Philips Hue Smart Plug, White – 1 Pack – Turns Any Light Into a Smart Light – Control with Hue App – Compatible with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit

These switches are easy to set up (we use Home Assistant) and infinitely flexible. They can stay on the wall, but they’re also portable. We can also control the lights on our phones, but these are easy for guests to use. They’re a serious upgrade to our smart home controls!

This button is perfect for turning off individual lights. To do that you can create a zone in the hue app and have the button operate that zone. Since it is magnetic I was able to put it on the lamp itself which is nice. I’ll likely be buying more of them.

These smart plugs are a great option for automizing your home without the need to splurge on smart lights and other things. I even used one of these with my space heater, and was worried it would overload the plug. Nope, it can handle it! I would highly recommend pairing with a bridge as you can store your schedules on there and it can always load those up regardless of if you’re paired with bluetooth. I would also recommend the app Hue Essentials as it is an easier way to program smart home stuff for Philips hue.One odd thing I noticed with the plugs, however. I was having issues where they kept turning off shortly after plugging them in. Weirdly enough, they wouldn’t work if I had my Philips lights in the same room alternating through different colors. I changed the program and had the lights stay a single color, and weirdly the plug in the room started working. I’m not sure what caused this, but be aware that if you have other smart bulbs/devices in the same room it can interfere with how the plugs function.Outside of just the smart plugs, I’ve got to say that I’ve tried cheaper options for smart home stuff, including a light strip from a no-name company. I got what I paid for there and they didn’t last more than a year. I have a lot of smart lights and plugs from Philips and it can be expensive but I’ve found them to be much more reliable and easier to use.

Ordered one of these for our guest room. It works great and the magnetic back lets it be placed on a metal nightstand. Instead of guests telling an Apple Homepod how to change lights and lamps, they can just press buttons. First button for nightstands (Hue on/off switches controlling table lamps), second for changing scenes for ambient lighting (Hue bulbs and lamps), third for dim nightlight, and fourth for everything on. Not all houseguests like to talk to a voice assistant! This is a fun product and dialing the outer ring to dim lights is especially satisfying.Given how good this product works, I could be done here. However, I feel like I have to say a few words about how poor Philips Hue’s consumer facing support is. The product info sheet with hieroglyphics and no words that comes in the box is utterly useless as an installation guide. The sheet is so bad it is comical. The QR code the opens a web page is a little better, but as with many Philips Hue product the documentation on the Philips website is incomplete and inadequate. I was able to figure out installation by playing around with the app, but Philips Hue is just plain lazy in the documentation department. As a long time Hue user with 40+ Hue products, I know what to expect, but new users are going to be befuddled by the lack of clear guidance. Please do better.One more gripe. Thank you Amazon for the clear picture of the product showing the Tap Dial Switch comes with a rectangular wall mounting plate – I knew exactly what I was getting. But zero thanks to Philips Hue for a product picture on Amazon with a smaller square mounting plate, and zero thanks for a product picture on the Hue website that shows no mounting plate and a puzzling round backing plate.Perhaps the problem is that Philips sells different products in the US vs. in other countries, so the names and images change. If so, this should not become a consumer problem as well. Philips really needs to clean up its act and make sure its products are clearly described across the Internet, and also provide usable set up instructions.This is a 5 star physical product with a 4 star app and 1 star product onboarding experience.

My home project earlier this year was converting a lot of my home lights to Smart lighting. For a while these were backordered and I had the simple one push smart buttons but mostly because I just couldn’t access these. I wish I had started with these! I was able to obtain three of them. The plate was easy to install and looks nice with the existing hardware for a 2000s constructed house. It involves just screwing in a base plate and snapping on the top plate. The remote easily attaches with the magnet to the base and is very portable, attaches strongly to stay put but isn’t so strong you have to wrench the remote off. Sometimes in the dark I have flailed at it and knocked it out of the groove but that’s pretty infrequent. The settings are interesting – the top button can be set to either be a specific single brightness for a room/zone/set of lights, dimmer works well but is a bit slow in speed. HUE switches between a set of up to five scenes that you can program for the zone or room.I have my home exit switch which is in my ‘mud room area’ set to ‘turn off all lights after holding for three seconds’ and this easily lets me shut off all lights in my house on my way out. The HUE button is what’s most convenient for my uses, because of all my rooms my bedroom has eleven separate lights (in a variety of towers, nightstand, accent lights, and torch). There are some times I just want to turn on a few lights when I’m zipping in to grab something and don’t want every single light on. The ‘power’ top switch I have set to a nice incandescent color. For the scenes, I set the first one as a limited scene with just one tower and the torch so I get enough light to see by but don’t have to turn on every single light. Multiple presses then go into my favorite four scenes afterwards. In essence this is a like a two button ‘on’ switch where I can use the Hue to get to a more efficient pattern, all from one single switch site. I have these also set up for my living room, where power is the full shebang and then HUE is only a overhead light over my computing desk – which makes it super convenient to use one single switch site to control multiple looks of lights. It’s so easy to swap things around once you have the switches in place. So far so good!