Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Update: Earlier today (12/16/2015) Philips reversed its decision to block third-party bulbs (h/t to Richard Brennan for leaving a comment letting us know). I try to be honest and fair in my reviews on Amazon, and when a company does the right thing to correct a mistake and/or I discover new things good or bad about the product, I'll amend my review accordingly. In this case, regarding the issue of blocking third party bulbs Philips heard its customers loud and clear. We don't need a big corporation to "protect us from ourselves". The vast majority of us will continue to buy Philips bulbs, but for the minority of us who still want to experiment and tinker we want that option as well and will accept whatever consequences arise. That's how an open system works. I appreciate the fact that Philips is listening to its customers and doing the right thing. And so I'm happy to rescind what I said and once again recommend Philips Hue. In addition to the things I wrote below about why I love Hue, probably the thing I love the most is that for years as authorities were banning incandescent bulbs it seems that our future was going to be relegated to a world of depressing CFL lighting. But LED technology changed all that, and Philips certainly made it accessible. One thing I love to do is to go into the OnSwitch app from time to time and turn on the "fluorescent bulb" light recipe and sit in the depressing world that might have been had LED not come along. For me the colors was just a bonus. Hue literally changed our life--we'd originally wanted to paint our walls different colors, but we decided to paint them an off-white, neutral color so that with the click of a button we could effectively get a different paint job every day. It's really amazing how changing the light of a room can change your mood. Look up "color moods" or "color psychology" and you'll see what I mean. (But just a warning--if you're trying to lose weight don't color your room red or orange) Like many of you my first set of Hue lights was the first-generation BR-30 lamps--if you look hard enough you can find these at a pretty good price on clearance nowadays. But I much prefer this second generation of A19 bulbs because of a couple things. Obviously there's the HomeKit integration (something I don't need right now as I'm using my own combination of Echo, WeMo, and Hue to do everything, but it's nice to know the option is there). While they tout the improved brightness of these lights (which isn't all that noticeable) for me the bigger improvement was that they're able to dim to much lower levels than before--something that always annoyed me (and the baby) about the old lights. The form factor of the A19 bulbs (essentially the standard light bulbs you grew up using) is convenient because it fits into any existing light fixture (with the BR-30s I had to remove lamp shades or twist the wires to fit them, and remove sconces all just to satiate my geekiness...much to my wife's dismay, but now with the A19s everything looks and fit as it should). Philips also improved the packaging--the BR-30s came in a gigantic box that was a bear to carry and ship, but the new packaging fits everything in about a third of the size. Finally, I like the fact that they use real glass instead of the plastic of the BR-30s, which makes these feel more like "real light bulbs". One of the annoying things, though, was that Echo doesn't work out of the box with the 2.0 hub. It's a shame that neither Amazon nor Philips will seem to even talk with each other when launching a new product when so many of their users depend on using both their products together. Luckily, I kept my 1.0 hub in, and everything still works (the 1.0 hub didn't recognize the new bulbs automatically, but the app gave me the option of entering the serial numbers on the bulbs manually, which worked fine). Another gripe I have is about their app. It's an interesting premise (you take a photo and then assign each of the lights to a different spot in the photo to come up with your "light recipe") but the default lighting schemes are more gimmicky than anything practical. Philips should pay app developers like OnSwitch to just license their software instead of pushing their own subpar app. And so I'm changing my review back to what it would have been in the beginning before this whole mess started, four stars (five for the lights, but docking one star for the app and the lack of Echo compatibility with the new bridge). So once again, I do recommend this product. But just so we (and Philips) don't forget, I'll keep my original review below. Original Review from 12/13/15 Recent developments from Philips show they're not a company to be trusted I was one of the biggest advocates of Philips Hue there was. I admit, at first I thought the premise was ridiculous. Who in the world is going to pay more than $60 for a light bulb when you can buy them at the dollar store for pennies on the dollar? But after I installed my Hue I was a believer. The hub was easy to install, the app was easy to use, and it was amazing how three little bulbs in a room could change the entire atmosphere. One click and it felt like you were standing outside in the sun. Another and you felt like the room was lit by candles. Yet another and you felt the room was lit up with Christmas lights. (Incidentally, I'd strongly recommend downloading an app called "OnSwitch" instead of using Philips' default app for the best color "recipes"). So yes, just like Philips convinced me to spend $200 for a toothbrush, they convinced me to spend $200 for three light bulbs. And in both cases the engineering as well as the impact they had on my daily life was so good that I didn't mind. But like many other long-time users of Hue, their latest firmware upgrade caused my opinion of this product to plummet overnight. To give a little background, Philips Hue was built on an open technology called ZigBee, which has been around for almost 10 years but has recently taken the home automation market by storm. Since Philips launched its product, ZigBee-certified competitive bulbs like those from Osram, GE Link, and CREE Connected worked fine with the hub. But as of December 11, they pushed a software patch to forcibly disable any competitors' products from working on their Hub. Only Philips products and those dubbed "Friends of Hue" (essentially third party developers who pay a huge fee to Philips) work anymore. Ostensibly the reason they give for this is "we just can't guarantee this seamless experience for products from other brands that are not tested and certified". But if the buyer is willing to take that risk, why not just leave well enough alone? Sadly, the real reason likely comes down to good old fashioned corporate greed. The same company that charges you $12 for a toothbrush head that costs them $0.50 to make now want to make sure that it protects its revenue stream of people buying $60 light bulbs. The only difference is that while they can't strong-arm you into not buying cheap replacement brush heads, one flip of the switch and they can shut you out of buying competitors' light bulbs. And someone in corporate must have done the math--we'll tick off a certain number of early adopters who paid full retail for our product and evangelized it to thousands of others...but now that the product is reaching critical mass in the marketplace we'll shut the door and milk the cash cow. What would have been nice, especially for a system based on open standards, would have been if they just competed in the open marketplace. If their bulbs are truly better than their competitors, I'll gladly pay the $60. By shutting out competition, all it tells me is that they have no interest in innovating or improving, just on gouging the next set of customers to come along. Sad that it's come to this, as this otherwise would have been a 5-star review. I hope Philips sees the foolishness of what they're doing and turns this around.