Philips Hue has released app version 4.2 for iOS and Android. And as of now, the timers are back. They are well hidden: You can find them in the “Automations” section and have to scroll down quite a bit – the timers have made it into the app as the penultimate function.
With the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box, our favourite manufacturer launched an exciting new product two years ago, which was supplemented last autumn by the Philips Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip. The perfect combination to be able to offer something like Ambilight on any TV with external sources. There is only one problem with the whole thing: the “Hue Ambilight” is only three-sided.
I could tell you stories now that would make you lose your faith. But now I’m not quite sure how serious Philips Hue is about keeping its new products secret. After all, they have just put some of the new products online in their own American shop. To be more precise, it’s about the new generation of lamps that are supposed to offer a brightness of up to 1,100 lumens, which is almost 40 per cent brighter than the previous Hue lamps with a brightness of 806 lumens.
In the course of the week, I was able to introduce you to an exciting new release that Philips Hue actually wanted to present in September: The new Gradient Lightstrip Ambiance, a multi-coloured upgrade for the well-known Lightstrip. But that will not be all, because another Gradient product is now announced.
A normal Philips Hue lamp achieves 806 lumens. We have become used to this in recent years. We already know that this will soon change, because a month ago I was able to reveal new Hue bulbs that also manage up to 1,100 and 1,600 lumens. But that’s not the only change we can look forward to.
When I asked you at the beginning of 2020 what a new light strip should be able to do, over 40 percent of you answered that it should be able to display several colours at the same time. In the meantime, the Philips Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip is on the market, but it is specially designed to be mounted behind a TV.
When Lidl had a power strip with ZigBee on sale for just under 30 euros last December, the interest was really high. Unfortunately, there was a small problem: despite Lidl’s promises, the power strip could not be paired with the Philips Hue Bridge. Müller-Licht made another attempt with the Tint power strip, which in my view was an absolute mistake: only two of the four plugs could be controlled via app – and only together.
Actually, it sounds pretty great: you can easily expand the Ambilight of your Philips TV with Philips Hue light sources. You don’t even need the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box to do this, instead you just click through the TV menu a bit and you’re ready to go. What sounds so simple, however, currently seems to be causing big problems again.
One of the biggest criticisms of the current Philips Hue app for many users is the tile view. What still looks quite pretty with the scenes and is also quite good to use thanks to two rows, is a big cramp with the lamps. Here, only one row is used for the display and on many smartphones there is a lot of unused space, yet you can only see three bulbs without having to scroll horizontally.
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In addition to the criticism around the widgets, one thing can be read again and again in reviews and comments around the new Philips Hue app: users would like to see the timer function back. Shortly after the launch of the new app, already more than one and a half months ago, Philips Hue promised to bring back the functionality with a future update.
Frederick