I have fallen in love with using coloured smart bulbs in my home. The ability to change colours comes up more often than you may expect, from being able to create ambient lighting when watching movies, to having a nice soft light at nighttime, to being able to quickly switch to a bright white colour so I can sort read the small print on my Magic: The Gathering cards when I am deck building. I change the colour of the lights in my home multiple times a day, and being able to shout my commands to Alexa while I am surrounded by cards is a luxury I don’t think I can live without.
The biggest issue with smart bulbs is they tend to be pretty soulless. You get normal shaped bulbs, or the common down light bulbs which are becoming more and more common in homes. These are functional, and great, but pretty soulless. So, what if you want some snazziness in your life? If you have gotten lost at Mitre 10, you have seen some of the cool bulbs they have in the lighting section with all kinds of shapes, and all kinds of filaments inside. Well, Philips is mashing the coolness of those lights, with the awesomeness of smart features, and I am all in.
Why even get smart bulbs?
Did I not already convince you what’s up with the awesomeness of smart bulbs? Well, allow me to explain. Philips Hue lights are damn awesome. Using a smart assistant like Alexa, you can tell it to turn the lights on or off, dim them, or change colours. It can sound like a gimmick, but I use the colour change every day.
Philips Hue used to require the bridge, which is a separate device you attach to your router to use smart light controls. Nowadays, you can use Bluetooth to do the basic functionality, with up to ten lights. This is great for people starting out, but you will quickly need a bridge, as I have eight smart bulbs/lights in my lounge alone. With the bridge you can use more functions, like being able to control the bulbs when you’re away from home, or doing other fancy stuff like having your lights turn on at certain times, syncing up with other devices, etc. Basically all the fun bits.
The best thing, if you are new to smart lighting, is it is super easy to set these up. Once they are screwed in and turned on at the wall, you just need to install the Hue app, and just follow the guide. These bulbs offer as much or as little as you want. Want them to just be fancy lights? Done. Want to connect them to Home Assistant and do all kinds of fancy as automation? Go for gold.
But you want some more style, right?
As I mentioned earlier, smart bulbs tend to look like normal lightbulbs, downlights, or fancy lighting strips. But lights these days can actually be functional design pieces. Well, the new G95 and Triangle smart bulbs may be what you need here.
The triangle bulb is a triangle…ish shape, with a thick piece in the middle giving the look of some fancy filaments. When it lights up, the whole bulb gives a nice glow that looks seriously fantastic. The G95, on the other hand, has a classic light bulb shape, but way bigger. This one also features the same thick bit in the middle that lights up.
What the bulbs do is make themselves the design element, so you can have them hanging down from the ceiling, or popping up vertically from a lamp. So, instead of the lampshade being the design choice. The bulb itself is. Best of all, it takes these elements that make normal bulbs designed like that awesome, but adds in the sweet features that smart bulbs offer. You can have your fancy kitchen start to light up at 6AM with a warm glow, or the fancy-looking lights in your room dim with a soft orange to help you wind down for the night. Or if you want to, you can change them all to teal, then turn the lights off so when your partner wakes up and turns the lights off they get blasted with a bright teal. I don’t know why I do this, but it still tickles me.
Should you get the Philips Hue G95 and Triangle smart bulbs?
I have been playing with these for a week and I absolutely love them. Modern design and modern technology have finally met to give you the best of both worlds!
Their easy to use, look dope as hell, and do everything I wanted them to do. What more can you ask for?
