Signify/Philips Hue/Wiz

About the vendor and its products

The lighting division of Philips was in 2018 renamed to Signify, but the brand name Philips is still used. Philips Hue is the primary brand name Signify uses for its smart lighting products, but in 2019 Signify also acquired the Hong Kong-based company WiZ Connected (more about its products below the same for Philips Hue).

Philips Hue

For consumers who have not been comfortable with Z-Wave and other more complicated setups, Hue was arguably one of the first platforms accessible to “anybody” as a starting point for making a home smarter. The product selection is constantly expanding, across a number of main categories:

• A base station, called Hue bridge, which earlier had to be installed first in order to set up a Hue system, but gradually some Hue components also support Bluetooth. This allows simple control without the Hue bridge, but more advanced functions still require it, see more below.

• Several so-called control devices, which include:

• A smart plug, which is quite similar to alternatives by other manufacturers

• Several types of switches, a Tap switch (wireless, with several buttons that can control devices/scenes and which does not require a battery), a Dimmer switch (also a wireless swicth with several buttons to turn on/off/dim devices/scenes and which uses a battery), a Smart button (wireless switch with one button/knob and which requires a battery), and a combined switch/dimmer called Tap dial switch

• In January 2020, Hue also launched a type of smart relay switch, called Wall Switch Module, for installation in the wall recess behind an existing switch

• Two types of motion sensors, an indoor motion sensor and an outdoor motion sensor (both sensors also measure temperature and light levels)

• Smart bulbs, in many different versions, with sockets E27, E14, and GU10 and I many different shapes, with white and colored light, etc.

• In September 2019, additional smart bulbs were launched, of the filament type, in some versions and with E27 socket

• Smart light sources, where a large selection of different lamps are available, including ceiling lamps, wall lamps, table lamps, spotlights, etc., and from 2022 even holiday lights. In some of these, they contain an integrated bulb, in other cases they are “traditional” lamps with smart bulbs

• Smart light strips, in versions with both white and colored light, for indoor and outdoor use, and a light strip designed to be installed on the back of a TV and which syncs with what is shown on the screen

• Smart outdoor lighting, which is a line launched in the fall of 2018 and consists of lamps, spotlights, and light strips

• Security cameras, in various versions, launched in 2023

• Play HDMI Sync Box, which sync smart lights with your home theater using HDMI connections

All Hue products are controlled using a Hue app, but are in additional compatible with a wide range of other platforms, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Home, IFTTT, etc. Furthermore, there is a Hue Sync app, which allows synchronising the lighting in the room with movies, music, or games.

For many years, all Hue products were based on the Zigbee platform and one had to have a base station as the starting point for a Hue system. In the summer of 2019, the company also started to launch bulbs that support bluetooth, which makes it possible to only buy bulbs without a Hue bridge. The limit is lower range (about 30 feet) and that one cannot set up smart control of the lights (but one can then upgrade with a bridge). For controlling the lights based only on bluetooth, one has to use a dedicated Hue Bluetooth app. In 2023, support for the Matter standard was rolled out, and one can now choose to connect the Hue bridge to Apple Home either the “traditional” way or via Matter (if changing between these, the devices must be set up again in Apple Home).

Another thing to mention is that the base station, the Hue bridge, also can be used to connect other Zigbee-based devices. We have utilized this to connect several products; lights from Gledopto and Loevschall as well as a smart power strip from Namron. The downside was that such devices, which are not native Hue products, did not appear in Apple Home, but must be brought there via Homebridge or Homey. With the Matter update, this changed and also such devices appear in Apple Home.

Wiz

Wiz Connected was established in 2015 and offers products/solutions for both the professional consumer markets. Toward consumers, an important selling point has been that there is no need for a base station for connect the lights, since each light has its own "brain". The product selection consists exclusively of different types of smart light sources, but this selection is quite broad:

• Different smart bulbs with E27/B22 socket, with colored/white light and in a couple of different sizes/brightness levels, e.g., WiZ Colors A60 (colors, 806 lumen)

• Smart bulbs with E14 socket, with respectively colored and white light, e.g., WiZ Colors P.E14

• Smart bulbs with GU10 socket, with respectively colored and white light, e.g., WiZ Colors GU10

• A number of smart lamps/light sources–table lamps, ceiling lamps, and downlights

Wiz uses WiFi as communication platform, but has later also added support for Matter, and there is a dedicated Wiz app for controlling the lights.

There is also broad support for integration with other platforms, both voice control through  Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Siri Shortcuts, and later Apple Home via Matter, as well as manufacturers like nest, Ring, Netatmo, Somfy, and SmartThings.

Our experiences

We have an extensive selection of Hue products in our home (but no Wiz products); lamps (for indoor and outdoor use), bulbs, light strips, sensors, and various control devices, see more specific experiences in the table below. These are mainly controlled using the Home app, except for firmware updates, which must be handled in the Hue app. A small frustration about the interplay with Apple Home are frequent warnings about deviations between setup/naming of devices in the Hue vs. the Home app. If you allow the Hue app to fix this, this is strangely enough solved by overwriting the correct information in the Home app with the erroneous one in the Hue app. Otherwise, we experience very few problems with the Hue products, and I have no problems in recommending them as the backbone of a smart lighting setup.

I should mention, though, that also Hue products sometimes report that they are “unreachable”, without any obvious reason for this. Usually, this happens to one bulb/lamp now and then, but I have also had situations where most devices get disconnected. In one particularly bad incident, none of the troubleshooting advice from Hue worked, including changing the Zigbee channel. This lasted all night and in the end we had to turn off the lights manually and go to bed. The next morning, everything was fine again, though, and I suspect this situation was related to firmware updates.

Another issue sometimes occurring has been that all or just one or two of the four buttons on the dimmer switch would not work, i.e., pressing them produces no effect. In the end, I did what I should of course have done sooner, namely contacting Hue support. They informed me that each Hue Bridge is only meant to handle ten control devices, while we have thirteen, and this could cause the issues. We bit the bullet and invested both the money to buy a second bridge and the effort required to remove a number of devices from the original bridge and add these to the new one and re-program them in the Home app. So far it seems to have been worth it; the problem has not appeared since and the motion sensors seem to have become snappier in triggering the responses.

Notice that on phones, the table might only display in landscape mode