Features:

  • VOICE ACTIVATED: With the Philips Hue Smart Hub, add up to 50 Philips Hue smart lights of your choice with this ZigBee-controlled hub necessary for voice control with Alexa, Apple HomeKit, or Google Assistant
  • CONTROL YOUR SMART LIGHTS FROM ANYWHERE: The heart of your Philips Hue system, this hue hub also enables you to control all of your Philips Hue products via the Philips Hue app, even when you're away from home
  • FULLY AUTOMATE YOUR SMART HOME: Enhance your Philips Hue system by setting timers and alarms, connecting to a variety of apps, dimming the smart lights and more (cannot be used with conventional dimmers)
  • EXPAND YOUR ECOSYSTEM: Easily expand your smart lighting system with Philips Hue accessories (sold separately), such as a Hue Dimmer Switch, Hue Tap, or Hue Motion Sensor. Pair it for home automation with your existing Nest or SmartThings system. Control your hue lights by connecting the Hue Hub to your router with the included ethernet network cable. This box also includes one Philips Hue Hub, power adapter, manual, and two-year warranty for the full Philips Hue experience
  • CROSS-DEVICE COMPATIBILITY: HomeKit compatible iOS 9 or later. iPhone:4, 4S, 5, 5S, 6, 6 Plus, 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPhone Xs, iPhone Xs Max, iPhone Xr, iPod touch: 5th generation.Network Connectivity:Wireless A,Wireless B,Wireless G,Wireless N
Be careful with it

It works. Comes with its own Philips' branded, bright-white AC adapter, 5 volt size. Fun fact: 9 volt AC adapters fit the same size hole as 5 volt. And if you accidentally plug a 9 volt AC adapter into the Philips Hue Smart Hub, it will instantly fry the Hub, and you'll have to buy another one here on Amazon and then post a review warning people to be careful. To be fair, Philips' AC adapter is white just like the Hub, making it clear that they belong to each other. So Philips did everything they could - short of making the connection itself unique - to help people avoid that mistake. One dismaying discovery during this experience was learning that the Hub does not back up your programmed routines and rooms and lights to your iPad or whatever device you've used to set up the Hue system. It is all saved within this Hub - so if you fry it, you have to teach a new one everything all over again by hand. I had fewer than a dozen lights and routines and rooms to set up again, but it would have been worse for someone with more. Perhaps Philips will start making backups in one of their frequent updates.

Great upgrade

I bought this new hub so I could upgrade my Hub 1 which was not Alexa,Apple Homekit compatible. The transition from the old hub to the new hub was pretty painless, the app directed what to do and I had no issues with it. This hub is a bit smaller than the old version but works the same. I have no complaints with this hub, I think the new version of the app is a lot better than the old one. The only issue I have is that sometimes, the internet connection is lost between the hub and the router and lights will not respond without a reboot of eithe the router or the hub.

FASTER.

As compared to the original (round) it it MUCH faster and responsive. I have 45 color Hue’s. The geofencing was getting spotty and the bulbs were “lagging”. I tried repositioning the hub but still got inconsistent light response. This new hub is much more powerful, as Philips has said...and I didn’t believe them. Transferring to new hub was one press of a button, really. Every single setting transferred. I did have to re-pair Harmony and Alexa. I’m still running the original Hue app. I refuse to upgrade because the consensus is that it’s terrible (must rebuild all scenes and timers) If you are looking to upgrade simply because of performance, yes this will fix your problem. The old legacy hub just doesn’t have the processing power we now need, expecting flawless and lightning fast performance.

It worked

We had a "first of the gen 2" hubs that was pretty old and for some reason it just stopped connecting to our network. I picked this up to swap out and it worked. It looks subtly different from my early hub so I'm hoping this new one lasts longer, looks like they've had a couple hardware revisions since. For anyone replacing an existing hub, if your hub still works, KEEP IT. A quirk of zigbee is that once your lights are bonded to a controller, they won't be discoverable again. Your only options are A. To do a hub transfer in software which copy pastes your lights and settings to a new hub (didn't work for me since my hub was cooked). B. Add every single bulb by serial number. It's a pain but it works. Not an issue with the hub itself though.

Installed Easily and Quickly For Apple & Alexa

I purchased this Phillips Hue Hub to add my foyer lights and Kitchen lights to my Echo Dot and it works great. I can now access my lights by using my iPhone six, or through Alexa on my Echo Dot. I purchased six of the white smart bulbs. My foyer light fixture and my kitchen light fixture each have three bulbs. My router is on the second floor and you do have to wire the hub to the router, I had no problem doing that and there’s no problem with the system communicating with the lights. I am going to be adding a lot more lights to the system. I am very happy. I want to say this also. It cost me about $130 to do everything and now my Foyer lights and kitchen lights can work with the dimmer. And being able to set this up myself and not having to call an electrician to add dimmers; an electrician would’ve cost me more than what I paid for the lights and the hub. Think about that if you were wanting to change anything in your house to add dimmers, etc.

Very simple to set up and sync with the app. Took me less than 10 minutes!

I got Smart Bridge, along with a few Phillips Hue lights. This was extremely easy to set-up. - Plug-in Smart Bridge to power - Connect it to my router via ethernet cable - Download the Phillips Hue app on my phone - Press and hold down the center button (on the smart bridge) to sync The app found my Smart Bridge very quickly. My Phillip Hue lights were also installed and the app/smart bridge was able to discover them quickly. Afterward, I set up the lights in my room, as its own room, and voila! It was all set up. The entire process took me less than 10 minutes.

Doesn't work with existing dimmer switches!

**Warning: you may have to switch out your light switches if they are dimmer type.** This works! Really cool! I set this up for use mostly in my basement theater room and might start adding more lights as other bulbs burn out. I integrated this in with my Amazon Echo Dot and can tell Alexa to turn on/off, dim and turn on my "scene" that I created for movie watching. For setting the scene by voice command I had to program a smart home action on the Alexa app specifically for it. In regards to my warning, I had to change my dimmer switch out and replace it with a standard on/off light switch. With my dimmer switch the Hue lightbulbs flash continuously. I tried the lightbulb on a standard switch in my utility room and all was well. Prior to this the lightbulbs would flash constantly and could not be detected by the smart hub. I switched my dimmer to a standard light switch and all 4 bulbs connected can be controlled by the Hue app or the Alexa app and by voice to my Echo Dot. The bulbs can be controlled individually or as a group and it appears that you can control the lights when you are away from your home. ***Update: not a con.*** One con I have is that when you power your lights off using your light switch, when you turn the lights back on they are at max 100% brightness. I haven't figured out the best practice for leaving the light switch on all the time and using the app/voice to turn lights on/off or still using the light switch to turn the lights on and off. It works either way and I have no need to control the basement theater lights while away from home. **Update: you can set loss of power settings for each lightbulb, they are just set to 100% by default upon power loss and/or turning off by switch.** You can set it to power up in last known state. Setup was simple after realizing the dimmer switch problem. Too bad you need to downgrade your existing dimmer switches, especially because a couple years ago, I put in a bunch of dimmers throughout my house.

A fun product - but is it worth the crazy cost for a whole system?

I struggled with what to include in this review as the product itself is pretty straightforward and really has no meaningful functionality to "review," per se: it either works or it doesn't. In my case, the hub worked just fine, setup was easy enough, and I haven't had any actual trouble with the hub. Since most people looking at the hub are likely considering diving into the Hue system as a whole, my review, instead, will focus on my experience with a relatively built-out Hue system after a few weeks. My current setup includes two BR-30 multicolor lights in my theater room, three of the same in my kitchen, a LightStrip with multiple extenders in the bedroom, and two A7 lightbulbs for our nightstand lamps in the bedroom. The only "smart" home product that I've owned prior to the Hue lights was two Nest thermostats and a Ring doorbell, so my experience with this category of technology is fairly limited. Overall, this lights are just fun. Adding lights to the system was straightforward, the automatic detection worked well, and it was easy to get individual lights assigned to rooms and scenes set up. The Hue app itself is fairly easy to use, though some of the UI decisions in the most recent version of the app are a little annoying (for example, having different "tabs" for individual lights and scenes). I've had some hiccups with getting individual lights to "group" together for color changes when setting up scenes, though this has been relatively rare. Setting up scenes was straightforward, though I'll admit I almost immediately deleted most of the included presets since I thought they were a bit strange. But setting up individual scenes with custom colors and brightness was a breeze. Getting used to using an app - rather than light switches - has been a bit of a challenge. This isn't a fault of the Hue system itself but is something relevant, I think, to the experience of switching to a smart lighting system. A few weeks in, I still accidentally use my light switches at times. I'm looking forward to getting some of the Hue motion sensors to see if this can make the system truly automated; I love the idea of lights turning on and off automatically based on need, and I imagine that this will improve my experience with the system immensely. For now, though, there's definitely a bit of a learning curve to getting used to using an app (and carrying a phone around) to turn your lights on rather than the much more convenient light switch. The main problem I've had thus far is having individual lights being "unreachable" for, sometimes, long periods of time. Interestingly, the lights still respond to scene changes even when they're listed as "unreachable," but I can't control "unreachable" lights individually. I haven't quite figured out what the issue with this is, and I've verified that all of the firmware for the lights and the iOS app are up-to-date. This seems to mostly happen with the bedroom lights, which are located upstairs while the hub is downstairs, and I wonder if this is part of the problem. Perhaps it'll be less of an issue as I continue to expand the system and have a stronger mesh network throughout the house. But I will say that this has been quite an annoyance that I haven't been able to sort out completely. Not enough to say that I won't continue to buy Hue lights, but certainly something to be aware of if this might be enough to cause you to think twice. Because of this issue, HomeKit integration has been spotty for me. While the Hue app will allow me to change the lights via scenes even when they're "unreachable," this isn't the case in HomeKit. As a result, I rarely use HomeKit, and frankly I just find the Hue app easier to use. Since I don't have a ton of smart products, I don't necessarily need the deep integration and automation that can be achieved with the HomeKit system. The brightness and color setting are very granular, and you can create just about any lighting situation you can imagine. You're really only limited to your creativity. For day-to-day use, most of these features are a bit unnecessary, though even at times it can be fun to use some of the different colors. The adjustable brightness and color warmth are incredibly useful on a regular basis. But I can imagine this being a very nice touch for parties or big get togethers. Overall, do I think the Hue system is work the admittedly high cost? After about $600 to be able to light three rooms, I have to say I don't think so. It's a very fun toy, and I'll continue to expand the system, but I don't see this as a huge game-changer. Maybe it's because I'm not using the system to its fullest extent (e.g., integration with a smart thermostat), but I see this as a very expensive amusement and nothing else. Hopefully the lights will last quite a while: at $30-40 for each replacement, this can very quickly become an expensive system. But for those looking for the ability to fine tune your home lighting setup and are willing to pay the high price, I would definitely recommend it, although perhaps try setting it up in just a room or two to see how it goes before you spend a ton of money for whole-house lighting.

Greatly improves response times and connection

The circular (prior model) was buggy, always disconnecting, and had a 30 second lag or wouldn’t respond. Lights and switches would disconnect randomly too. The new model fixes all issues I had above. Using the app now results in instantaneous light response times, no more disconnections, and a few more customization tools on the app. While the app could be more user friendly and allow more options like Christmas light shows or a waterfall effect ect the hub allows the previous uses to work correctly and erases all the complaints I had before

Favorite 2018 Technology Find

I absolutelyy adore the Hue light system. I’m an avid fan of all things lights; this, is no different. If you appreciate lights, syncing lights to music, hundreds of color themes, exploring more holiday lighting options and party options by way of lights invest in this product and its appropriate bulbs. Its easy to set up, plugs into my apple airport extreme and stays plugged into electrical outlet. Personalize light colors based on the mood you're trying to set. Use the bright white light to read. Use the warm white light to relax your eyes. Keep it on low with a nightlight setting. Sync it to music beats via partnered apps. So many options to play around with.

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