Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

At first I wasn't sold on the smart light thing. I bought a Google Home with interest in getting into the API, and decided to try Hue, which I had heard about for a while, because Google Home integrates with it. The integration is a bit immature, but that's not what this review is about. These bulbs draw a little more power than my previous LED A19/E26 bulbs, but the amount is not much. Not enough to care. They are still substantially more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs. The fact that you can tune the white color to your liking means there's no question about which bulbs to get, unlike CFL and normal/non-smart white LED bulbs. The shape is not A19, though the socket type is E26. Despite not being A19 shape, their size doesn't inhibit their installation. The glass dome is designed such that light radiates in a pattern almost as good as any A19 bulb. There is a dark spot on the socket side that is bigger than a typical A19, but that's not a huge issue. The color of the generation 3 bulbs are quite rich. They create deep greens, reds, and blues without issue. The colors in between are also quite nice. However, my Google Home doesn't seem to be able to make a good yellow as it looks a sickly green. However, that seems to be an issue with Google Home as I can use the Hue app to generate good yellows. Using the smart hub is quite easy. With a wired connection, as long as you have a good firewall setup on your internet connection, getting it set up is secure and easy. Pairing devices and apps require physical access to the hub, making it relatively difficult for an external attacker to steal control over it. The app is fairly basic, but there are third party apps that extend the functionality quite a lot. Some are free, some are not. The only extra app I really took to extend functionality was Hue Pro. While I do love this system and it will likely become even more embedded in my home life, especially with the home assistant integration, it has its flaws. There are two major flaws, one of which I think can be solved, and the other I don't know of a solution that Philips should implement. Flaw 1: The bulbs have a default on state when given power. When a light switch is flipped on for a bulb, they turn on. If power fails, even if the light was off prior to the power failure, the light will return to on when power is restored. What this means is if you put the bulb in a socket with intention to leave power always applied, if you have unstable power, you might find they randomly turn on. Philips is aware of this and has no solution. They intend to leave it in default on state for emergency purposes. To work around this, for lights where there might be some sensitivity to this problem (ie: bedroom at night), just turn off the socket to prevent it from randomly turning on when it would be inconvenient. To a point, it negates some of the smart features, but you can leave the socket on at other times to get that advantage. Flaw 2: The lights have a default white state that cannot be modified. Like the default on state, the default white state is for emergency purposes. However, I hate the white color temperature they chose as default. I understand why they would prefer not to return to a previous RGB color state and brightness in case of emergency, but I would love to be able to set the default white color temperature at the very least. I hope Philips implements at least this much control.