Philips Hue 3rd Generation Starter Kit Review Best Smart LED Lighting

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Philips hue 3rd generation richer colors
Image Philips.com

Philips Hue 3rd Generation richer colors are the newest kids on the block when it comes to smart LED bulbs. As a company, Philips is the market leader when it comes to smart connected LED light bulbs. They have a proven track record with bulbs that last 25000 hours. The Hue has made wireless lighting a real possibility to the everyday DIY handyman or woman.

Hue makes the Intelligent home a reality. Combine it with a Google Home or Amazon Echo speaker and you have really Smart Homes.

Philips Hue Light Bulbs 3rd Generation

hue camera tv sync Ambilight

Starting off with smart lighting can transform any house’s internal space ambiance. Philips makes a number of smart lighting systems for your home automation they include:

  • White and Color Ambience A19 Starter Kit, Philips Hue 3rd Generation Richer Colors 464479
  • Hue Philips White Ambiance Single A19 Bulb 461020
  • Philips  Hue White A19 Light Bulbs 468058
  • Philips Hue Bloom – check out our review
  • Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus, 2nd Generation, and extensions. Great for Stair Lighting
  • Philips Hue Lightstrip 1st Generation – See our 5050 light strip hack modification project here.
  • Philips Hue Go Light, – Is one of my favorite portable LED lights. Check out our review.
  • Philips Hue 65W Equivalent BR30 Single LED Light Bulb 432690
  • Philips Friends of Hue Personal Wireless Lighting Iris 259960
  • As well as Philips 458158 Hue Dimmer switches and Hue Motion Sensors you can truly automate your house lighting.

They all work with Amazon Alexa and Google Home voice commands for full automation.

Hue Lux Lumens

Philips Hue LED 3rd generation

Lumens measure the brightness of a light source and provide an accurate description of how much light a certain light bulb can produce. As LED bulbs become more energy-efficient, watts can drop but Lumens or Lux increases. This means you will get better light output vs cost to run your lighting.

In the old days, a 60-watt incandescent light bulb would produce about 800 lumens. A compact fluorescent CFL bulb produces that same 800 lumens using about 15 watts. Now that same light can be made from a 10w LED globe.

The older Halogen Lamps were a real power thief. Replacing your lamps with LED will save you hundreds of dollars over the life of your globe and we proved this by monitoring our electricity usage with an efergy power monitor.

Philips Hue now has white high output globes that are rated at 1600 Lumens which are super bright. They only draw 16 watts but are equivalent to the old 100 watts incandescent bulbs.

Philips Hue White and Color Ambience A19 Bulb

Philips Hue pheonix pendant

This is the famous bulb that most people have in their house. It cost a little more than the white LED bulb, but it can do 16 million colors and 50,000 shades of white light, from warm to cool white so that’s good hey? With 25000 hours run time it’s with you for life. Installs easily into your existing E26/A19/E27 light fittings

You better believe it. The Philips Hue 3rd Generation version of this bulb rocks. Colors are so much more vibrant than Gen 2.

The easy way to tell the difference between Philips Hue Gen 2 and Gen 3 is if you look at the top right-hand logo on the packaging box there is a picture that says Richer Colors. That means it the newer Generation 3.

There is no easy way to check if you are buying the latest Philips Hue Gen 3 light globes apart from the Richer Colors in the top right-hand side of the packaging. Some websites don’t update their site picture so it’s luck of the draw what globes they may send you.

Philips Hue A19 Generation 3 Specs

Lumens800 lm (60 w equivalent)
Light temperature2000 – 6500K
Lifetime25,000 hours
Colors16 million
Philips Hue Single Globe Price

Philips Hue A21 High Output Color

Lumens1600 lm (100 w equivalent)
Light temperatureWhite and Color
Lifetime25,000 hours
Colors16 million
Single Globe E26 Price

Philips Hue 3rd Generation Starter Kit Wireless

The cheapest way to get into the Philips Hue ecosystem is to buy the Philips Hue starter kit. They are a great deal, especially during special events like crazy Black Friday deals.

The Hue seems more future-proof and has way better colors than the previous Generations. One way to save money is to continually buy the Hue Starter kits.

Then you can on-sell the new bridge say on eBay to recoup some costs if you already have the new Hue Square bridge.

Philips Hue Downlights Australia

So where can you purchase hue lights in Australia?

There are a few brick-and-mortar stores here in Oz that now carry part of the Hue range. These include Harvey Norman, Officeworks, Bunnings, JB-Hi-Fi, and Apple stores.

Hue light strip behind a TV

Smart USB LED Light Strip for TV

The old and newer Philips hue light strip plus, are a perfect product for behind a TV, to do back-lit ambiance.

Easy to install and set up within minutes. There are a few projects happening at the moment, that will integrate Plex and Netflix.

Philips has a product called Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box this box is designed to have Colored Lights With Music, Movies, and More. It supports 4K TV and is a HDMI Splitter, 4 In 1 Out. A Hue Bridge Required. You will require Hue products like strip lights to make the color appear behind the TV which will change according to the scene.

The possibilities are Limitless and with a wi-fi connected home, your bridge becomes your hub to add new devices and lamps. Having backlit TVs are also good for your eyes.

The lamps control wireless with a protocol called Zigbee, so anyone can install them it’s easy. The only wire needed is the Ethernet from your fabulous router to the Hue Bridge.

If you just want a simple cheap option for light strips behind your TV then check out this review we did with some stand-alone LED TV backlighting.

Philips Hue Colour Control

The easiest way to control the colors on your Philips Hue bulbs is by using the Android or Apple IOS apps. There are many free and paid versions. The one that stands out the best on Android is Hue Pro.

You can then enjoy Painting with Light

Top 3 Philips Hue Android Apps

  • Hue –  Philips Hue Lighting  The Generic Philips Hue app. You need this to update your Hue Bridge and add Hue accessories.
  • One Switch – Free but there are in-App purchases if required. Great to try out different colors etc
  • Hue Pro – Prismatic LLC  Paid Highly recommended, regularly updated with new features like can be used for scheduling events with alarms and timers, controlling your lights away from home, turning your room into a live lava lamp, music mode, wi-fi detection and animated presets.

Philips Hue Types A19, BR30, GU10, MR16

Depending on the type of bulb you need Hue has a range of products for you.  Look for the Richer Colors logo to get the latest Gen 3 Hue Globes.

Philips hue range lighting A19, BR30, GU10, MR16
Photo credit Philips Hue 3rd generation

Philips 432690 Hue 65W Equivalent BR30

The Philips hue BR30 is a 7-watt flood lamp. It has 50 thousand shades of white, from warm to cold color temperatures. It can dim down to 1% using the Hue apps.  It is rated at 15000 hours run time. 680 lm @ 4000K down to 440 lm @ 6500K

Philips Hue GU10 White and Color

This is your replacement downlight for 240v halogens. Furthermore these Hue bulbs are 7cm long, standard LED GU10 is 5cm long, so make sure you have enough room in your lamp holder to install these.

They are rated at about 6 watts and will throw out about as much light as a 35-watt halogen.

Philips Hue MR16

This is the 12 volt equivalent of the GU10. The MR16 Hue is not released yet but I’m sure it’s an interesting product that maybe will be released soon. The market is huge for a 12 volt Hue

How to Install Philips Hue Lighting

First get your Philips Hue 3rd Generation Color Ambience A19 Startup Kit. Amazon is usually the cheapest most days, best buy and other brick and mortar stores will sometimes have excellent specials. As the Philips hue 3rd Generation is a premium product, not all stores will stock the Hue light bulb products.

Apple stores now finally carry the Gen 3 Philips Hue range, but you will pay for their excellent service.

Power Your Light Bulbs

Next workout if you need Bayonet Cap (BC) Bulbs or Edison screw (ES) if you only have access to say Edison Screw bulbs you can buy adaptors that will convert you Bayonet Cap fittings over. They should only be a few dollars and can be purchased from eBay or IKEA

First of all and most importantly turn off the light switch. Remove your old Incandescent or Fluorescent Light Bulbs and install your new Philips Hue Lights. If you have other Philips Hue lights, for example, Philips Hue light strips, you only have to plug them into a GPO outlet and power them up.

bulb types

Install your 2.0 Philips Hue Bridge Hub

Plug-in your Hue Bridge into a 240 or 110-volt power outlet, and also into your internet router with the supplied cat 6 Ethernet cable. Wait for the three lights to come on. Each light has a purpose, Power, Internet Communications good, and Network

You can connect up to 50 lamps to one bridge, and 12 Philips Hue accessories per bridge

Download the Philips Hue App

To set up your Philips Hue 3rd Generation lights you will need to download the fantastic new version 2 Philips Hue app either on Apple IOS or Android.

This can be done with either a phone or tablet. Connect to the bridge. Find your lights. They will be numbered.

Set up each light with a name and room location. You can group them so if there are 4 lights in the large Dinning room, all 4 will change color, or turn off when commanded to do so.

Play around and see the Hue Ambience

There are many 3rd party Hue apps on the google play store and one of my favorites is the Hue Pro.  This lets you set moods to match your decor or environment. Thinks disco or party mode for fun. Blue for a chill, or cherry red for romance.

What’s new with the Philips Hue Bridge 2?

Philips hue 3rd generation richer

The new square-shaped Hue bridge has a power consumption of around 3 Watt which is not much at all.

The new 2.0 square-shaped Hue bridge adds Apple HomeKit compatibility. It offers all the same features and compatibility with existing Hue lights as:

  • Philips Hue taps – We open one up to find the magic.
  • Hue wireless dimmer switches,
  • Philips Hue apps for iOS and Android and all of the third-party Philips Hue apps.
  • The square Hue bridge 2.0 is ready for updates as it has a lot more internal memory, and a more powerful processor than the round Hue bridge ver 1 as a result it is faster.
  • You can upgrade to the new bridge by transferring all your data from the Old Hue Bridge to the New square one by pairing them together.
  • Paint with Light globes
  • Support for the new Hue Motion Sensor – see our detailed review here
  • Sync lights with music and movies
  • Light Schedules
  • Remote Lighting from away from your house (makes it look like someone is home)
  • Use timers, alarms, geofencing and soft security to achieve personalized lighting
  • Zigbee Home technology
  • Home automation ideas Paint with light
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