Philips Hue announce a new line of smart lighting and music sync with Samsung Galaxy smartphones

It’s official, Philips Hue’s attractive Lightguide bulbs are actual. Signify, which owns Philips Hue, introduced the brand new white and colour ambiance gentle bulbs on the IFA tech convention in Berlin this week, confirming The Verge’s earlier report of the approaching arrival of the outsized dimmable sensible bulbs designed for open lights.

Different new merchandise incoming to Hue’s smart lighting line embody a Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip for PCs, a slimmer downlight for low-profile ceilings, and a tunable white filament candle bulb. Signify additionally introduced a partnership with Samsung SmartThings to sync music along with your sensible lights, and new options for its Hue app, together with the flexibility to set automated away lighting — which Hue is asking “Mimic Presence” lighting.

The Lightguide bulbs are the primary actual assertion lighting bulbs from Hue. With a distinctly modern design, the bulbs are available three shapes — massive globe, ellipse, and triangular — and will be paired with a specifically designed pendant twine, accessible in white and black.

Picture by Jon Porter / The Verge

Every bulb has a glowing internal tube that diffuses gentle, and every sports activities a shiny end designed to make the bulbs shine extra brightly. They’re able to illuminating your property with each white and colour ambiance and placing out as much as 500 lumens.

The bulbs price $74.99 to $89.99 every, and the cords are $49.99. Each are coming later this yr.

The opposite new {hardware} merchandise embody an up to date filament candle bulb; the present model is simply dimmable. The brand new Philips Hue White Ambiance Filament bulb provides tunable white gentle, so you may regulate from heat to chill white gentle. It’s approaching September thirteenth to Europe and North America for $44.99 or in a 2-pack for $64.99.

Picture: Signify

New Philips Hue slim downlights can be found now for $69.99 every. These have a decrease profile, canless design to go the place conventional can lights can’t. Utilizing a tab system, the lights — that are simply three-quarters of an inch thick — snap immediately into the ceiling to hook up with the junction field. At 1200 lumens, with white and colour gentle, the Philips Hue slim downlight is designed for any room of the home and is wet-rated, so can be utilized in a toilet.

The brand new Philips Hue Play gradient lightstrip for the PC is available in three sizes, and pricing begins at $169.99. It’s additionally accessible on September thirteenth, and remember to read my colleague Alice Newcome-Beill’s take on this new gaming peripheral.

With all this new {hardware}, the Hue app is getting some new options, too, together with a “Mimic Presence” automation. This turns your lights activate and off through the day and / or at evening routinely while you’re away from residence, as a safety measure.

Picture: Samsung SmartThings

Mimic Presence is coming to the app this month and will probably be managed from the Hue Automation tab, the place the Spotify music sync integration is presently. This will even be the brand new residence for the Philips Hue Sync app. For those who use the Hue Play Sync Box to sync your lights along with your TV, you’ll be accustomed to this app. Now you’ll have the ability to management all of your Hue lights and gadgets from the primary Hue app.

Talking of music integration, Signify confirmed particulars of its leaked expanded partnership with Samsung SmartThings. Its sensible lights will have the ability to sync with music on Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets by a brand new Philips Hue and SmartThings app music sync, beginning on September 1st at 8PM ET.

Music sync allows you to pulse your coloured Hue lighting in sync with the beats of your favourite songs. It does require a Hue Bridge, and the service solely works on Galaxy gadgets. However it would work with any music service; the Hue app only supports Spotify for music sync.

Lastly, Signify reconfirmed its commitment to Matter. Gerwin van der Horst of Signify advised The Verge on the IFA Smart Home League occasion on August thirty first that it is going to be rolling out firmware to replace its current bridge to Matter as near the launch of the brand new sensible residence normal as potential.

The replace will make all its sensible lighting merchandise, current and forthcoming, Matter-compatible. Hue presently helps a lot of the widespread sensible residence integrations, together with Apple Dwelling, Google Dwelling, and Amazon Alexa, in addition to Samsung SmartThings. Matter compatibility ought to convey extra integration on the {hardware} entrance, permitting you to extra simply pair Hue bulbs and equipment with non-Hue gadgets.