Philips Hue Safe Floodlight evaluate: Nice gentle, common digital camera

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 cost effective possibility, they’re nonetheless very talked-about because of their top 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 mix floodlight and safety digital camera that is designed to guard your property 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 understand how 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 by means of its paces to search out out.

Philips Hue Safe Floodlight

The Philips Hue Safe Floodlight has the standard you anticipate from a Philips Hue product, with a vivid floodlight you can flip to any coloration you want. The included safety digital camera presents good high quality and options corresponding to bundle detection and exercise zones out there with a subscription. Nonetheless, there’s at present no solution to see the reside feed exterior the Hue app, and no help for HomeKit Safe Video.

Professionals

• Shiny floodlight in any coloration
• Customizable movement activation
• Respectable digital camera

Cons

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

Value, specs and availability

The Safe Flood Gentle Digicam is that can be purchased now from the Philips Hue web site for $350.

Design

Philips Hue products often have a glossy and trendy look, and the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight isn’t any exception. The mounting and floodlight look fashionable sufficient that you just will not cringe about mounting them to the outside of your property. The digital camera sits under the floodlight and contains a glossy look as properly. The one slight flaw within the appears to be like division is that the ability cable and tether for the digital camera dangle down a bit of under the digital camera, however this is not an enormous difficulty.

Set up

Pretty painless when you have exterior energy

The Philips Hue Safe Floodlight must be hard-wired; there is not any battery possibility out there. This implies you may must mount it someplace the place you may have current exterior wiring. If you do not have anyplace applicable, you might must get the assistance of an electrician, particularly if you happen to do not feel assured working with electrical wires.

Should you do have current wiring (for instance, if you happen to’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 comply with. The floodlight may be angled to level in a particular course, and the digital camera is hooked up by magnet, permitting you to level it at a 60-degree angle in any course.Annoyingly, as soon as the floodlight is in place, you may be requested to


scan QR codes
that are pretty inaccessible now that you have 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 digital camera individually because the Hue app sees them as particular person units. The directions within the app are easy to comply with.You may want a

Hue Bridge
with the intention to arrange and management your Philips Hue Safe Floodlight, which is bought individually. Nonetheless, if you happen to already personal different Hue merchandise, you in all probability have already got a Hue Bridge.

Efficiency

Respectable digital camera and nice lighting

The center of the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight is the highly effective 2,250 lumen floodlight. As with many different Hue merchandise, this floodlight would not simply provide vivid white gentle, nonetheless. You may select from virtually 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 major space exterior your property.

The hooked up digital camera presents 1080p seize with a 141.2-degree subject of view, which I discovered broad sufficient for my wants. It additionally options two-way speak by means of the Hue app, and you’ll set off an alarm that can flash the floodlight and make a loud sound by means of the digital camera.

Image high quality is nice, with sufficient element to make out faces even at a distance. You may zoom in on the reside feed and recordings and the standard is nice sufficient to get a great 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 digital camera’s evening imaginative and prescient with the floodlight off in comparison with the picture at evening when the floodlight is on. Yo simply see what is going on on exterior your property even in the course of the darkish of the evening.

Options

Extremely customizable movement activation

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

You should use the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight as a motion-activated gentle, but it surely does require some setup. For the reason that digital camera and lightweight are handled as particular person units, you may want to enter the digital camera settings within the Hue app and activate the Set off Lights toggle. You may then select the sunshine you need to activate when movement is detected. The intelligent half is that within the app you possibly can customise the habits of the sunshine. You may 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 totally different behaviors for every slot. For instance, I’ve arrange the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight to activate at medium brightness in a blue gentle after 10 pm at evening. That is greater than sufficient gentle to see by, with out turning on a blazing white gentle each time a leaf blows previous the digital camera. The customization is basically helpful and units the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight aside from 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 gentle exterior.

The digital camera presents movement notifications that can seem in your cellphone when movement is detected. You get customary movement notifications without spending a dime, however if you happen to join a paid Hue Secure plan, you additionally get particular person, animal, automobile, and bundle detection. The particular person notifications are strong; I’ve seen far fewer false positives than I get with my Ring video doorbell, and you’ll regulate the sensitivity if you happen to’re getting too many or too few notifications.

The Safe plans provide different options, too. You get live-streaming, customary movement notifications, end-to-end video encryption, blackout zones, and video snapshots without spending a dime. The Fundamental plan, which prices $40 per digital camera per yr, 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 yr 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 digital camera will monitor for movement. Any movement exterior these zones is ignored. For instance, in case your digital camera is pointing at your entrance gate, and also you frequently have vehicles driving previous it, you possibly can create an exercise zone that excludes the world the place the vehicles 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. Should you discover something untoward in your digital camera, you possibly can faucet the Take Motion button. This offers you the choice to sound an alarm and flash the lights to discourage any undesirable guests. There are additionally fast motion buttons that assist you to name a pre-set emergency contact quantity, or instantly name emergency providers.

Sensible dwelling integrations

Missing in video streaming

Should you’re hoping so as to add the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight to your good dwelling setup, there’s some good and unhealthy information. The excellent news is that the floodlight is appropriate with Alexa, and Google Assistant. It is also works with HomeKit over Matter. I used to be in a position so as to add the floodlight to Alexa and the Apple Residence 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 digital camera is just not at present appropriate with Alexa, Google Assistant, or HomeKit. Should you had been hoping to have the ability to view your digital camera feed in your Echo Show, for instance, then you definately’re out of luck. The one manner to take action is thru the Hue app.

It additionally implies that there is not any help for HomeKit Secure Video; if you would like entry to your recordings, you may should pay the Hue subscription price.

Assist for viewing reside 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 customary.

Verdict

Hue has all the time had a status for making nice lights and the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight isn’t any exception. It is a break from the norm to discover a motion-activated floodlight that may shine almost any coloration you possibly can think about. That is helpful for offering low-level lighting at evening, however you should utilize the floodlight for different makes use of too, corresponding to including a pop of coloration to your property’s exterior in the course of the holidays.

The safety digital camera additionally does a great job, with first rate 1080p image high quality. It is a disgrace that, at the very least for the second, there is not any solution to view the digital camera feed aside from by means of the Hue app. Assist for good shows corresponding to an Amazon Echo Present or Google Nest Hub would make the digital camera extra helpful. The shortage of help for HomeKit Safe Video implies that if you wish to save recordings, you are going to should pay for the privilege.

Philips Hue Safe Floodlight

Establishing the sunshine to work as a motion-activated floodlight additionally takes a bit of time, however as soon as you’ve got finished so, you may have 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 often implies that they’re well worth the value. Should you simply intend to make use of the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight as a motion-activated gentle on your dwelling, then it is a formidable, if barely costly, possibility. Nonetheless, the dearth of help for the digital camera is an actual disgrace; the power to stream the digital camera feed to a sensible show, or help for HomeKit Safe Video, would flip this product from a great one into a wonderful one. Philips Hue will add at the very least a few of these options sooner or later.