After renovating our Kitchen with down-lights, the last job to do was to work out what pendant ceiling lights to use. Now we already had invested in the Philips Hue ecosystem of lighting throughout our home, so the natural approach was to check out what cool lighting options Philips has on the market.

Philips Fair Hue and Phoenix smart ceiling pendant lamp review

We were lucky that Philips has just released a new range of Hue-compatible ceiling and pendant lights, that actually look great and will suit our decor perfectly. The five new flush and pendant lamps just released are the,

• Philips Hue white ambiance ceiling
• Philips Hue White Ambiance Fair Suspension,
• Philips Hue White Ambiance Fair Flush-mount
• Philips Hue Phoenix Pendant Light, Opal White

• Philips Hue Beyond Pendant Lamp Single, White

Each has its own unique style and flair, but in the end, we went with the hanging Hue chrome pendant lamp called the Hue White Ambiance Fair Suspension. Whoever named these lights needs a lesson in product word flow. So let’s go ahead and check out each smart lamp in more detail.

Philips Hue White Ambiance Fair Suspension Review

There are 3 different types of Hue flair ceiling lamps. They all share the same base lamp but have different options to mount them.

They are the Philips Hue Flair Flush-mount, Hue Flair Semi-flush-mount, and the Philips Hue Suspension Flair.

We often have friends come over to visit, and they will say “Those lights are cool, where did you get them? And what are they called?”

The usual response is “Philips Hue Suspension something or other?” Apart from the interesting, hard-to-remember name, these hanging Philips Hue pendant lights are actually really cool. Rather than have a LED light globe inside, they are warped with power-saving smart Hue light-strips.

This makes the Philips Hue pendant LED light shine outward and up in an even bright glow without any dark or washed-out spots. With 39 watts of power and 25 thousand hours of light-strip life, these pendants will last a lifetime. (13.6 Years if used for 5 hours a day)

We found that these ambiance light-strip pendants will turn on virtually instantly, when on standby power. This means that you can either use your smartphone or the supplied dimmer switch to turn on the lamp.

When just using the wall switch like a conventional light there is a slight delay with the light coming on between 1 to 2 seconds. I guess this is because of powering up the transformer and the electronics there will be a slight delay. Each lamp is software upgradable on the fly and when connected to a smart Hue bridge this will do it automatically.

With 50 thousand shades of white, from warm to cold white you will be sure to get the perfect color temperature for your room. The light output is shown below for the different color of white.

Don’t forget that this lamp is also dim-able down to 1% from either a smartphone with the official Hue App or from the supplied free wall mountable dimmer switch. Enhance your everyday life with Fair Philips Hue White Ambiance Suspension. It can automatically wake you up and help you be more energized, read under a perfect color and brightness, or just relax with your partner.

Tear-down of the Philips Hue Pendant white ambiance flair.

As you can see there is a Philips LED driver inside which can take an input of 110v to 240 volts, so this Philips Hue pendant LED light is good for any part of the world. This driver converts the voltage down to 24-volt output at 1.67 amps or a maximum lamp load of 40 watts. Perfect for the light-strip.

This then powers the circuit board (shown in green) which is the Zigbee color-changing, dimming controller, and antenna all rolled into one package.

This 3-led combination strip-light includes the white and yellow LEDs. These are switched and dimmed to make the 50 thousand different combinations of hue white light. No color only white light.

We use two of these Hue suspension flair pendants over our kitchen preparation area and find them to be quite amazing. Before we had only 3 halogen downlights which at 50 watts each were a huge power-hungry light, and had a narrow beam angle. This caused harsh shadows and not a very bright workspace.

These light-strip pendants throw out so much more light and use less power. It really has brightened up the kitchen work-space, and they look fantastic as well.

Because these pendant LED lamps glow light down as well as upwards. I find that the light bounces off the white ceiling and lights up the area fully.

Being made from a chrome/aluminum brushed material these LED pendant lamps will look great in any kitchen with matching stainless/aluminum stoves, cook-tops, and fridges.

Voice control lighting with Google home and Amazon Alexa

The really cool feature of all Philips Hue lighting is that you are able to control your lights with your voice. It is compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Home automation, which supports dimming, shades of white settings, and power on / off through voice control. At the time of writing Amazon Alexa has sold over 11 million units. But Google Home is slowly catching up.

You will require the optional hue bridge to enable smart home automation which is sold separately, but you may already have one if you have other smart hue globes in your home. The best deal to get a bridge is through a generation 3 starter kit.

We wrote about some of the full list of Google home voice commands earlier this year. You should check out that growing list of compatible devices and voice commands, some responses are really funny.

Philips Hue Phoenix Pendant Ceiling Light Review

The Philips Hue phoenix ceiling light also comes in 3 different flavors. Wall mount, ceiling mount, and pendant suspension ceiling mount. This is also a nice little table lamp in the same design shown above.

The interesting fact is the outer plastic defuse has little springlike hex patterns. This helps make the lamp stand out from its competition. Very effective and looks great.

The lamp comes with one hue phoenix pendant light – requires a hue starter kit or compatible bridge for dimming and smart control. This is true for all Philips Hue globes but you will only need one bridge for up to 50 lights. Works with Amazon Alexa as well.

Even though “Hue” is in the name, this lamp cannot change colors like other Hue color changing bulbs. It can only change color temperature from cool light to warm light. It can also change the brightness from 1% up to 100% with an optional bridge.

All user manuals for the Phoenix ceiling, pendant, wall and table lamps can be found here.

How to install the Hue Phoenix pendant ceiling lamp

To install a Philips Hue pendant light please first view the included installation instructions.

It’s recommended to use an electrician for the installation. If you want to do it yourself make sure to first turn off the electricity to your lights from the main switchboard.

Test the old lamp by using a multimeter that it has been isolated. Remove your old lamp by disconnecting the electrical cables and then unscrewing it from your ceiling.

Use the included bracket on the Phoenix pendant to screw it to the gyprock ceiling (also known as plasterboard) using suitable screws. You will need to supply your own screws to suit your ceiling. It’s best to use gyprock screws unless you are screwing into wooden battens then a normal wood screw will be fine.

Pull through your electrical wiring and terminate into the Philips Hue Phoenix terminal block. Depending on where you live the color of the cables may mean something different.

• Red, Brown usually indicate the positive cable.
• Black, Blue usually indicate negative cable.
• Green, yellow usually indicate earth.

Once the cable is terminated you can then go ahead and add in the defuser, and set the length of the drop. Double check your connections and turn on the power. If connecting to a Philips Hue Bridge go ahead and add in your extra lamp by following these instructions.

Connect up to 50 Hue lamps and light

You can connect up to 50 lamps or lamps for Philips Hue Control Center. It’s just to start with one of the available starting kits and add Philips Hue products. You can then control all of your lights with your finger, via the official and 3rd party Philips Hue apps for iOS and Android smart devices.

You can control up to 50 Hue products on a single Philips Hue bridge, these are compatible with Zigbee-certified and Wink network products.

Conclusion

I feel most people overlook the one thing that makes your kitchen stand out. That being lighting. To truly get the most out of your work-space you must have a mix of down-lights, wall, and pendant lighting.

Philips has come out with a huge range of Hue lighting products, and they are very quickly becoming a very popular choice. The ability to really control the white color as well as dimming control on both of these Hue suspension pendant lamps, have made them a winner in my books. Apart from being slightly expensive, they will be a forever feature in our home.

So Philips Hue Phoenix vs Hue Fair, which is the best? It’s all going to come down to your decor. The flair suspension pendant will output more light but it is also physically larger. That’s one of the reasons we went with it, more light output and a nice silver finish.

We have been very happy with the Hue range of products ever since we started with their light-strips which we use for stair lighting. just make sure to get a Hue base station controller to really make your smart light come alive. Check out some more pendant lights shown below from Amazon.

Mathew S

I am a qualified Industrial Electrician for the past 20 years and I love to share my knowledge on home repair and maintenance jobs.

I love fast toys like Motorcycles, Cars, Jetskis, Boats, and Computers so writing about them is easy. Working on them is fun.
To keeps costs down I do all my own mods, repairs, and servicing. These skills I want to share with everyone. DIY is a skill everyone can learn.