Colourful lighting in the home isn’t just going to come down to a light bulb replacement, as Hue expands the bits and pieces you can plug in, and even take to go.
Making your home into a smart home doesn’t have to be something solely dependent on just giving it a smart speaker or smart display to speak to, because you can change the bits and pieces installed within.
Air conditioners can be connected to the cloud and controlled remotely, picture frames can become big TVs and even smaller digital frames all working from an online system, and even the humble heater — a winter must-have — can be controlled from your phone or even your voice.
But while all these things are nice, the most logical way to endow a home with web-connected smarts may actually be with lighting.
We all have electricity and we all have light, and so replacing those lights with something that can be electronically controlled makes a lot of sense. Smart lights can then be controlled by other devices, listening to the commands of Alexa, the Google Assistant, and Siri, and they can be made to do a little more than turning on and off at a moment’s notice.
Rather, you can give them colour, changing the moods and environments just that little bit. And it’s not just a lightbulb that can do these things, but lights as well, something Philips appears to be expanding.
New Hue models are on the way, it seems, coming in the form of a Hue downlights for folks who want colour and light control in their homes, with track lighting also on the way in the Hue Perifo.
There’s also a bathroom light on yhe way in the Hue Xamento, a light kind of resembling a bit of a donut with a black edition that can be dimmed low in lots of colours.
Philips (or rather Signify which owns Philips Hue) is also releasing a lamp for the bedroom and beyond in the Hue Signe, a sort of slim strip light attached to a wood base to work on either a table or the floor, depending on how tall a lamp you’re looking for.
Meanwhile, there’s also a portable lamp on the way in the Hue Go table lamp, which is exactly what it sounds like: a table lamp with a shade that can offer colours from its style, and as much as 48 hours of battery life.
Philips is also bringing a new variation of its switch for folks who mightn’t want to call on their smart assistant, arriving in the Hue Tap Dial Switch, which includes four buttons for lighting controls, plus a dimming control to change the brightness quickly.
One thing neither Philips or Signify has commented on locally is pricing, or availability for that matter. Signify’s announcement of new products is primarily for Europe, but Hue products do typically make their way to Australia, so while the Australian pricing isn’t yet set here, we’d say there’s a pretty good chance for the Hue Go table lamp and Xamento models to pop up at your local hardware and electronics stores eventually, even if it’s not there right now.
