I am a dabbler in home automation and thinking about starting to get into lighting. I have heard mostly good things about the Philip Hue line and wanted to see what peoples thoughts are about it.
Our main current automation are a large number of Google Smart Speaker and Arlo video doorbells. Everything is working now on the Google ecosystem which I think Philip Hue will connect with. Our house is 100 years old which means that our possibilities to automate are lower than a new home since we have very few overhead lights, power outlets are at a premium (we have lots of power strips running through the house).
We are thinking about doing smart bulbs in some lamps which we can leave on and a chandalier. I think the biggest issue will leaving things always powered on.
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I have 19 of the Hue bulbs in my home, all running off a Hue bridge using Home Assistant. This was easy to setup, and basically I haven’t had any issues with them in the almost 8 years I’ve owned them. I have four Hue switches and an android tablet for control of the other lights, and Home Assistant runs off a raspberry Pi.
I don’t think I can really help you much though because I bought my setup mostly on sale and haven’t had other brands of bulbs or switches.
I will warn that Phillips also sells a whiz brand bulb and this product doesn’t run off zigbee and pretty much requires an internet connection to work. Do not be fooled by the cheaper prices.
As others have mentioned the Philips bulbs are about as good as you can get but they are also the most expensive. And that you can save money by going with the IKEA lineup but the quality isn’t as good. But your third option is Innr bulbs which sit perfectly in between Philips and IKEA for quality and price.
TLDR
Philips - best quality / most expensive
Innr - medium quality / middle pricing
IKEA - lowest quality / least expensive
Note: when I say the IKEA is the lowest quality, I just mean between these three. They are still miles ahead of any of the no-name brand crap you can get on Amazon.
Innr kit has been great here, and recently affordable. The bulbs are little workhorses and have required exactly no extra attention since first connection, even across a house move.
Setup is ZHA/Conbee II. Old now but still all smiles.
I got into Hue way back in 2014, before I knew what HA was, and before I cared about local control. Hue is OK, and they have a wide variety of form factors to choose from, but I’m always afraid they’ll enshitify to the point you can’t pair the bulbs with a non hue zigbee controller. I’m pretty sure I can’t update the bulbs unless they’re connected to a hue bridge.
Using smart bulbs to mitigate the lack of in-wall plugs/switches is a great idea. I do that with my bedroom fan since the light chain is busted.
If you use Zigbee2MQTT in Home Assistant, you actually can update the firmware on Hue devices, obviously it’s up to you if you actually want to push the update though
I have some. They work. They are just more expensive than other options. I have a few smart bulbs from IKEA that work just as well and are cheaper so these days I would just go the IKEA route if I needed more smart bulbs.
Edit: To clarify I do not use either the IKEA or Phlips Hue apps. I connect to all my bulbs via Zigbee.
If I get an IKEA bulb can I intergrate with google things? I am assuming I will need some kind of Zigbee hub which I then connect into things for automations.
I just realized that you are not using Home Assistant as your “hub”, I assumed you were due to the community. In that case I guess you would need the IKEA hub. I’ve never used an IKEA hub so I have no idea how well they work. If you plan to continue to use Google Home as your “hub” then my advice is less useful since I’ve no experience here. I would defer to someone else who is more experienced with the Philips Hue/Ikea hubs.
IKEA has its own hub. I used to have the old Tradfri one but now I just connect with a Sonoff Zigbee dongle. I think if you want to go through Google and then to Home Assistant you might need the Dirigera hub which is kinda pricey. My personal preference is to have as little as possible connect through the internet. I just want everything local.
HA will be your “hub”. What you need is more like something that lets you communicate to Zigbee devices i.e. a Zigbee dongle. There are a lot of choices and you can search online for the current best option.
HA will act as the main server that connects everything. HA can then expose all of your devices to Google Home and then you can control things via Google Home as well. As an example, if you turned off a light bulb in Google Home the chain of command will look something like this: You issue an off command -> Google Home -> Home Assistant -> Light Bulb.
I have a mix of normal Hue bulbs and some Innr brand GU10 (spotlight) bulbs. The difference in quality of light from both brands is quite noticeable, with Hue being far and away better in terms of colour blending and accuracy. There’s a reason the Hue bulbs are 2-3x the price of the competition
That said, I’ve had multiple Hue bulbs either outright fail or one LED die so that it still works but the colour is completely wrong. It’s frustrating for bulbs that are supposed to last decades but maybe the latest generation are more robust.
They’re also regularly on sale for Black Friday and the like, so I’d advise planning your purchases around those events.
I wouldn’t worry about leaving them on. Standby power draw is very low and I think even at maximum output they use about 7W each. It’s just not a big deal.
I think Black Friday will be the day to buy them. I have heard that they last 7-10 years so a bummer they don’t last.
