Philips Hue White Personal Wireless Lighting LED Starter Kit, Includes 2 x 8.5 W A60 E27 Edison Screw Bulbs, 1 x Hue Bridge

I would say brand says a lot here and with Philips you can be sure you're getting a good product. A lot of companies rip products off and I always try to go with the original or market leader because you do get quality although you pay a bit more but with these lights you will want to pay that extra bit for the quality. The hub was really easy to setup, you just plug it into your router, the only thing is it has to be wired so you better have a port free. The connection is reliable and it always works. The only negative thing and this could be the ECHO DOT but when you tell it to turn off "ROOM" sometimes it gets confused. ~TURN OFF "MY ROOM" ~ There is more than one device named "MY ROOM" which one do you mean? ~ "MY ROOM" ~ OK Then the light goes off so you have to repeat the name of the room... I only have two rooms setup with a single light bulb in each room and it gets confused and it did it when I just had the one room so there isn't multiple rooms with similar names or anything. It's not too bad, most of the time it works, it helps if you phrase it a certain way: "ALEXA TURN OFF.... .... .... 'MY ROOM' " You can connect the bridge to the Philips website so you can control the lights when you're away from home which is good. Make sure you get the correct bulb set for your lights, bayonet or screw. I haven't tried it but Philips say a single hub can control up to 50 lights and there are lots of options. I don't have 50 lights in my house even with lamps and everything but you can buy wall lights for cool ambient effects and you can set moods where you get your control device a command and it will turn that setting on. I just have the white lights but you can get the colour lights if you want something like that. Practically for me it is handy turning off the lights using voice commands, the light switch is on the opposite side of the room with respect to my bed and my room can be messy so for me I used to turn the light off and navigate to the bed but now I can get into bed and just turn the light off with a voice command. It's also nice using brightness commands to dim the lights so If I wake up in the middle of the night I can set all lights to 50% brightness meaning I don't need to cover my face when I go to the toilet. It's only a benefit to get this, you just have to justify the price.

I'm a bit of a gadget lover and having control of my home lighting both while at home and away really appeals to me. Initially purchased for it's Echo dot integration I now question why I didn't get this sooner! Pros: I get the impression of very good quality with the look, the weight and the feel of both the hub and bulbs. I've purchased more Hue products since getting this and everyone has been easy to set up, working first time and every time. The mobile application is smart and intuitive, coming with pre set 'scenes' for different lighting levels such as 'concentrate' and 'reading'. The app allows me to set up my own scenes as well as dim the lights on the fly. You can set the lights to come on when you're close to home and go off when you leave, and the icing on the cake is voice activation using Alexa. I can turn the lights off, on, select scenes, dim and increase lighting levels with just a few verbal commands. Cons: Compared to some others on the market Hue products are a touch more expensive.

I use this every day in 3 different rooms in the house - I added a few more Ambient bulbs to the kit. The Bridge is extremely quick to connect and match up with a Samsung Android phone, adjustability of the bulbs is great - though not as advanced as the Ambient bulbs - and the price at purchase was reasonable. I have paired it with an Amazon Echo and this along with the phone controls give great control and variance over timings, intensities and hues etc. The bridge and phone paired with the bulbs almost instantly and updates have been seamless ever since. These are expensive and the novelty will wear off pretty quickly of changing the intensity etc but being able to walk into the house on a dark night and see Alexa lights on and they all come on is great. You can also do this remotely from your phone anywhere with an internet connection and also programme it with the location on your phone switched on so that when you are near your house the bridge detects your location and switches the light on for you.

I was unconvinced about the Hue system but decided to take a chance on the starter kit as a low point of entry to the system. The system is very straightforward to install - connect the hub via the cable, download the app, replace the relevant bulbs, and switch the lights on. That's the theory, but the truth is slightly more convoluted. I followed the instructions to the letter and initially everything worked, however later on one the bulbs could not be found by the app, no matter what I tried. I decided to reset everything and since then it's been a flawless, the app is very straightforward and the functionality of routines, individual lights etc. is intuitive. I have since added two further bulbs to the system (one using an E14 to E27 adapter) and plan to add more. It also 'talks' to the Nest system of a fashion. All in all well worth it, one star deducted for the early-on malfunction, but otherwise highly recommended.