like a silly idea at the outset has turned into a pretty cool smart home staple!

Check out more of our IFA 2017 coverage right here!