Philips Hue Safe Floodlight assessment: Nice mild, common digital camera

Philips Hue is arguably the most important identify in good lighting. The corporate has been producing glorious good lighting merchandise for a few years. And although Philips Hue merchandise aren’t the most cost effective choice, they’re nonetheless very fashionable because of their prime quality.

The corporate is not resting on its laurels, nevertheless. 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 private home from the skin.

There are already good 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 vibrant floodlight that you could flip to any colour you would like. The included safety digital camera presents good high quality and options comparable to bundle detection and exercise zones out there with a subscription. Nonetheless, there’s presently no solution to see the reside feed outdoors the Hue app, and no help for HomeKit Safe Video.

Execs

• Vivid floodlight in any colour
• 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 Digital camera is available for purchase now from the Philips Hue web site for $350.

Design

Philips Hue products often have a smooth and fashionable look, and the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight is not any exception. The mounting and floodlight look fashionable sufficient that you just will not cringe about mounting them to the outside of your private home. The digital camera sits beneath the floodlight and encompasses a smooth look as properly. The one slight flaw within the appears division is that the facility cable and tether for the digital camera dangle down just a little beneath the digital camera, however this is not an enormous situation.

Set up

Pretty painless when you’ve got outdoors energy

The Philips Hue Safe Floodlight must be hard-wired; there isn’t any battery choice out there. This implies you may must mount it someplace the place you’ve gotten present exterior wiring. If you do not have wherever acceptable, it’s possible you’ll must get the assistance of an electrician, particularly for those who do not feel assured working with electrical wires.

In the event you do have present wiring (for instance, for those who’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 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 may be requested to

scan QR codes
that are pretty inaccessible now that you’ve got put in the system. Fortunately, copies of these codes are additionally on stickers on the entrance of the handbook, so be sure you preserve them 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 comply with.You will want a


Hue Bridge
as a way to arrange and management your Philips Hue Safe Floodlight, which is bought individually. Nonetheless, for those who already personal different Hue merchandise, you most likely 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 does not simply supply vibrant white mild, nevertheless. You possibly can select from virtually any colour you possibly can think about. This may be very helpful. Furthermore, the sunshine is greater than highly effective sufficient to light up a big space outdoors your private home.

The hooked up digital camera presents 1080p seize with a 141.2-degree area of view, which I discovered huge sufficient for my wants. It additionally options two-way speak by the Hue app, and you may 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 possibly can zoom in on the reside feed and recordings and the standard is sweet sufficient to get a great take a look at the faces of any potential intruders.

Night time imaginative and prescient high quality is great 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 outdoors your private home even in the course of the darkish of the evening.

Options

Extremely customizable movement activation

Probably the most widespread makes use of of a floodlight is to light up the skin of your private home when movement is detected. That is helpful for serving to you discover your approach again into your private home when it is darkish and can be a great deterrent for potential intruders or undesirable guests of a furrier form.

You need to use the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight as a motion-activated mild, but it surely does require some setup. For the reason that digital camera and light-weight 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 possibly can then select the sunshine you wish to activate when movement is detected. The intelligent half is that within the app you possibly can customise the conduct of the sunshine. You possibly can have it activate in any colour 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 mild after 10 pm at evening. That is greater than sufficient mild to see by, with out turning on a blazing white mild each time a leaf blows previous the digital camera. The customization is de facto helpful and units the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight other than many different motion-activated floodlights. There’s additionally a daylight sensitivity setting that you could tweak in order that the sunshine will not come on when it is mild outdoors.

The digital camera presents movement notifications that can seem in your cellphone when movement is detected. You get commonplace movement notifications totally free, however for those who 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 may modify the sensitivity for those who’re getting too many or too few notifications.

The Safe plans supply different options, too. You get live-streaming, commonplace movement notifications, end-to-end video encryption, blackout zones, and video snapshots totally free. The Primary plan, which prices $40 per digital camera per 12 months, 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 12 months for as many cameras as you would like, 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 outdoors these zones is ignored. For instance, in case your digital camera is pointing at your entrance gate, and also you commonly 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 continuous stream of movement detection alerts.

One other helpful safety measure is the Take Motion function. In the event you discover something untoward in your digital camera, you possibly can faucet the Take Motion button. This provides 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 straight name emergency companies.

Good dwelling integrations

Missing in video streaming

In the event you’re hoping so as to add the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight to your good dwelling setup, there’s some good and dangerous information. The excellent news is that the floodlight is suitable 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 House app with little effort, permitting me to manage the facility, brightness, and colour by voice. The response is nearly instantaneous.

The dangerous information is that the safety digital camera shouldn’t be presently suitable with Alexa, Google Assistant, or HomeKit. In the event you had been hoping to have the ability to view your digital camera feed in your Echo Show, for instance, then you definitely’re out of luck. The one approach to take action is thru the Hue app.

It additionally signifies that there isn’t any help for HomeKit Secure Video; if you need 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 commonplace.

Verdict

Hue has all the time had a fame for making nice lights and the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight is not any exception. It is a break from the norm to discover a motion-activated floodlight that may shine practically any colour you possibly can think about. That is helpful for offering low-level lighting at evening, however you need to use the floodlight for different makes use of too, comparable to including a pop of colour to your private home’s exterior in the course of the holidays.

The safety digital camera additionally does a great job, with respectable 1080p image high quality. It is a disgrace that, a minimum of for the second, there isn’t any solution to view the digital camera feed aside from by the Hue app. Assist for good shows comparable to an Amazon Echo Present or Google Nest Hub would make the digital camera extra helpful. The dearth of help for HomeKit Safe Video signifies 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 just a little time, however as soon as you’ve got completed so, you’ve gotten 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 often signifies that they’re definitely worth the value. In the event you simply intend to make use of the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight as a motion-activated mild in your dwelling, then it is a powerful, if barely costly, choice. 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 a minimum of a few of these options sooner or later.