Philips Hue Safe Floodlight evaluate: Nice gentle, common digicam

Philips Hue is arguably the largest 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 affordable possibility, they’re nonetheless highly regarded 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 mixture floodlight and safety digicam that is designed to guard your property from the surface.

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 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 want. The included safety digicam presents good high quality and options comparable to bundle detection and exercise zones out there with a subscription. Nevertheless, there’s at the moment no option to see the reside feed exterior the Hue app, and no help for HomeKit Safe Video.

Professionals

• Vibrant floodlight in any colour
• Customizable movement activation
• Respectable digicam

Cons

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

Worth, specs and availability

The Safe Flood Mild Digital camera is in the stores now from the Philips Hue web site for $350.

Design

Philips Hue products normally have a modern and fashionable look, and the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight is not any exception. The mounting and floodlight look trendy sufficient that you just will not cringe about mounting them to the outside of your property. The digicam sits under the floodlight and contains a modern look as nicely. The one slight flaw within the appears division is that the ability cable and tether for the digicam dangle down a bit of under the digicam, however this is not an enormous situation.

Set up

Pretty painless in case you have exterior energy

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

In case you do have current 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 essentially the most useful, consisting solely of photos with no accompanying textual content, however they’re pretty easy to observe. The floodlight might be angled to level in a particular route, and the digicam is connected 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 have put in the gadget. 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 have put in the floodlight and powered it up, you’ll be able to simply add the gadget utilizing the Hue app. You add the floodlight and digicam individually because the Hue app sees them as particular person gadgets. The directions within the app are easy to observe.You will want a

Hue Bridge
so as to arrange and management your Philips Hue Safe Floodlight, which is offered individually. Nevertheless, for those who already personal different Hue merchandise, you in all probability have already got a Hue Bridge.

Efficiency

Respectable digicam 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 gentle, nevertheless. You’ll be able to select from nearly any colour you’ll be able to think about. This may be very helpful. Furthermore, the sunshine is greater than highly effective sufficient to light up a big space exterior your property.

The connected digicam presents 1080p seize with a 141.2-degree subject of view, which I discovered broad sufficient for my wants. It additionally options two-way discuss by the Hue app, and you may set off an alarm that can flash the floodlight and make a loud sound by the digicam.

Image high quality is nice, with sufficient element to make out faces even at a distance. You’ll be able to zoom in on the reside feed and recordings and the standard is nice sufficient to get an excellent take a look at the faces of any potential intruders.

Night time imaginative and prescient high quality is superb too; there’s little distinction within the image high quality when utilizing the digicam’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 property even in the course of the darkish of the night time.

Options

Extremely customizable movement activation

One of the vital 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 approach again into your property when it is darkish and can also be an excellent deterrent for potential intruders or undesirable guests of a furrier sort.

You need to use the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight as a motion-activated gentle, but it surely does require some setup. For the reason that digicam and light-weight are handled as particular person gadgets, you may want to enter the digicam settings within the Hue app and activate the Set off Lights toggle. You’ll be able to then select the sunshine you need to activate when movement is detected. The intelligent half is that within the app you’ll be able to customise the conduct of the sunshine. You’ll be able to 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 can too create a number of time slots and have completely 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 digicam. The customization is admittedly helpful and units the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight aside from many different motion-activated floodlights. There may be additionally a daylight sensitivity setting that you could tweak in order that the sunshine will not come on when it is gentle exterior.

The digicam presents movement notifications that can seem in your telephone when movement is detected. You get normal movement notifications at no cost, however for those who join a paid Hue Secure plan, you additionally get individual, animal, automobile, and bundle detection. The individual notifications are stable; I’ve seen far fewer false positives than I get with my Ring video doorbell, and you may alter the sensitivity for those who’re getting too many or too few notifications.

The Safe plans supply different options, too. You get live-streaming, normal movement notifications, end-to-end video encryption, blackout zones, and video snapshots at no cost. The Primary plan, which prices $40 per digicam 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 digicam will monitor for movement. Any movement exterior these zones is ignored. For instance, in case your digicam is pointing at your entrance gate, and also you recurrently have vehicles driving previous it, you’ll be able to create an exercise zone that excludes the realm the place the vehicles move, in order that you do not get a continuous stream of movement detection alerts.

One other helpful safety measure is the Take Motion function. In case you discover something untoward in your digicam, you’ll be able to 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 permit you to name a pre-set emergency contact quantity, or immediately name emergency companies.

Sensible residence integrations

Missing in video streaming

In case you’re hoping so as to add the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight to your good residence 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 Dwelling app with little effort, permitting me to manage the ability, brightness, and colour by voice. The response is sort of instantaneous.

The dangerous information is that the safety digicam isn’t at the moment suitable with Alexa, Google Assistant, or HomeKit. In case you had been hoping to have the ability to view your digicam feed in your Echo Show, for instance, then you definately’re out of luck. The one approach to take action is thru the Hue app.

It additionally implies that there isn’t any help for HomeKit Secure Video; if you need entry to your recordings, you may need to pay the Hue subscription payment.

Assist for viewing reside footage on Alexa and Google Assistant gadgets 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 normal.

Verdict

Hue has at all times 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’ll be able to 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, comparable to including a pop of colour to your property’s exterior in the course of the holidays.

The safety digicam additionally does an excellent job, with first rate 1080p image high quality. It is a disgrace that, a minimum of for the second, there isn’t any option to view the digicam feed aside from by the Hue app. Assist for good shows comparable to an Amazon Echo Present or Google Nest Hub would make the digicam extra helpful. The shortage 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

Establishing the sunshine to work as a motion-activated floodlight additionally takes a bit of time, however as soon as you have performed so, you might 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 well worth the worth. In case you simply intend to make use of the Philips Hue Safe Floodlight as a motion-activated gentle in your residence, then it is a formidable, if barely costly, possibility. Nevertheless, the shortage of help for the digicam is an actual disgrace; the flexibility to stream the digicam feed to a sensible show, or help for HomeKit Safe Video, would flip this product from an excellent one into a superb one. Philips Hue will add a minimum of a few of these options sooner or later.