Regardless of whether it’s a large or small provider: When things don’t run smoothly, the most important thing is good support. Those who offer fast and good solutions can gain points with their customers. I tried the Philips Hue support this week and would like to tell you about my experience.
“Never change a running system” – this is a more than well-known wisdom from the IT world. The Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box, for example, has not received a single firmware update in the past year, with the last update dating back to 29 October 2021. If you have encountered one problem or another during this time, you might be helped with an update now.
After the update to version 4.40, it wasn’t worth writing a separate article because the new features weren’t visible at all. Only with the update to version 4.41 does Philips Hue show the latest products from the in-house portfolio in the Discover section of the Hue app. A change in the Hue app that can hardly be surpassed in terms of excitement.
The Lightguide collection from Philips Hue, which was officially launched in September 2022, has not exactly gone according to plan so far. After the first models had just gone on sale, sales were stopped again a short time later. Our own experience and numerous reader reports showed that the light sources fogged up inside.
From my point of view, it was already a big step forward when Philips Hue added White Ambiance models to its filament collection in late summer 2021. The different shades of white are a real added value, because previously you had to rely on 2,100 Kelvin with the Hue White Filaments and thus on a very warm light setting.
Approval documents already suggested it at the beginning of the year, then yesterday the first product photos surfaced. Signify, the manufacturer of Philips Hue, will launch a smart home camera. However, not in the Hue cosmos, but for the independently operating WiFi system of the WiZ brand. Works with Nest has since been discontinued However, the topic of Philips Hue and camera is not entirely new.
Approval documents have already suggested it earlier this year, now we can deliver the first pictures. The French manufacturer WiZ, which was taken over by Signify a few years ago, will probably soon bring a surveillance camera onto the market. The first product photo shows the packaging of the “Home Monitoring Starter Kit”.
Philips Hue is probably omnipresent in many of our homes. One or the other smart lamp is probably also installed in bedrooms and children’s rooms. And this is where a question from Hueblog reader Jovi comes into play. He emailed me: Which is the darkest Hue bulb in E14 format to regulate?
After the rather small novelties in January, the next new products from Philips Hue will probably be available in June. Here, too, the market leader in smart lighting will apparently concentrate on model maintenance, at least that’s what the first products that I was able to find for you on the web suggest.
I really don’t want to know how much money some of you have already put into your Hue installation. We’re certainly no longer talking about a few euros here, but three-figure or even four-figure sums. So far, the costs have been limited to the purchase of hardware, but that seems to be changing this year.
Fabian