Philips Hue White and Colour Ambiance LED Smart Light Bulb 2 Pack [GU10 Spot] , with Bluetooth, Works with Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple Homekit. [Energy Class G]
1 Tropical Twilight Scene 2 Chinatown Scene 3 Relax 4 Energise
| Weight: | 80 g |
| Dimensions: | 5.1 x 5.1 x 5.8 cm; 80 Grams |
| Brand: | Philips Hue |
| Model: | 9290019531 |
| Colour: | White and Colour Ambiance |
| Manufacture: | Signify |
| Colour: | White and Colour Ambiance |
The best smart bulbs
Always connect with hub and easy to control
So far I’ve used about 20 of these in the house in various places and overall I think they are very good. Expensive, but good. I like the fact it’s so easy to change the colour of the ‘white’. The first hue spotlight bulb I bought was the normal white (eg non ambiance) and it was far too yellow. We like a much cooler white, as it mirrors daylight a lot better. Since switching to these ambiance bulbs, we’re delighted with the temperature of the white we can set it to. They aren’t the cheapest, or brightest on the market, but I like the hue app and integration with Alexa. Unfortunately, my wallet hasn’t enjoyed Philips hue so much, and in that respect I sort of wish we’d not got sucked into the whole Hue ecosystem! I’d say we’ve spent a good few hundred quid on various Hue bits around the home, including their lightstrip for behind the tv and a ceiling light for the porch.
Interestingly I’ve just started experimenting with addressable ‘pixel tape’ leds from other manufacturers, and the effects you can get are much more impressive than anything I’ve seen from Philips, but you just have to be prepared to fiddle around with it a lot more, whereas Philips integration is pretty straightforward as long as your not a complete smart home newbie/ luddite!
Rich saturated colours, controllable without the Phillip’s hub, integrates easily with Alexa, lovely warm white and as bright or dim as anyone could ask. Great bulb.
Brilliant range of hue products. This is just as good as any
I gave it 5 stars for Alexa integration, but I use Google Home like everyone else.
Don’t waste time with the cheap Chinese competitors, these lights are so much better there is no way to compare them. Very nice to have a dim feature when in the kitchen at night.
Love my hue lights, got these for my bathroom and they’re great.
The spotlight perfectly complements the default set up of 2 other Hue lights.
The original GU10 White Bulbs with Bluetooth did have a buzzing sound and Philips customer support replaced them with the newer ones and they work brilliantly.
Great reliable product. Grossly overpriced. But, they seem to have a monopoly on decent WiFi bulbs, so….
I am not one to leave reviews, but this bulb is SICK ! I never bought any philips bulbs because of the hue bridge situation and to be honest to the high price … but this bulb as changed my mind ! 1) because the quality of the light and the number of options is exceptional 2) for once the app is perfectly adequate for a multiple bulbs household 3) no delay in switching unlike literally every other brand on the market.
So yes, replacing all my bulbs one by one to Philips
Although our house is very much a “smart” home, I’m relatively late to the smart bulb party. I’m an immediate convert though.
Over the last year I have slowly been changing as many of the bulbs in the house that I can. I have chose to go with the Philips Hue White Ambiance bulbs as they give the best combination of lighting options against cost that suit our requirements. Although there are a few benefits to the coloured bulbs, I see it more of a gimmick that you’ll quickly get bored of. Of all my lights, I have four that are coloured bulbs, but I couldn’t tell you the last time I had them on anything other than white. I use the dimming function regularly, but not the colours. Plus, not only are they considerably more expensive than the Ambiance bulbs, some are also much bigger and don’t fit all light fittings quite so well, if at all.
So, presently I have 10 GU10s, 4 B22, 4 E27 bulbs and 6 E14 bulbs dotted around the house plus some of the exterior Hue lights also. The elephant in the room with these bulbs is the cost. There’s no getting away from the fact that they are expensive, even if you manage to pick them up on a Lightning Deal. That said, you’re paying for much more than a way of lighting your room. Smart homes are only limited by your imagination, and you can implement some pretty funky routines through the Alexa app if you’re brave enough to delve deeply. Beyond the Hue bulbs I have 12 TP Link smart sockets controlling things like the lights on my two fish tanks, I have 7 Echo dots, 2 Sonos Ones, a Logitech Harmony, Nest thermostat and two Nest smoke detectors. My Denon amp is connected by its HEOS app, and I have a couple of LG TVs with Alexa built in plus another with a Fire HD stick. Five internal IP cameras and 8 external cameras plus my recent addition of a Ring door camera. If thought through, all of these can be interlinked. For example, should the smoke detectors or door bell go off, I can have the Hue light bulbs dim or light up. If a motion sensor is tripped on one of the IP cameras, I can have the Hue bulbs in the patio lights come on.
Additionally, even without linking with other smart devices, the Philips Hue bulbs offer plenty of things on their own. The ability to gradually lower the light as the night goes on, and likewise gradually bring the light up as your morning routine begins. You can have lights come on as the daylight begins to fade, and set them to many different shades to suit your mood such as reading or night light, through Savanna sunset and white brilliance.
You options are many and varied, and if you can look past the initial set-up costs, they can hugely enhance your home. I’d certainly fit them again if I had my time over.
Fitting out the house with these. Love the warm white colour adjustment.
These new bulbs are only 5.8cm tall which is a direct replacement for standard GU10 bulbs. These also have Bluetooth built-in so that you can access each light via Bluetooth independently if you don’t have the Hue Bridge (why you would want to do this is a mystery – buy the Philips Bridge it will save you a lot of hassle).
One thing to note – as you will see from the photo the lense on the new bulbs is a little convex, whereas the previous model was concave – just to be aware if you have flush bulb cover fittings.
I have actually installed these in the garden as downlights within waterproof fittings and they work very well.
Works perfect with Alexa unless we have visitors then they just do what they like to make us look like idiots 🙂
Will always buy Philips hue though
As the title says, these are really expensive bulbs. However they work really well and have integrated into my smart home brilliantly
My bog standard thermostat was playing up, so after a bit of research, I purchased a Nest learning thermostat.
I learnt that you could control the thermostat via an app or using Alexa, so I decided to get a couple of Echo dots and a 3rd Gen speaker.
I then heard about the Philips Hue lights. We have 21 downlights around the house, plus various B22, E27 and E14 bulbs and and thought it would be good to upgrade so bought the Philips Hue bridge which was recommended.
My jaw hit the floor when I saw the price of the Philips GU10 colour bulbs!! How can they be this expensive??
But I was hooked by this point and decided to get a few anyway. Once fitted I loved the look and decided to get a few more. Before long, all 21 downlights were replaced including most of the other bulbs around the house. I took advantage of Ebay and Gumtree and found some really good deals – all of them the newer type smaller GU10 bulb.
Using the Hue bridge, the GU10 bulbs have 16 million colours, so you can get really creative with this, alternatively just ask Alexa to turn them on/off or dim and change the colours. Bear in mind Alexa doesn’t have the full colour range that you get with the bridge.
We already own a 2 couple of Philips Ambilight TV’s and was pleasantly surprised to learn that via the Hue bridge, you can sync your selected lights to follow the Ambilight, although we don’t use this feature much.
They do starter kits, so you don’t have to go full throttle as I did but beware because once you start down the light path……
A superior LED product. Could be a little less expensive.
Beautiful light bulbs, you can adjust the brightness according to your needs ( which is also energy saving) It was a bit of a headache to link it google home but I managed to do it ( after several attempts) and now it all works smoothly.
I am definitely get more bulbs!
Super easy retrofit option, paired with a hue wireless wallswitch, a few spots transform the room.
Excellent addition to my hue set up in the kitchen.
Nice light from these. Was going to get the colour ones, glad I didn’t.
These White and Colour Ambiance have support for a wide and broad range of colours from warm white to a cool daylight white and they also support configuration with 16 million different colours allowing complete customisation for a user.
These new generation bulbs support the use of the Philips Hue Bluetooth Application meaning that the bridge is no longer required, however some people may still wish to invest in this for the added functionality such as away from home control. This supports the Alexa and Google Assistant AI Virtual Assistants for voice control of the bulbs. It has great presets already for people to use out of the box.
It is a little pricey however it is the basis for a bigger and better smart-home system if you are interested.
OMG! Those gu10 Philips lightbulbs looks stunning! So easy to setup, just plugged bridge in to your router then search for it in the hue app run all the updates of the firmware then insert all the bulbs and turn your light on, immediately go to search mode and all your lightbulbs will show! Like magic! You pick any bulb and it will flashes for you telling: here I am! You can create groups or split them! Millions of colours to pick! Yay! I am so happy like a 4 years old with biggest ice cream on Earth! If you can afford please go and buy them! If you cannot just buy one! One tiny little bulb and try it! Perfect addition to living room! Worth every penny! I have bought 9 of them as per attached video! Make site your switches on the wall are normal switches, if you have dimmers those bulbs will flicker like crazy! Well enough writing, I am back to my lightbulbs!
once you are over the price of these little things… you’re happy. work perfect. combined with senors or other home smart device controllers.
Excellent product and integrated into hue app and alexa and google home. Easy to group and set up timers
Got these for bathroom with no window as a nightlight that also turns on as full light during the day. Need separate waterproof casings for the spots and they are expensive but they work very well with motion sensor as a solution. Whilst spots aren’t cheap it does save you cost of electrician and found them very straightforward to install.
Very expensive in comparison to rivals. However are the only ones to truly fit a shallow ceiling housing.
I love smart lights! 90% of my house is now Philip hue. Bulbs, strip lights, now looking at a outside light. Love the apps that you can download to add more effects. HueDynamic (not free) I recommend for a good range of effects.
These are awesome, pretty expensive but worth the investment. We have them setup so that they slowly change temperature based on sunrise/sunset which works well for us. Seamlessly integrates with Alexa, you’ll need a Hue hub to control a large amount of lights, I use a RaspberryPi running Hassio with a Conbee USB adaptor so I can maintain local control without the need for a Hub, but the Hub works well too. As these are individually addressable if you have a load of ceiling lights you can use the Hue app to set up scenes and only turn on selected lights at the touch of a button even when they are all in the same circuit.
I must admit, after a lifetime of buying cheap humble lightbulbs, from decades of incandescent through to the low energy compact fluorescent (initially expensive in the early 80’s ), dallying briefly with halogen spotlights (banned from sale in the EU since 2018) until finally, in just the last few years, the now ubiquitous led light, which has become the supreme ultra low energy consuming, and , finally, cheap lightbulb of choice.
The move to led lighting has been an environmental godsend in terms of CO2 (and mercury, in the case of the compact fluorescent. or CFL, ). The annual energy consumption for an LED bulb is around 30 times lower than for a corresponding incandescent bulb. As lighting accounted for around 20% of national energy consumption in the US, moving to LEDs provides a significant environmental benefit and , due to lower demand for electricity, an economic one as well.
Now, a new revolution in lighting is upon us; the smart bulb. I know I’m a little late to the show as they have been around a couple of years but they have been , as still are, relatively expensive. So expensive, in fact, that I found it hard to justify paying so much for what is essentially a simple light source. After all, these new bulbs don’t last as long as a simple led (15,000 hrs compared to a theoretical 50,000hrs). I have finally taken the plunge by being given a pack of two Phillips Hue GU10s and a ‘smart button’ (sold seperately). Initially I thought I would install them in my bathroom, replacing 2 of the very bright cool white recessed spotlights. I was surprised, and somewhat disappointed to find that my bathroom lights were sealed units. I cannot take the bulbs out! As it would take time and money to install new replacement GU10 bulb holders, I opted instead to find another way to try them out. A search on Amazon revealed that I could get a pack of B22 to G10 converters quite cheaply. This meant that I could simply plug them into my Anglepoise lamp or any of the other traditional sockets around the house. Once I had done this, I was so impressed by my new lights. I can now control them with my new Phillips Hue smart button and also from my phone via the free Phillips BT Hue app (BT= Bluetooth, which needs to be enabled on your phone), not just switching them on or off or for dimming but also for setting the ambiance, in the case of these bulbs the temperature, from a cold blue to an almost natural to a warm orange, so useful for whether I want to read or draw or as a background while watching TV or conversing. Furthermore, through the app, you can control the timing of individual lights. It’s a remarkable difference to just manually switching the light on or off and well worth 5 stars, and I haven’t even got around to using Alexa and Google Assistant capability yet.
Having purchased some Osram smart bulbs in the past I can not recommend Philips Hue bulbs enough. They are practically plug and play. No flicking lights on and off to reset them and no issues finding them within the app. Will always be buying hue bulbs from now on.
Colour is uniform across the lamp face. Excellent colour range and brightness. Compact.
My 3rd set of Hue bulbs. Very reliable and I love the dusk to dawn feature and also being able to set different levels of brightness for different times of day. Bought during Black Friday event for a great price. I can’t fault them.
I have so many of these bulbs!
I decided to replace all my GU10’s with these so I had Alexa integration etc and I am really happy with the outcome.
They have a number of colour and brightness settings to suite every taste and need. I set my bathroom ones to a motion sensor along with my hall ones and its just so good to not think about it!
Great smart lights if you’re already heavily invested in the Philips Hue ecosystem. However, I recently moved house and decided (as part of the agreement with my girlfriend, whose idea it was to downsize) to make the entire house “smart”. After a bit of research, I decided upon the Samsung Smartthings system, which integrates with Hue among many other manufacturers. This is where things start to lose their shine (pun intended) for the expensive Philips bulbs.
You see, IKEA now sell a range of smart bulbs that are compatible with Smartthings too, but they’re much, much cheaper, whilst offering almost identical functionality. This makes Philips offering seem very expensive in comparison, and whilst I do love Philips Hue (I must have close to 30 bulbs and lamps in the house), I have to mark them down a few stars in the value rankings.
They are pricy but with the app they are capable of so much. These gu10 bulbs fit exactly as a replacement for my existing bulbs.
Very easy to install with Hue app.
Can get great effects. Not as bright as some but seem very reliable and perform well.
Just too expensive as all Hue products are given the new entrants into the market. Come on Philips – you have competition now, it’s time to price appropriately.
With all things hue, they just work perfectly. Easy to install. Rarely any issues. They are pricey, but you get quality.
Much brighter and more colourful than the previous generation. Plus the added bonus of fitting flush and not protruding from light fitting.
Great light lots of different colours and easy to install and use
Brilliant purchase. No issues with pairing and connecting with echo.
Had the older version and they are good, these however are even better.
Easy to tune the white ambience using the Philips Hue app. Good consistent results.
The Philips Hue White Ambiance Smart Spotlight Twin Pack is a good way to extend your smart lighting to lights needing GU10 Spots. This might be to add some extra ambient lighting in the corner of a room using an uplighter. You can then control these with your other smart lights via a smart phone app with Siri, Alexa or Google.
Use the Hue App on your smart phone (make sure it is the proper Hue one and not a generic smart lights app) to setup everything easily and quickly. Once you’ve done that you can change the mood or the brightness of your lights quite easily – and, if you have a hue button, you also have a smart switch to control your lights, on/off and dim, from anywhere in the room.
The bulbs are White Ambiance which means the mood can be varied through 50,000 shades of white from cool to warm, and they are fully dimmable as well. Control of the lights is possible via the App or voice controlled by Alexa, Google or Siri and also, partly, through the hue button.
Though great fun to play with I really still wonder just how practical, and expensive, it would be to try and change all your light bulbs throughout the house with ‘Hue’ bulbs and switches. Most of us remain happy to switch lights on and off, and dim them, with a switch by the door when we walk into a room rather than announcing “Alexa! Switch on the main bedroom light.” I realy still haven’t got over just how odd this seems – but less self-conscious Alexa adopters may have no problem with it – and the money to cover the extensive cost.
I can, of course, see the advantage for anyone with mobility issues when voice control might be a great asset. For me, though, this is a solution in search of a problem – and I think that sticking with standard switches by the door makes more practical and economic sense.
Works very well, I use them with Alexa – no need for any installation, just ask Alexa to scan for the devices.
Brightness is great.
Excellent items, which were a much needed addition to my Hue Lighting system in the home. I have installed these in the bathroom, and in the kitchen. Whilst they are not super bright the dimming and remote control of the devices is a godsend.
I love these bulbs – I just wish they were a little cheaper. I recently fitted 8 to my living room and it was very expensive for a few bulbs… that said they work and work well.
These G10 Spotlight bulbs seem to be of good quality and give off a good amount of light equivalent to the 35W G10 halogen bathroom lights I used to have. The Philips app also works well allowing you to control when the lights come on and set schedules for brightness and colour (white to warm white) for different times of day. What is disappointing is that you need to purchase an additional Hub in order to control away from home or control lights in multiple rooms. I have smart plugs that are connected to the router so I can control everything from my phone – I think it is poor that the same can’t be done for these lights. This, coupled with the relatively high cost of the bulbs, means I would approach the Philips Hue light range with caution.
Work a treat I. My kitchen and they are nice and bright.
Love them! Best thing we could of done with our lounge. Great lighting for all moods and films.
If you know your Philips hue you’ll know these are great! And to get these on sale is even better!
Really easy to install with the Phillips BT app, connects to Alexa really easily and work really well
Easiest smart bulbs to install, we have an Echo home so no need for an extra smart hub, put the bulbs in and the Alexa app picked them up straight away. What you get for a higher price is convenience – I have one other cheaper smart bulb in the house and it took 3 different apps to get it running and it still flickers uncontrollably!
Perfect for lazy gits who can’t even be bothered to use a light switch or for tormenting husbands who like to irritate their wives from an app while at work
I previously wrote the below review but having discussed this issue with a colleague of mine, I took the following steps and now I am happy. I removed all 6 lights from the Alexa app and added them to the Hue App. I then added them back into a group in the Alexa app and now they respond almost simultaneously.
I got 6 of these in total for my kitchen and while they work great and integrate well with Alexa there is a slight delay in getting them all on/off/color changed. Ok the delay is minimal but still slightly annoying my eyes.
Fab; I have other Philip hue light bulbs and they all work wonderfully. I tend to use via Siri. Integration is easy, use is easy.
Sometimes you’d prefer white (or blue-white) lighting. At other times a more mellow yellow light would be preferable.
Now with these smart spotlight bulbs from Philips, you can have a range of white colours (warmth), controlled by an app on your smartphone.
These GU10 bulbs are funky and cool, there’s no denying it. But at 34.99 for 2 bulbs I find myself wincing at the price.
You’ll want a Philips Hue Bridge (sold separately) to get the most functionality out of these bulbs.
Philips Hue bulbs are always very reliable in my experience and work perfectly with the app and HomeKit.
The good.
Ive never gone with the crowd on anything, so this was my first time. It was worth it. Setting up is easy. The app is great, and so are the independant apps you can get. Eg disco, lights flash and change colour to music.
The colours they produce are far better than the cheap ones i bought.
Overall really please with them, i got a motion sensor and put that in the kitched. Everytime i come in the lights go on, and will go off after i have left. Ie gone to work .
Finally they are too expensive if they are not on some offer. Wait until they are.
Easy to setup and use. Love the disco apps you can get with these when playing music from my Echo devices
As ever, expensive for a light bulb, but my god the colour and the brightness are fantastic! I’ve got plenty of other hue white and colour ambience bulbs in B and E formats, and these spots just top the list for me, I had 4W dimmable LEDs in before that were expensive, and these are even brighter, colours are crisp and have good range. The bulb itself is the standard GU10 form factor size and thus these bulbs will fit nicely in any existing GU10 fitting without issue compared the the previous generation which were too large apparently.
Got a whole dose of these on black Friday, too dear otherwise. They are an excellent upgrade on the previous ones, colours are better. Extremely important point, these are now the same height as “ordinary” gu10 da which straight away makes changing to these easy, a lot of gu10 fittings are not long/deep enough to accommodate the previous is model
This is sadly a really limited review as I just can’t get them to work. Yes, I’m certainly no electrician or DIY expert by any means, but can usually set up wi-fi or Bluetooth tasks, but absolutely not with these. Also my 13 year old daughter is really good with technology but sadly she’s none the wiser either.
What I can say is the instructions are incredibly limited and we tried setting this up using an IPad Air to no joy. I’m not even convinced the app we downloaded was correct as there’s a few different options on the instructions. It also said to hold the app near the bulb to connect this but ours just came up with an error message. I’m now going to ask family members if they can set this up for me when they come to visit as I’m now at a loss.
I will also say that the light bulb is currently working (just as a normal light bulb) and it’s brilliant quality, very bright and was easy install. I’m truly hopeful that if can get this working with the app then it’ll be a really fun light bulb for my children in the bathroom.
Difficult to comment on value for money as can’t see the finished product. It truly does need to be easier to set up with far clearer instructions.
Bulbs nice and bright…set them really quickly in my bathroom. Love the different shades of ambient light. Have them working with a Hue motion sensor.
These bulbs are excellent and easy to install if you already have GU10 fittings in your house. Once installed, they very easily connected to my existing Hue Bridge (these can apparently be used over Bluetooth without a Bridge but I didn’t need to test this so cant speak to this feature).
Being able to dim and change the tone of my kitchen/dining room has meant I can really customise the space depending on whether I’m hosting and want medium warm light or need lots of light for cooking.
One note is these bulbs are about 5-10mm deeper than normal LED GU10 bulbs so may be an issue in some ceiling fittings.
Now I wanted the Phillips Hue to work with my Alex and Hive. This was a lot easier than the initial setup and I was pleased. Please note it also works with Google Assistant and Apple Home Kit.
The are many controls in the Phillips Hue App and you can customise your lights to your liking. Its fun and the number of colours are almost endless. 16 million colours and shades of white. Wow, that’s a lot.
Everybody should have LED lights in their homes as its currently the most energy-efficient way of illuminating your home. And may I add brighter brightness than the old conventional light bulbs.
The Hue Bridge uses your Hue bulbs as stepping stones for its Zigbee network, allowing you to add more lights to even the furthest corners of your home. Adding a new device is easy – go to the settings icon – choose Light setup for example and then follow the “Add light” instructions.
I love the Phillps Hue technology and will be expanding my home with a mixture of Hive and Phillips Hue devices in conjunction with Alexa – Amazon Echo.
I do recommend Phillips Hue, it is pricey but you are paying for one of the leading brands with robustness and well supported and tested devices.
Great replacement lamp and can now be automated with a Philips lux level and movement detecto
Bought them on Black Friday due to the saving. They would be too expensive otherwise. Easy to install and great product like all the Hue lights.
These are good. After a very expensive mistake with INNR bulbs (Over 850 spent & now 7 bulbs have died in less than 12 weeks @ 29.99 each) DO NOT BUY INNR BULBS) they replaced 3 only and were not at all concerned about how much I had spent with them. These work and the colours are better. Phillips Hue, more expensive but better.
The Hue app is so easy, you simply pair the bulbs to your phone and you can control them independently or as a set. This includes choosing a colour from millions or by selecting one of the presets like Nightlight, Dimmed or Relax.
The future of lighting is here, very much in its infancy but it will get better and more common.
Well recommended, become an early adopter of technology! Roll on the musical flashing toilet…
Great all round, always get comments from visitors about all my different Philips hue lighting.
Don’t get me wrong it can be pricey but by far the best out there and worth i
I’m a big fan of the whole Philips Hue thing, and have it set up all through my house, but many people are put off by the need to have a ‘hub’ plugged into your router which uses up a power point and needs to be next to your router as well. All of this adds up to more cables in your house and can make things look untidy, and it’s a fair amount of money to spend on something you might not use.
This bluetooth based version gets rid of the hub by connecting via bluetooth instead of your home network, which simplifies things and reduces the price. Set up is very easy, just screw in the bulbs and fire up the bluetooth app which is free to download. Once you’ve done that, you have full control over the bulbs from your phone. You can dim them, turn them on and off, change colour, and so on. You can also connect Alexa to them, so that it can be voice operated. This sounds like a gimmick until you’ve tried it, as the convenience of entering a dark room with your hands full and just asking for the lights to come on is awesome. Or you’re sitting down to watch a movie and realise you’ve left the lights on full beam just after you get comfy – say the word, and they’ll dim down to whatever you like.
The bluetooth connection though, while convenient and easy to set up, does have some limitations which you’ll probably find frustrating eventually. Firstly, because it’s bluetooth, it only works if your phone is in the same room as the lights. Similarly, any Alexas (Alexi?) you have also need to be in the same room. This undoes lots of the usefulness of Hue, in that you can’t turn lights on and off when you’re away from home, or even if you’re in another room. You can’t set up programs like the lights coming on at certain times or in response to certain events. (lights on slowly at sunset, for example). If you find yourself really using the features of these bulbs, you’ll almost certainly want to get a hub.
If you don’t really use them though, well, you’ve not spent much money to find out Hue isn’t for you, so this is a good way to try them out.
As for the bulbs themselves, they’re nice bright LED bulbs, so you can reasonably expect them to last for a good few years. They are bright enough to use in the kitchen. Light colour you can of course choose youself via the app, but they can go from a quite harsh blue to a golden yellow. You can mix and match the tones between each bulb to suit your likes.
I’m pleased with them very much, but I’m quite sold on the whole Hue thing. If you’re not convinced, this is a reasonably good value way of seeing if it’s for you.
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As with so many things in the smart home arena… most of us tend to stick with the kit/infrastructure we already have and I am no exception. These bulbs, in addition to all other bulbs (lights) work fine. As mentioned…. am not much into Bluetooth, but use them with the bridge. the convenience to have Alexa handle them for me is a key factor. Granted…. Alexa (She whose name must not be spoken in vain) can at times be temperamental with anything under her control, but as a Lady…. you can expect that from her. Phillips….you could double your market share IF you set a more reasonable price.
As to the bulbs themselves? Bridge INSTANTLY found them, as well as ALL FOR HUE, a brilliant third part app which is my main control app. They do what they should do and do it well. I’ve two more to buy and then the GU10’s have all been replaced with these. The bridge does the work for me and uses just ONE single IP address on your router. If you are kitting out the whole house, over time, I would suggest to invest in the bridge to control the lot. One advantage of sticking with the same make (Phillips in this case) is that All the firmware in the bulbs can be updated via the Hub. But that only works with the Phillips bulbs. Remember what your Mum told you ? The joy of the low price is soon forgotten, but the misery of poor quality lingers on forever.
Albert.
Albe
Put 4 in bathroom with IP65 rated fittings. All looks good and easy to control with dimmer switch or Google home.
The old Philips Hue GU10’s were a disaster due to their bulky size which meant you had to buy new deeper light fittings. These new generation bulbs are significantly smaller and should fit straight into any GU10 fitting. Pairing with the bridge is also a breeze, unlike the older gen bulbs which sometimes required manual serial number setup. I’ve installed 8 of these so far without any problems, and the colours are also stronger.
These GU10 bulbs are not only ZigBee and work on the Philips hue system but also have Bluetooth so can be controlled by a smartphone without a hue hub. I have a Philips hue ZigBee system which uses a hub with a mix of Philips, Osram, IKEA and some unmarked ZigBee bulbs, however I was interested to see how these bulbs worked on Bluetooth. I downloaded the Philips hue Bluetooth app, this is separate to the normal hue app, and I tried to connect the bulbs and, although I could see each bulb, I couldn’t pair with them, I assume because I have a working hue system. I deleted the Bluetooth app and connected the bulbs to the hue system which they did without any problem. The bulbs change from cool to warm white and dim smoothly. The lights are a uniform colour, I have other GU10 bulbs where the individual LEDs are visible as they dim which isn’t attractive. These are high quality bulbs which work well, the addition of Bluetooth means that you can have basic control before moving on to using a hub which offers additional features and control.
This bulbs look very good quality however when tried to add it to my previously installed Philips Hue starter kit, only one bulb was reachable and visible on my app. Not sure where is the error.. tried switch that bulb with other halogen light and still same result. I guess there must be something wrong with the bulb itself. The bulb lights on when I turn the wall switch on but that’s all it does. It doesnt connect to the app. From this 2pack at least one bulb works as it should.
Updated 08/01/2020: still working great, come on when I come home at night, absolutely fantastic. They are launching new outdoor lights, a up and down lighter with colour lights, very cool. HUE is the best.
I had really high hopes for these but as they only initially work on Bluetooth, they’re functions can be quite limited without a Philips bridge. The Alexa integration relies on this additional equipment to get everything to work. They are quite premium in price so the basic functionality is frustrating.
I like being able to change the colour temperature, it’s ideal to tie in with room temperature.
Overall ok, but very pricey.
Great happy with my purchase great deal and will recommend to friends.
Loving my new lights, fantastic deal I got would purchase again at this price. We have set it up to hue disco and it is just fab, you can actually have a disco. The lights are in sync with the music
These bulbs were controlled directly via the Bluetooth to an app on my phone. To combine with other controllers you need to use a bridge. The app gives full control of colour and brightness but but it couldn’t be controlled via Google home.
The app and the bulbs have been great, they are spots so the area lit is limited but the control and colour is good and the dimming is excellent. I have grouped two together in the living room and synchronised them. They work together without a problem.
All in all the setup was easy, the control is easy and the bulbs themselves are great as low power spots. They will not fill a whole room with bright light unless you have a few of them.
These bulbs are supplied as a pack of two securely packed in a branded box along with instructions which are mainly pictorial and lack detail. They can be controlled directly from the Phillips Hue app and do not require a hub although some extra features are enabled if they are paired to one and it makes management much easier.
This latest generation of Philips Hue White and Colour Ambiance Smart Spotlight are a major improvement on the previous model which was over 7cm tall and often didn’t fit into normal light fittings These are only a similar size to standard GU10 spotlights and should be a straight swap straight swap although the lens is a little convex which may be an issue on flush fittings.
The bulbs produce a better beam than the previous version and are configurable with 16 million different colours as well as bright and warm white options. They worked well with the app and were easy to set up despite the instructions being rather vague. These are expensive but work well as a part of a smart home but ensure that you order this latest generation as they are a significant improvement over the previous model.
Excellent add on to my existing Hue system. These bulbs set up in less than 2 minutes and stay set up! Allowing individual control – dimming – changing colour (16 million to choose from) and on/off, the Hue app works wonderfully and Alexa takes control with a simple 45 second detection cycle. You should already have a separate kit with a Hue Hub (like a router) to use these.
They are not cheap, but unlike so many of the competitors out there, they actually work (!) I am thrilled to bits with these add on and it is great just to say “Alexa, kitchen lights on” and walk into the kitchen with arms full and be able to see where I am going!
Excellent product. Very good quality and produces a warm light.
Bought a few of these to replace some of my 1st generation Hue white and colour GU10 bulbs around the house. I didn’t realise Philips had updated the Hue Colour GU10… they seemed to keep that a bit quiet… or maybe I just missed the launch… but when one of my existing GU10 bulbs had packed in, I went to replace it, only to realise that they’d updated them. And about time too.
Not only are these much shorter in depth in comparison to the bulbs they replace, but they have a much better colour spectrum available. The originals couldn’t do cyan, yellow or green properly… but these can… and so better match the Hue ‘Richer Colours’ B22 / E27 / E14 bulbs and the Hue colour light strips’ output. They also have local Bluetooth connectivity which I imagine is useful in some situations, but I would highly recommend getting a Hue Hub to control them.
Having used Hue bulbs of all fitments around the house for a good few years, I did begin to think they’d never update the GU10. I’m so glad they finally have.
These are great bulbs. I already have a Philips Hue hub so I used that setup. If you don’t want the full smart setup, I guess the Bluetooth option would work for you. I like the smart system and now more than half the bulbs in my house are Philips Hue which connects into my Samsung Smart Home and Alexa seamlessly. I stumbled on this in the early days, bit by bit, and my understanding is now fulfilling what it should have done to start with. It’s fun, it’s addictive but for more than 40 a bulb it just isn’t practical in the long term. I certainly hope these bulbs last for the rest of my days. 😀
Using an Alexa routine, I can get these bulbs to change colour at a command, or just ue the Alexa app to do what I want.
This would have been 5 stars as initial installation was relatively straightforward and the lights are amazing. However, I initially added by Bluetooth which was very simple, then by the bridge (I purchased a week later believing I could add my gen 2 Philips living colour iris to the bridge) which transferred the lights into the hue app. All good so far. Lights look great, scenes are really good. Then the nightmare begins as I try to add the iris lamps. Disaster! Not only would the lamps not pair the new spot lights disappeared from app and could not be found. I had to reset everything and go right back to install the lights through the Bluetooth app and transfer again. Even then it took ages to get everything back to normal. All a bit disappointing and I have abandoned the idea of pairing 3 lamps.
Over the last year I have slowly been changing as many of the bulbs in the house that I can with Philips Hue bulbs. Hue bulbs are usually available in three flavours. White, White Ambience and Colour. The White bulbs are basically just a dimmable bulb, the White Ambience adds a huge range of temperature to your light which can really alter the mood of the room. The Colour bulbs have everything that the White Ambience have, but an almost infinite variation of colours. I do see the Colours more of a gimmick that you’ll rarely use, but if you get creative there are some funky things you can do with them. They’ve also improved with the latest generation so if you do buy a Colour bulb do make sure it’s the latest ones (the ones with Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi) as they have a greater range of colours and fit into a standard GU10 bulb holder whereas the older ones don’t.
They’re much more expensive though, so I’d generally recommend the Philips Hue White Ambiance bulbs as they give the best combination of lighting options against cost. If your budget stretches though, you can have some fun with the Colour bulbs.
Currently I have 11 White Ambiance GU10s and 3 Colour GU10s, 4 White Ambiance B22s and 1 Colour B22, 4 E27 bulbs and 6 E14 bulbs dotted around the house and have space for several more in the coming months. The elephant in the room with these bulbs is the cost. There’s no getting away from the fact that they are expensive, even if you manage to pick them up on a Lightning Deal. That said, you’re paying for much more than a way of lighting your room. Smart homes are only limited by your imagination, and you can implement some pretty funky routines through the Alexa app if you’re brave enough to delve deeply. Beyond the Hue bulbs I have 12 TP Link smart sockets controlling things like the lights on my two fish tanks, I have 7 Echo dots, 2 Sonos Ones, a Logitech Harmony, Nest thermostat and two Nest smoke detectors. My Denon amp is connected by its HEOS app, and I have a couple of LG TVs with Alexa built in plus another with a Fire HD stick. Five internal IP cameras and 8 external cameras plus my recent addition of a Ring door camera. If thought through, all of these can be interlinked. For example, should the smoke detectors or doorbell go off, I can have the Hue light bulbs dim or light up. If a motion sensor is tripped on one of the IP cameras, I can have the Hue bulbs in the patio lights come on.
Additionally, even without working with other smart devices, the Philips Hue bulbs offer plenty of things on their own. The ability to gradually lower the light as the night goes on, and likewise gradually bring the light up as your morning routine begins. You can have lights come on as the daylight begins to fade, and set them to many different shades to suit your mood such as reading or night light, through Savanna sunset and white brilliance.
Your options are many and varied, and if you can look past the initial set-up costs, they can hugely enhance your home.
My house is undergoing renovation and I’ve tested 6 of these in one of the rooms – I’m happy with these bulbs and they’ll be going in every room in the house. I just wish Philips had bigger pack sizes as to reduce the price per bulb and also to reduce the amount of packaging.
I have placed these outside my front door porch and they fitted within the holder perfectly.
As soon as I plugged them in, the Philips Hue app detected them immediately when I scanned for new devices. I have a hue bridge but these also work without a hue bridge and via the app. There are some limitations without the bridge such as software updates and the number of lights you can have.
These lights are bright, at 350 lumen. Not as bright as my regular GU10 bulb, but bright enough.
The colour changing from warm white to cool white and every colour scale in between is great.
I have set a timer – sunset to sunrise via the hue app so these come on automatically and turn off at sunrise. Helps with security.
The bulbs are great. I’ve got a few of the older type, which are a lot larger and have a more limited colour output (especially around the green/blue area). The new bulbs fix everything that was wrong with the old ones – they are brighter, standard size and have a full spectrum output like the richer colours range.
I cant work out why the other review is complaining they cost less to run….
Colour production is excellent and the smaller form factor is excellent. The Bluetooth compatibility is not something I will use as I have a hub, but for smaller installations I am sure it’s a great bonus.
The price is always going to be a sour subject when it comes to Philips Hue, but with 40+ Hue bulbs now in use in my home I can honestly say that the investment has been worthy of the high price tag. I couldn’t really imagine going back to traditional light bulbs.
No criticism of the product here, maybe 10 cheaper would be great… but that’s wishful thinking!
These new bulbs are only 5.8cm tall (THE SAME SIZE AS A NORMAL GU-10!) – so forget the sparky or broken ceiling – these are a straight swap for your current bulbs – now is the time to buy them! (Sadly I paid over 500 for a sparky to replace half the light cages in our apartment a month ago – so – hopefully my all caps above might save someone else a few hundred quid!
The bulbs produce a better, brighter colour than the previous version (they have a much larger plastic lense surface area to disperse the light and a new complex shape design probably to help heat disbursement for the new smaller shape bulb – see photo), they still have a broad range from warm white to a cool daylight white, and are configurable with 16 million different colours. These also have Bluetooth built-in so that you can access each light via Bluetooth independently if you don’t have the Hue Bridge (why you would want to do this is a mystery – buy the Philips Bridge it will save you a lot of hassle).
The Bluetooth helps with the mesh apparently, effectively keeping all the lights connected to each other – but really the reason to buy these is the new size.
One thing to note – as you will see from the photo the lense on the new bulbs is a little convex, whereas the previous model was concave – just to be aware if you have a flush blub cover.
Be careful when not purchasing from Philips via amazon as you might end up with the previous model. These were released in late September 2019.
I needed some new bulbs, so came here to purchase and saw my review was still showing – hopefully it helped a few people. There are now 2 options for these bulbs – “Old Generation” and “New Generation”, I bought the “New Generation” to see what the difference was and because it said 350 Lumens – so I assumed this was better.
TLDL
“New Generation” bulbs released in September 2021 are identical to the “Old Generation” (not to be confused with the “Original Tall” ones I wrote this review about 2 years ago which were the very tall ones that didn’t fit into regular light fixtures) in almost all ways. The only difference is the Energy consumption which has gone from A in the “Old Generation” (see the side of the box photo on Amazon, to a G in the “New Generation”!!! See the attached images.
They are still great bulbs, if not very overpriced compared to the endless stream of other companies mass-producing LED bulbs. Are they 5 times as good as other bulbs that cost 10 each? Nope.
Full Details
The “New Generation” box has a nice 350 on it – hence my thoughts about the 350 lumens – but if you look a bit lower down it says 230 lumes@ 2700k and 350 lumens at 4000k – which is identical (see the photos) to an old bulb that I took out.
The physical bulbs look identical, but I still held out hope that perhaps when I plugged them in they would be more vivid or brighter or something – but nope – identical in every way.
The other thing to note is that the bulbs are 4.3W each – lower than the 5.2W of the “old generation” – perhaps this is what has affected it (the description on the 2 pack says 8.6W – this is simply the 2 bulbs combined wattage). The only difference I can see is the energy usage now rated at G.
I am not a professional reviewer or expert on these things – so am happy if someone can tell me if I have missed something amazing about the bulbs and I will update this review – in the meantime – if you can get the “old generation” standard GU-10 size bulbs and probably cheaper – I would buy them instead.
It makes no sense to me – maybe a G-rated 4.3W is better than an A-rated 5.2W – hopefully this helps someone.
Timeline:
New Generation – Launched Sept 2021
Old Generation – Launched Sept 2019
Original TALL Generation – Launched 2017ish
Original Review about the “Original TALL Bulbs” vs the now called “Old Generation” Bulbs below for reference.
If you have looked into these bulbs before, you probably noticed that the previous versions were over 7cm tall and didn’t fit into normal light fittings – which was a real pain – so either you had to replace all your light fittings with bigger cages or use the cageless fittings – either way it meant messing around with the ceiling and potentially breaking big chunks of it off trying to get the old cages outs (or paying an electrician to do it for you).
These new bulbs are only 5.8cm tall (THE SAME SIZE AS A NORMAL GU-10!) – so forget the sparky or broken ceiling – these are a straight swap for your current bulbs – now is the time to buy them! (Sadly I paid over 500 for a sparky to replace half the light cages in our apartment a month ago – so – hopefully my all caps above might save someone else a few hundred quid!
The bulbs produce a better, brighter colour than the previous version (they have a much larger plastic lense surface area to disperse the light and a new complex shape design probably to help heat disbursement for the new smaller shape bulb – see photo), they still have a broad range from warm white to a cool daylight white, and are configurable with 16 million different colours. These also have Bluetooth built-in so that you can access each light via Bluetooth independently if you don’t have the Hue Bridge (why you would want to do this is a mystery – buy the Philips Bridge it will save you a lot of hassle).
The Bluetooth helps with the mesh apparently, effectively keeping all the lights connected to each other – but really the reason to buy these is the new size.
One thing to note – as you will see from the photo the lense on the new bulbs is a little convex, whereas the previous model was concave – just to be aware if you have flush bulb cover fittings.
Be careful when not purchasing from Philips via amazon as you might end up with the previous model. These were released in late September 2019.