Philips Hue Bridge 2.0 (Works with Alexa), White. Smart Home Lighting System

Having used and discarded a few so called smart systems thanks to the tragic side of my early adopter failures I eventually ended up using Philips Hue.And by far its the best system out - with one caveat which, is the way the app is programmed isn't immediately intuitive. Once you understand it, it works well, but one has to understand the way in which Philips have created the system and their logic.Anyway, the basic idea is to fit this bridge or hub unit so that it can connect to the web which, is where it runs from being interfaced by the app on your phone or tablet.The hub then controls wirelessly the various lighting around your house - as long as you make sure they are switched on of course.The range of the hub is very good and compared to the likes of LightroomRF and Samsung Smart Things - both of which I have - the Philips Hue Bridge has the best range.That does not mean it covers my house because it's a bit larger than most and more importantly when I renovated it I used foil backed plasterboard thus creating a bit of a Faraday cage in various places. Doh!So I have three of these bridges and that's another winner over the likes of LightroomRF which does not allow this. You can fit many bridges so that dead spots can be covered effectively. It's not quite ideal on the app as you have to switch between bridges each of which is used to program the lights within it's zone of influence but of course once set up with routines you can forget about it anyway.Seamless integration with Alexa and that means voice control of your lights if you have some that you don't leave set on a routine.Overall a superb system.

I bought this along with two of the bulbs separately to use with Amazon Echo... and boy am I glad I did. It's just so cool to be able to remotely control your lights, and is surprisingly more useful than you would think.The installation process was easy:Plug in the equipment, turn it all on, download the app, press a big button on the bridge. If you have Amazon Echo you just install that skill and discover the devices, that was it.Like I mentioned in my Amazon Echo review my son is a light sleeper and refuses to turn his bedroom light off. With this I can either leave the light on and slowly decrease how strong the light is or i can ask Alexa to turn the lights of later when I am sure he is asleep. My stairs are particularly creeky so if i walk upstairs to do this he wakes up easily.It can also be used to keep your home safe whilst you are away at work or on holiday. You can set the lights to come on at a particular time so it looks like you are home when it is dark, or away. This to me is a winner.The lights themselves are as bright as any other 60W bulb on the market, but are slightly longer that normal bulbs so factor this in if you have enclosed light fittings and check your measurements.They are also insanely expensive for some of the bulbs (between £15 to £25 and upwards depending on the bulb) but are they worth it, to me yes they are... especially if you have Amazon Echo as it really expands the experience. I'm not rich but love my tech and got some parts of the kit as a gift from family and can appreciate the cost on these (but they do last 25000 hours + which is a plus).On a side note you do not need to buy a starter kit to get the bridge to work if you are a first time user, you can start off by just buying this and then buying the bulbs separately if that's cheaper for you. I have read elsewhere people saying you need a starter kit and that this is just for upgrading from the V1 bridge, that is incorrect informationOn the whole with the price taken in to consideration I would still recommend this.

So glad I got a couple of these and fired Alexa from her job handling lighting duties.I’ve gradually accumulated more smart bulbs in the last year and experienced issues with the Alexa app to the point of destructive action!!!But - the Hue bridge and more importantly the software has saved the situation completely.Now I use a Hue app on my phone to control lights and it’s fabulous, fun even.We had bulbs that previously connected to the Alexa app that randomly stopped communicating. Whether this was one of our routers I dunno but trust me life’s too short to constantly play about constantly reconnecting or rebooting with the Alexa software - in my experience it’s fine with the echo speakers but gets in knots with multiple lights.The Philips app is great once you’ve learnt the basics of grouping lights and setting up routines (look on YouTube for instructional videos)We had a momentary challenge getting both bridges to be accessible via the cloud (one bridge in the house and another in our garden studio) which was to do with needing different email accounts to set them up separately if I recall correctly, but now we simply switch between the house or garden room via settings and then easily control lights and routines or groups of bulbs via the app.My wife had issues with the Alexa app because it was registered to my account she couldn’t control the lights from her Alexa app in the way I could due to security apparently, so she could only use voice commands to one of the echo speakers which isn’t alway convenient.Now we both have the Hue app on our phone or tablet and can control the lights freely - hurrah!The Philips app has been totally solid which is more than can be said for the Alexa app which I suspect can’t keep up with the multitude of combinations of device applications the millions of users ask of it.So get a Hue bridge, get playing with lights coming on automatically at dusk, dimming to nightlight at 22:00 and automatically turning off at midnight or other such things.