Philips Hue 563270 Starter Kit, 10.5W A19 E26 Bluetooth 4-pack Smart Bulb

I had planned to purchase these months ago because another smart bulb brand that I was using kept repeatedly failing in my home. Worse than the other brand failing, their support process often meant spending 30+ minutes on the phone and waiting weeks for replacements... Then their is Phillips Hue - what a relief. They arrived quickly, the packaging was great, the instructions were clear, and setup couldn't have been easier. It took me about 20min to unbox, write down the serial number of each item, screw the bulbs into my fixtures, connect the hub, and get the lights working via the app. It was so fast and easy and the bulbs seem to respond quicker than the previous brand I was using. The day after install I played with the app more and setup zones and scenes and then connected Hue to my Alexa - everything was so much easier than past smart bulbs and I couldn't be happier. I plan to slowly convert all of my lights over to Hue.

I have been dabbling with "SMART" home for about a year. All of the learning and experiments have led me to the stable baseline that is Philips Hue. I purchased a White Ambiance Starter Kit and I am really happy I did. What I can do in my home office is effective, fun, and useful. Isn't the order for 6 Ambiance Color lamps I just placed the real 5 Star review? Yes it is.

Extremely easy to set up and use with the app. Perfect lighting for a family room with a large screen tv. Bright for reading and tone it down for tv time.

Very happy with my bulbs and hub. Product availability seems low at the moment for additional Hue items, but I'm hoping that it improves after the holidays

Overall I'm happy with my purchase of this started kit. I work in the home automation industry as a low voltage designer and I wanted to use the Hue products for my personal home. After having them for about a month the bulbs themselves appear to have a high CRI for a consumer product and have a nice low level dim. Its important to note that the Hub needs to be hardwire to your router. That was not clear before I purchased this kit. Luckily I have a mesh network set up that let me find a work around. I'm mostly struggling with the app interface. I find navigation to not be intuitive at all. The 'Hue Labs' lists the automations separately than the rest of the native automations and its very annoying to work with. To flip back and forth between the two requires quite a few "clicks" and makes it hard to look globally at all of your automations. Having those automation in place was one of the major selling points for me to invest in this product. Also to make edits to any accessories you have to go through the settings to each of the accessories and only then can users make changes, not intuitive at all. I understand why the 'Explore' tab is always available at the bottom of the app screen, but from a consumer stand point it should be replaced with accessories. I would still recommend the kit, but know going in there are some pain points to take into consideration. Also if if you're not a tech-y person than the app might be challenging to navigate.

A little more initial direction on which app to work from would have saved some time with customer support getting back on track. There are red herrings when simply searching for Hue or Philips Hue. Otherwise a great product, very convenient to use.

Great add on to my philips hue collection works great with Hue Sync box while watching movies better then the old standard floor lamp

I really, really like what Philips are trying to do with this product line. However, the product is not as plug-and-play as it should be (in my opinion) esp given the cost. And the software intergration seems very glitchy / temperamental. It took a while for the App on my phone to recognize the Philips Hub and the s/w update seems to take a while longer than it should. I wasn't able to connect to Alexa via the app on my phone but was finally successful using my laptop. (I read about this tip from another Philips on Google.) I would have rated it higher if it wasn't for the connection issues I found.

The product image was not what I received. It was misleading.

The bridge could not connect to my wifi even though I connected the ethernet cable directly to the router. I looked online and found all kinds of trouble shooting advice, but nothing worked. I wish I could've had a better review since I was look forward to using the smart lights.