The new 100 Watt outdoor power supply: How many lamps are possible?

For more than two years now, Philips Hue has been offering its low voltage system for outdoor use. Starting with Lily and Calla, there is now a whole range of products that can be connected together. The Philips Hue Outdoor LightStrip or the brighter Lily XL are very popular, too.

Up to now there was only one outdoor power supply with a maximum output of 40 watts, at least that is what Philips Hue says. How many lamps can be connected to it, each user should be able to reach easily by himself: A Philips Hue Lily consumes up to 8 watts, so five of them can theoretically be operated with one power supply. But how does it look in practice?

When will the 40 Watt power supply reach its limits?

That's exactly what I wanted to find out with a small test setup for you. I connected the following Hue products with a 40 Watt power supply:

• 1x 5m Hue Outdoor LightStrip (39,5 watts)
• 1x Hue Lily XL (15 watts)
• 2x Hue Lily (2x 8 watts)

The bottom line is that the maximum power is a little more than 70 watts, much more than the 40 watt power supply from Philips Hue should be able to withstand. But with a measuring device I was able to make interesting findings.

The outdoor power supply seems to have enough reserves. Only at exactly 70 watts was there a shift at the shaft, at this point connected lamps started to flicker. But I could only achieve these values with bright white light settings anyway, for example the scene “Concentrate”.

But in my opinion this is something that should be rather rare in practice. So I simply let the four lamps shine in different colours – because much less power is needed here. The result: The consumption has dropped from 70 watts to just 27 watts, so here the 40 watt power supply would even have reserves.

Here we are moving in an area that the power supply can still easily cope with. Unfortunately, I can't tell you what effects a higher consumption between 40 and 70 watts has on the small outdoor power supply. Signify leaves us with the following knowledge in a statement:

• Power consumption levels indicated for products are based on max power, which is at 4000K white light and full brightness.
• When overloading the 40W PSU (>40W), it will affect performance (flickering & lifetime). When used like this warranty will not apply

If you want to play it safe and need even more power, you can now reach for the big 100 watt power supply, which Philips Hue already announced in January. Meanwhile the new powerful power supply is actually delivered, but the first batch seems to have been sold already. The German reseller Click-Licht.de currently states a delivery time of around two weeks, and the 100 watt outdoor power supply will be available again from 17 July at a price of €56.39.

In addition to the improved performance, the 100 watt power supply from Philips Hue offers another little gimmick: There's not only one connection on the outgoing cable like on the small model, but two of them at once. This gives you a bit of flexibility if you want to route the cables from the power supply in two different directions. How many lamps can be connected in the end can hardly be answered. It depends on many factors, but with the 100 Watt power supply you should have enough reserves.