Philips Hue Color Bulb

The Philips Hue Color bulb is the full colour one: 16 million colours plus the whole white range, in a standard E27 screw fitting that goes straight into an ordinary lamp holder.

• Read this first: the Philips Hue Color bulb needs a Bridge
• Sixteen million colours, and the whites as well
• Scenes are the reason people keep them
• Dimming, and the flicker that is not there
• Fitting, power and one published discrepancy

Read this first: the Philips Hue Color bulb needs a Bridge

There is no Bluetooth radio in this bulb. It speaks Zigbee only, so a phone cannot reach it directly and it will not work on its own the way the White and White Ambiance bulbs do.

You need a Hue Bridge, which plugs into your router. Once it is on the network the bulb answers to the Hue app, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple Home. Budget for both if you are starting from nothing.

Sixteen million colours, and the whites as well

The colour range is the headline, but the white range matters more day to day: 2000K candle warm through to 6500K cool daylight, which covers everything the White Ambiance bulb does.

So this is not a party bulb that happens to do white badly. It is the full white bulb with colour on top, which is why it is the one to buy if you are only putting one Hue bulb in a room.

Scenes are the reason people keep them

Set a room amber for the evening and daylight white for working, save each as a scene, and switch between them from your phone or by voice.

With the Bridge those scenes can span several rooms at once and run on a schedule. That is the point at which the lighting stops being a gadget somebody demonstrates and starts being how the house works.

Dimming, and the flicker that is not there

Dimming is smooth the whole way down, far below what a wall dimmer will take an ordinary bulb, with no buzz and no flicker at the bottom of the range.

That is because the dimming happens inside the bulb rather than by chopping the mains supply. It is the single most noticeable difference between a Hue bulb and a cheap colour bulb on a dimmer switch.

Fitting, power and one published discrepancy

Standard E27 screw at 220 to 240V, 806 lumens, straight into an ordinary lamp holder with no transformer.

Philips publish both 9.5W and 10W for this bulb in different places, so we quote both rather than picking one. If the exact figure matters for a load calculation, tell us and we will check the box in stock. For a room that only needs white light, the White Ambiance bulb costs less and needs no Bridge. Philips list the range at philips-hue.com.