Philips Hue Play White and Colour Ambiance Smart Light Bar Extension, Entertainment Lighting for TV and Gaming (Works with Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit), Black

Bought 6 light bars, three for the home theatre pc and three for my main gaming PC. Initially I had almost returned the whole order but later decided to keep them. The main reason was the price, I got the light bars on a sale and still they were very expensive, the light bars with hub cost almost £300.The Software:You have to install the app on your mobile and also an app on your PC. Confusingly you have to use both, the PC app controlling mostly sync related lighting and the mobile app for setup, light positioning, timers etc. Both apps work well, but there is some room for improvement. The good thing is that Philips hue have a large client base, so the software should continue to improve and mature.The latency:In my setup there is almost no discernable lag between what is happening on my monitor and when the lights react, I would estimate around 20-50ms. I am connected directly to my router via a lan cable and I am around 5m away from the hue hub. This can very quickly turn in to a different story if you are on slow wifi or worst yet, try to wirelessly cast/mirror your laptop display onto a TV. I think most complaints about latency online is with ppl doing exactly that. I did notice an option in the software to mitigate the issue, but did not need to use it. There is no substitute for a hard wired connection.It works like this. The app on your PC analyses the screen space and calculates average light values based on your lighting setup. This gets sent to the hue hub via your local network. The hue hub then sends the signals to the lights via the Bixby wireless protocol.The light bars:These are rather small but can produce a good amount of light. Rather than the amount of light, it is the quality of the light that surprised me. The warm and cool white light is amazing and it is obvious that some attention was given to colour reproduction. They must have RGB and two different kinds of white light LEDs inside. The diffuser is excellent quality too, I am not able to discern any individual spots of light inside the bar. There is nothing quite like starting up DOOM and having the whole room go a deep red colour! Quite nice indeed.There is one annoying aspect of the light bars, at full brightness they emit an electric buzzing sound. The buzzing sound is reduced in line with the brightness setting. This should not be an issue when seated a few meters from a TV or if there is any other noise in the room, but when sat at a desk close to the lights it is noticeable. To mitigate the issue I placed the light bars as far away from my seating position as possible and have them set to around 30% brightness when doing work or just browsing the net in a quiet room. If you are using headphones or have any other noise in the room then you can't hear any buzzing even at 100% brightness. To give you an idea, it is reminiscent of some older and cheaper type monitors that emit a buzzing sound because of PWM dimming.The hub:Nothing much to say here, find a decent spot for it and switch it on, have not had any issues with it.PC performance:There is overhead associated with analysing the screen space, calculating average colours and sending the data to the hue hub. I have a top spec PC with a 2080ti GPU, and using a gaming benchmark I noticed about a 5-8% performance decrease with hue sync enabled. For me this is not an issue, but it could be an issue on weaker hardware. Hue sync can be disabled or enabled on a game to game basis in the software as profiles.The competition:Asus Aura Halo works by adding LED strips to the back of the monitor. I like Asus but they have a way of not updating their software, and when they do it will usually only work on the newer hardware. I don't trust them to improve the software or even fix it if potentially a windows update breaks it. The RGB light will be harsh with no diffuser or dedicated white leds.NZXT Hue 2 V2 Ambient, they seem a bit more invested in the tech with a v2 released recently, but again this is all controlled with their CAM software which has a terrible reputation. The same RGB strips are used with no diffuser or dedicated white lights. Since these light strips are addressable they offer a higher resolution as only some leds can be triggered to onscreen events, but this to me just seem to make them even harsher on the eye.In both cases the competitions software and features are lacking as compared to the Philips implementation. The lighting is also harsh, which is why I decided to go with Philips hue sync. With philips you can also add lighting at a later point and you are free to place the lights where you want.The lighting should add to the ambience of a gaming session, not be a distraction.UPDATE: Some months have passed since my last review and thought this detailed review could do with an update. In my living room setup I have added another light bar to my rear top left on a bookcase behind a nice Alien statue, and a E27 colour ambiance bulb to my tall lamp on the rear right. This is now my primary way of lighting the living room. I also stuck a Hue dimmer switch close to the couch so we can control brightness easily. Gaming and movies is awesome, although Netflix still does not work with Hue play. Works best with movies that have lots of colour and action.My gaming setup also got another Hue play bar for a total of 4, and a dimmer switch. I missed some light under my shelf and that has now been remedied. My lights are set to switch on via a timer on weekdays to help me get up, and they also switch of automatically when I leave the house.It is not a cheap echo system, but I would miss the ambient light during gaming if you took it away right now. During the past few months there has been one update to the sync app, validating my theory that the ecosystem is larger than the competition, and Philips is actively developing for it.

The media could not be loaded. I purchased these on Prime day as they were such a good price. At the time I wasn't sure where to place them for backlighting when watching TV or behind our bedside cabinets.If you haven't used Philips Hue before, then you're in for a real treat. Once setup with the required Hub (technically I don't think it is required, but the functionality is severely limited without it), it allows you to connect to a portable light-switch (use a light-switch cover available on Amazon), your phone, or controllable by asking Alexa/Google Home/Siri. The lights are well made, have a long life at 25,000 hours and mostly are bright with clear colours; my daughter loves 'Barbie Pink' in her bedroom. They're not the cheapest, but you certainly get what you pay for.This pack comes with two lights. These lights have a stand that allow you to stand them on their ends or on their sides depending on where you're placing them. The lights and the plastic on the lights is extremely good quality, but I do think the black plastic stands look a little cheap; especially on a white light surround.The set comes with a plug and adaptor that allows you to use this in either UK or the EU, there is a spare connector to plug a third light (sold separately) in the same socket. Helpfully the pack even has some 3M stickers the right size to allow you to mount them somewhere.I hope you found this review helpful!

Philips Hue Bars - Absolutely excellent - I have around 30 different types of Philips Hue products - My house and garden have been transformed - So very happy! -

Ignoring the price tag of these lights they are very nice to have. I use them to backlight my monitor and reduce eyestrain in the evenings. The lights are quite bright and coming in pairs allows them to completely flood the area that I want to be backlit.The lights come with a variety of useful mounting options being able to stand vertically, horizontally, resting on a surface or stuck to a surface meaning they can fit in and look good or be hidden in most scenarios. I do wish that the mounting plates were a little more integrated. I didn't use them initially and it didn't take long to lose them.The lights have the usual Hue customising options with a huge gamut of colours to choose from and relatively infinite adjustability in brightness. Truth be told, much like the colour bulbs I have throughout the rest of my house I don't really use the colour features at all (except in my bedroom where red light helps to keep the night vision better when getting up).You can set scenes from your PC/phone and if hooked up to a compatible device you can rather easily set it to match the colours of the scene being shown. This is a nice effect for watching films or gaming but again, once the novelty had worn off I found it irritating when using a PC in the evening as it would switch from relatively dark colours to sudden, bright white when alt-tabbing to view a crisp white internet site. This can be adjusted somewhat but I think it's just important to note that you might not use it as much as you think you will.The real deal comes down to price. These lights are not cheap and realistically you are paying well over double the odds than something that could easily be replicated with much cheaper bulbs or even an LED strip for just a few pounds. The reason why I still give it 4 stars is that it fits in with the rest of my Hue 'ecosystem' and the convenience of being able to go to bed and just shut forgotten lights off from a central point on my phone or blend lighting together across the house (particularly for events like cosy Christmas evenings or parties) is nice.The Hue 'ecosystem' works relatively flawlessly compared to other options where connections can be patchy, apps buggy and generally a nuisance that makes them undesirable and irritating to use. Hue has a great set up, they are easy to live with and rarely cause any kind of issue, being able to link with motion sensors is another plus. That being said I find Hue updates irritating as they require all lights to be switched on and the only time I see the update request is usually when I'm just getting into bed and turning all lights off.If you don't have a Hue set up I would probably much rather recommend basic lamps, LED strips and wifi plugs.