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

Philips Hue is arguably the largest identify in sensible lighting. The corporate has been producing glorious sensible lighting merchandise for a few years. And although Philips Hue merchandise aren’t the most affordable choice, they’re nonetheless extremely popular 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 mixture floodlight and safety digital camera that is designed to guard your house from the skin.

Associated

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

This central hub controls your Philips Hue sensible lighting system with ease, if you understand how to make use of it.

There are already sensible floodlight cameras in the marketplace, 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 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 brilliant floodlight you could flip to any shade you would like. The included safety digital camera gives good high quality and options reminiscent of package deal detection and exercise zones accessible with a subscription. Nonetheless, there’s at the moment no method to see the reside feed exterior the Hue app, and no help for HomeKit Safe Video.

Professionals

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

Cons

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

Worth, specs and availability

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

Design

Philips Hue products normally have a modern and trendy look, and the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight isn’t any exception. The mounting and floodlight look trendy sufficient that you just will not cringe about mounting them to the outside of your house. The digital camera sits under the floodlight and contains a modern look as nicely. The one slight flaw within the seems to be division is that the ability cable and tether for the digital camera dangle down just a little under the digital camera, however this is not an enormous problem.

Set up

Pretty painless you probably have exterior energy

The Philips Hue Safe Floodlight must be hard-wired; there is not any battery choice accessible. This implies you will must mount it someplace the place you will have present exterior wiring. If you do not have anyplace acceptable, it’s possible you’ll must get the assistance of an electrician, particularly if you happen to do not feel assured working with electrical wires.

Should you do have present 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 observe. The floodlight will be angled to level in a selected route, and the digital camera is hooked up by magnet, permitting you to level it at a 60-degree angle in any route.Annoyingly, as soon as the floodlight is in place, you will be requested to


scan QR codes
that are pretty inaccessible now that you have put in the system. Fortunately, copies of these codes are additionally on stickers on the entrance of the handbook, 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 system 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 observe.You may want a

Hue Bridge
as a way to arrange and management your Philips Hue Safe Floodlight, which is bought individually. Nonetheless, if you happen to already personal different Hue merchandise, you most likely have already got a Hue Bridge.

Efficiency

Respectable digital camera 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 provide brilliant white gentle, nonetheless. You may select from nearly any shade 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 house.

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

Image high quality is sweet, 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 sweet sufficient to get an excellent 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 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 exterior your house even throughout the darkish of the night time.

Options

Extremely customizable movement activation

Probably the most widespread makes use of of a floodlight is to light up the skin of your house when movement is detected. That is helpful for serving to you discover your method again into your house when it is darkish and can be an excellent deterrent for potential intruders or undesirable guests of a furrier type.

You should utilize the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight as a motion-activated gentle, but it surely does require some setup. Because the digital camera and lightweight are handled as particular person units, you will 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 conduct of the sunshine. You may have it activate in any shade 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 as well 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 night time. 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 actually helpful and units the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight aside from many different motion-activated floodlights. There’s additionally a daylight sensitivity setting you could tweak in order that the sunshine will not come on when it is gentle exterior.

The digital camera gives movement notifications that can seem in your telephone when movement is detected. You get commonplace movement notifications totally free, however if you happen to join a paid Hue Secure plan, you additionally get individual, animal, automobile, and package deal detection. The individual notifications are strong; I’ve seen far fewer false positives than I get with my Ring video doorbell, and you’ll modify 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, commonplace movement notifications, end-to-end video encryption, blackout zones, and video snapshots totally free. 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 would like, ups the video historical past to 60 days.

Exercise zones is a characteristic that is solely accessible with a Safe plan, but it surely’s a helpful one. It permits you to 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 repeatedly have automobiles driving previous it, you possibly can create an exercise zone that excludes the world the place the automobiles cross, in order that you do not get a continuing stream of movement detection alerts.

One other helpful safety measure is the Take Motion characteristic. 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 permit 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 sensible 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 shade by voice. The response is sort of instantaneous.

The unhealthy information is that the safety digital camera is just not at the moment appropriate with Alexa, Google Assistant, or HomeKit. Should you have 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 method to take action is thru the Hue app.

It additionally implies that there is not any help for HomeKit Secure Video; if you need entry to your recordings, you will need to pay the Hue subscription charge.

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 commonplace.

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 practically any shade you possibly can think about. That is helpful for offering low-level lighting at night time, however you should use the floodlight for different makes use of too, reminiscent of including a pop of shade to your house’s exterior throughout the holidays.

The safety digital camera additionally does an excellent job, with respectable 1080p image high quality. It is a disgrace that, not less than for the second, there is not any method to view the digital camera feed apart from by the Hue app. Assist for sensible shows reminiscent of an Amazon Echo Present or Google Nest Hub would make the digital camera extra helpful. The dearth of help for HomeKit Safe Video implies that if you wish to save recordings, you are going to need to pay for the privilege.

Philips Hue Safe Floodlight

Organising the sunshine to work as a motion-activated floodlight additionally takes just a little time, however as soon as you’ve got completed so, you will 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 glorious high quality normally implies that they’re definitely worth the worth. Should you simply intend to make use of the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight as a motion-activated gentle in your dwelling, then it is a powerful, if barely costly, choice. Nonetheless, the shortage of help for the digital camera is an actual disgrace; the flexibility to stream the digital camera feed to a wise show, or help for HomeKit Safe Video, would flip this product from an excellent one into a superb one. Philips Hue will add not less than a few of these options sooner or later.