


Whichever lumen output you choose, you’ll find Philips Hue White and White Ambiance available. This is equivalent to a 100W incandescent bulb! The high lumen 17W LED bulbs are Philips’ brightest bulbs yet, with a lumen output reaching 1600. The medium lumen 10.5W LED bulbs take brightness up a notch, with a lumen output reaching 1100.

With more and more people shifting to higher lumen output, you’ll most likely find a better deal on Philips medium lumen smart bulbs. Although still largely functional, competitors like LIFX offer significantly brighter bulbs (1100 lumens) that come at a more affordable price point. The base lumen is the standard 10W Philips smart bulb and produces 800 lumens. Whichever Hue light bulb you buy, you should avoid the base lumen light bulb and go for the medium or high lumen option. The Hue White bulbs are roughly half the price of the Hue White Ambiance. The only issue you’re going to have with Philips Hue White Ambiance is the price (don’t get me started on the Hue Color Ambiance at $50 each!). Is the White Ambiance Worth the Extra Cost? This becomes an issue if you buy bulbs from another company because you won’t have that “seamless” control over your house lighting like before. However, you can’t rely on the soft, warm white all the time, and you’ll have to buy cool white bulbs to balance it out. The light presets in the app are now indispensable to me, and I use Alexa to control the light setting around my house.ĭon’t get me wrong this was all possible with the Philips Hue White bulbs on their own. Once your whole house becomes equipped with these smart bulbs, the entire experience becomes seamless. It wasn’t until I bought the Philips Hue White Ambiance that I realized what I was missing. When the warm light became overbearing, I used to turn them off and turn on some cool white bulbs instead. I bought the Philips Hue White smart bulbs and was completely satisfied with them. However, its limitations will start to surface when you need a little bit of cool daylight in your house. This will work just fine in settings where you’re reading a book, going to sleep, or having a relaxing evening. The Hue White Ambiance not only gives you complete control over the white color temperature but also gives you light scene presets to choose from. This means that the warm light bulbs alone will feel out of place at times. Cool white represents the colors as they really are and is much better suited for practical applications. These are times when you want to be alert and focused, not relaxed. You’ll find how valuable the Hue White Ambiance bulbs are when you’re working at your desk, getting ready to go out in the morning, or cooking in the kitchen. The most you can do with the Hue White bulb is to dim the 2700K warm light when it’s too bright. So, does Philips Hue White offer the same features? Unfortunately not. Perfect for evenings and right before you sleep. They’re meant to make you relaxed and at ease. The “Read” and “Relax” presets are on the warmer side of the white light. The “Concentrate” preset takes the color temperature all the way up to 6500K, allowing you extreme focus over the task you have at hand. And as with the White and Color, the Philips app isn’t the most reliable on the market, prone to frequent disconnections from the Philips Bridge.Some of the various scenes within the Hue app If you want to use these bulbs’ more advanced features, such as controlling them when you’re away from home or using auto-away and auto-arrival features, you’ll need to create an account. The same pros and cons that affect the Hue White and Color Ambiance apply here. If that fixture is controlled by a Z-Wave dimmer, it will flash on and then off when first turned on, and it won’t dim at all. If the Philips Hue White Ambiance is installed in a fixture controlled by a conventional dimmer switch, it will flicker badly if you try and dim it. Four white “recipes” are included to make this easier than choosing between pure white and yellowish white, ranging from a very cold and bluish “Energize” to the nearly-red “Relax.” Christopher Null The Hue app simply hides the color light features while you’re managing a White Ambiance bulb, restricting you to making changes only in the white light temperature spectrum. You need a Philips Bridge to connect the ZigBee bulbs to your router via an ethernet cable, and the bridge can handle both white-only and color bulbs simultaneously. Setup and control is identical to that of the Hue White and Color Ambiance.
