Philips Hue Safe Floodlight evaluate: Nice mild, common digicam

Philips Hue is arguably the most important title in good lighting. The corporate has been producing wonderful good lighting merchandise for a few years. And although Philips Hue merchandise aren’t the most affordable choice, they’re nonetheless highly regarded due to their prime quality.

The corporate is not resting on its laurels, nonetheless. In 2023, Philips Hue expanded its product range to include security cameras, and now in 2024 it is including a brand new safety product. The Philips Hue Safe Floodlight is a mixture floodlight and safety digicam that is designed to guard your private home from the surface.

Associated

What is a Philips Hue Bridge, and do you need one?

This central hub controls your Philips Hue good lighting system with ease, if you know the way to make use of it.

There are already good floodlight cameras available on the market, such because the Google Nest Cam with Floodlight, so what does the brand new Philips Hue product have to supply? We put the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight via its paces to seek out out.

Philips Hue Safe Floodlight

The Philips Hue Safe Floodlight has the standard you anticipate from a Philips Hue product, with a brilliant floodlight you can flip to any coloration you want. The included safety digicam provides good high quality and options comparable to package deal detection and exercise zones out there with a subscription. Nevertheless, there’s presently no strategy to see the stay feed outdoors the Hue app, and no help for HomeKit Safe Video.

Execs

• Vivid floodlight in any coloration
• Customizable movement activation
• Respectable digicam

Cons

• Costly
• No stay streaming to good shows
• No HomeKit Safe Video help

Value, specs and availability

The Safe Flood Mild Digicam is available for purchase now from the Philips Hue web site for $350.

Design

Philips Hue products normally have a smooth and trendy look, and the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight is not any exception. The mounting and floodlight look fashionable sufficient that you simply will not cringe about mounting them to the outside of your private home. The digicam sits under the floodlight and incorporates a smooth look as effectively. The one slight flaw within the seems to be division is that the ability cable and tether for the digicam dangle down a bit under the digicam, however this is not an enormous subject.

Set up

Pretty painless if in case you have outdoors energy

The Philips Hue Safe Floodlight must be hard-wired; there isn’t any battery choice out there. This implies you may have to mount it someplace the place you’ve got present exterior wiring. If you do not have anyplace acceptable, chances are you’ll have to get the assistance of an electrician, particularly in the event you do not feel assured working with electrical wires.

In the event you do have present wiring (for instance, in the event you’re changing an existing floodlight), then putting in the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight is not too onerous, and takes about ten to fifteen minutes to do.

The directions aren’t probably the most useful, consisting solely of pictures with no accompanying textual content, however they’re pretty easy to observe. The floodlight might be angled to level in a selected path, and the digicam is connected by magnet, permitting you to level it at a 60-degree angle in any path.Annoyingly, as soon as the floodlight is in place, you may be requested to


scan QR codes
that are pretty inaccessible now that you’ve got put in the machine. Fortunately, copies of these codes are additionally on stickers on the entrance of the guide, so ensure you hold them readily available.As soon as you’ve got put in the floodlight and powered it up, you possibly can simply add the machine utilizing the Hue app. You add the floodlight and digicam individually because the Hue app sees them as particular person units. The directions within the app are easy to observe.You may want a

Hue Bridge
to be able to arrange and management your Philips Hue Safe Floodlight, which is offered individually. Nevertheless, in the event you already personal different Hue merchandise, you in all probability have already got a Hue Bridge.

Efficiency

Respectable digicam and nice lighting

The guts of the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight is the highly effective 2,250 lumen floodlight. As with many different Hue merchandise, this floodlight does not simply supply brilliant white mild, nonetheless. You possibly can select from nearly any coloration you possibly can think about. This may be very helpful. Furthermore, the sunshine is greater than highly effective sufficient to light up a big space outdoors your private home.

The connected digicam provides 1080p seize with a 141.2-degree subject of view, which I discovered large sufficient for my wants. It additionally options two-way discuss via the Hue app, and you’ll set off an alarm that may flash the floodlight and make a loud sound via the digicam.

Image high quality is sweet, with sufficient element to make out faces even at a distance. You possibly can zoom in on the stay feed and recordings and the standard is sweet sufficient to get a superb take a look at the faces of any potential intruders.

Evening imaginative and prescient high quality is superb too; there’s little distinction within the image high quality when utilizing the digicam’s night time imaginative and prescient with the floodlight off in comparison with the picture at night time when the floodlight is on. Yo simply see what is going on on outdoors your private home even in the course of the darkish of the night time.

Options

Extremely customizable movement activation

One of the widespread makes use of of a floodlight is to light up the surface of your private home when movement is detected. That is helpful for serving to you discover your means again into your private home when it is darkish and can also be a superb deterrent for potential intruders or undesirable guests of a furrier type.

You should utilize the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight as a motion-activated mild, but it surely does require some setup. For the reason that digicam and light-weight are handled as particular person units, you may want to enter the digicam settings within the Hue app and activate the Set off Lights toggle. You possibly can then select the sunshine you wish to activate when movement is detected. The intelligent half is that within the app you possibly can customise the conduct of the sunshine. You possibly can have it activate in any coloration or scene that you really want, at any brightness you need, have it revert to the earlier state when it was final on, or have it do nothing.

You may also create a number of time slots and have completely different behaviors for every slot. For instance, I’ve arrange the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight to activate at medium brightness in a blue mild after 10 pm at night time. That is greater than sufficient mild to see by, with out turning on a blazing white mild each time a leaf blows previous the digicam. The customization is actually helpful and units the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight other than many different motion-activated floodlights. There may be additionally a daylight sensitivity setting you can tweak in order that the sunshine will not come on when it is mild outdoors.

The digicam provides movement notifications that may seem in your cellphone when movement is detected. You get normal movement notifications without cost, however in the event you join a paid Hue Secure plan, you additionally get particular person, animal, car, and package deal detection. The particular person notifications are stable; I’ve seen far fewer false positives than I get with my Ring video doorbell, and you’ll modify the sensitivity in the event you’re getting too many or too few notifications.

The Safe plans supply different options, too. You get live-streaming, normal movement notifications, end-to-end video encryption, blackout zones, and video snapshots without cost. The Fundamental plan, which prices $40 per digicam per 12 months, provides 30 days of video historical past, exercise zones, in addition to the superior movement detection options talked about above. The Plus plan, which prices $100 per 12 months for as many cameras as you want, ups the video historical past to 60 days.

Exercise zones is a function that is solely out there with a Safe plan, but it surely’s a helpful one. It lets you create a number of zones which the digicam will monitor for movement. Any movement outdoors these zones is ignored. For instance, in case your digicam is pointing at your entrance gate, and also you usually have automobiles driving previous it, you possibly can create an exercise zone that excludes the realm the place the automobiles go, in order that you aren’t getting a continuing stream of movement detection alerts.

One other helpful safety measure is the Take Motion function. In the event you discover something untoward in your digicam, you possibly can faucet the Take Motion button. This provides you the choice to sound an alarm and flash the lights to discourage any undesirable guests. There are additionally fast motion buttons that let you name a pre-set emergency contact quantity, or instantly name emergency companies.

Good residence integrations

Missing in video streaming

In the event you’re hoping so as to add the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight to your good residence setup, there’s some good and unhealthy information. The excellent news is that the floodlight is suitable with Alexa, and Google Assistant. It is also works with HomeKit over Matter. I used to be ready so as to add the floodlight to Alexa and the Apple Dwelling app with little effort, permitting me to regulate the ability, brightness, and coloration by voice. The response is nearly instantaneous.

The unhealthy information is that the safety digicam is just not presently suitable with Alexa, Google Assistant, or HomeKit. In the event you have been hoping to have the ability to view your digicam feed in your Echo Show, for instance, then you definately’re out of luck. The one means to take action is thru the Hue app.

It additionally signifies that there isn’t any help for HomeKit Secure Video; if you’d like entry to your recordings, you may need to pay the Hue subscription price.

Help for viewing stay footage on Alexa and Google Assistant units could also be added sooner or later, but it surely’s unlikely that we’ll see HomeKit help till safety cameras are added to the Matter normal.

Verdict

Hue has all the time had a popularity for making nice lights and the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight is not any exception. It is a break from the norm to discover a motion-activated floodlight that may shine practically any coloration you possibly can think about. That is helpful for offering low-level lighting at night time, however you need to use the floodlight for different makes use of too, comparable to including a pop of coloration to your private home’s exterior in the course of the holidays.

The safety digicam additionally does a superb job, with respectable 1080p image high quality. It is a disgrace that, at the least for the second, there isn’t any strategy to view the digicam feed apart from via the Hue app. Help for good shows comparable to an Amazon Echo Present or Google Nest Hub would make the digicam extra helpful. The dearth of help for HomeKit Safe Video signifies that if you wish to save recordings, you are going to need to pay for the privilege.

Philips Hue Safe Floodlight

Establishing the sunshine to work as a motion-activated floodlight additionally takes a bit time, however as soon as you’ve got accomplished so, you’ve got some spectacular customization choices to make your floodlight reply precisely the way you need it to.

Philips Hue merchandise have by no means been low-cost, however the wonderful high quality normally signifies that they’re definitely worth the value. In the event you simply intend to make use of the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight as a motion-activated mild in your residence, then it is a powerful, if barely costly, choice. Nevertheless, the shortage of help for the digicam is an actual disgrace; the power to stream the digicam feed to a wise show, or help for HomeKit Safe Video, would flip this product from a superb one into a superb one. Philips Hue will add at the least a few of these options sooner or later.