Amazon has cut Philips Hue’s Essential starter kit to $79.99, a $40 discount on the four-bulb bundle. The kit includes four white-and-color E26 smart bulbs and a Hue Bridge, putting the larger bundle at the same price as the two-bulb Essential starter kit.
The deal is one of the remaining Philips Hue discounts after most of the brand’s Prime Day offers ended. Amazon’s listing shows the four-pack at $79.99, while Philips Hue’s own store lists the same kit at $119.99.
For buyers trying to cover more than a desk lamp without paying flagship Hue prices, the math is the point. Four bulbs plus the Bridge gets a room, or several fixtures across a small apartment, onto Hue’s app-based control system without buying the hub separately.
What the kit includes
Philips Hue says the Essential bulbs can produce color lighting as well as tunable white light from 2200K to 6500K. Each bulb is rated for up to 800 lumens.
The Hue app includes preset scenes for uses such as movie nights and holiday lighting, and users can make their own scenes. The included Hue Bridge adds the features Hue usually keeps tied to its hub: control away from home, schedules, automations, and support for as many as 50 lights in a home.
Philips Hue also says the Bridge enables control through major smart home platforms using Matter. That is the part that matters if the bulbs are being added to a mixed setup rather than a Hue-only room. Matter support should make the lights available across compatible smart home systems, although the usual platform-specific weirdness can still depend on the rest of a user’s setup.
The cheaper bulbs have limits
The Essential kit is Philips Hue’s lower-cost route into its lighting system, and it does not include every feature found in the company’s higher-end bulbs.
The most concrete limitation is dimming. Philips Hue says these bulbs dim down to 2 percent, while its premium bulbs can dim to 0.2 percent. That difference may matter for bedrooms, nurseries, or anyone who wants lights barely glowing at night.
Philips Hue also does not promise that Essential bulbs will match the color accuracy of its flagship bulbs across generations. For people building a room where multiple Hue bulb lines sit side by side, that caveat is worth reading before checkout. For buyers who mostly want inexpensive color lights with the Bridge included, Amazon’s current $79.99 price makes the four-bulb kit the more aggressive deal than the two-bulb package at the same price.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
