Philips Hue Twilight Bedside Lamp Review

There are so many ways to smarten up your home these days. The easiest and most noticeable I have found is with lighting. Whether you want to add ambience as you watch a movie, or if you want to be able to tell your smart assistant to turn off the lounge lights as you run out the door. These things are so damn handy. With Philips Hue’s latest Bedside Lamp, I was keen to find out if I needed one of them on my bedside. It turns out, yes, I did.

So much light!

The first thing I noticed when I plugged this beast in was the light it can pump out. With a frosted panel where a light bulb would normally go, this thing can brighten up the whole room or give a nice soft bit of light in the morning. Then it has a frosted panel on the back which adds a nice glow to the wall behind it.

The best thing about that panel at the back is it’s super easy to swivel the head of the lamp around, so it will fit in any part of a room and can backlight whatever you want. Need to be able to see the rest of the table it’s on? It can do that. Want to add a nice glow to the room? It can do that. Want the wall to light up red as it pumps out a soft yellow glow from the front? IT can do that.

So easy to set up!

One thing I get nervous about with some of these devices is how much dicking around you need to do to set them up. For an experiment, pulling it out of the box, I had my Hue Bridge unplugged. Then I plugged it into the wall and pressed the power button on the top of the device, and it turned on. Pressing it multiple times, it went through a bunch of preset options, and holding it turned the light off. So the thing works out of the box!

Then of course the power comes with the bridge. I have an old bridge, but connecting it up with the app was still super easy. Then with the app I was able to play around with the preset options. After that I connected it to Smart Assistant, and we are away to the races. Now when my alarm goes off in the morning, it can turn on to a soft glow to help me wake up in the morning. I bloody love this lamp.

There have to be some drawbacks, right?

From what it says it does on the box, it nails that. But given its size, I would have loved it if it had a USB-C output port or something so it could control my bedside table by letting me charge my phone or something. The power cable, of course, is specific to the device as opposed to using a common port like USB-C, but I will admit I am kind of nitpicking here. The only other thing is the price. At around $500 it is far from cheap. 

So should you get one?

If the price isn’t an issue for you, this is an absolute banger of a product. It looks super slick and feels sturdy, meaning it should fit any room’s aesthetic. It works so damn well and is so much fun to play with. I absolutely love it!