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Philips is unveiling a swath of new devices for the home in advance of this year’s Light + Building show in Frankfurt, Germany. On tap: One new lightbulb, one new way to turn your lightbulbs on and off, and a semi-unrelated set of 3D-printed lamps that one can spend a small fortune on in order to bring “a piece of art to your living room,” as Philips describes.
We’ll start at the top. The brand-new lightbulb that Philips is introducing is dubbed the “Hue lux,” and it basically amounts to a white-light-only version of its multi-color Hue smart lightbulb. That means that purchasers will be able to control the bulb’s brightness via their Wi-Fi connected smartphones or tablets, but they won’t be able to transform their rooms with red/green/blue/whatever lighting white only.
On the plus side, for potential purchasers at least, the move does allow Philips to cut the cost of the Hue lux quite a bit compared to its $200 Hue companion. Sort of. The Hue package comes with three color-changing LED bulbs and a mandatory hub, whereas the Hue lux package will come with two bulbs per kit and a hub for $100. Additional Hue lux bulbs will set you back $40 once they debut “after summer 2014,” whereas Hue bulbs cost $60 per color-changing lightbulb.
“Hue lux is another entry point for people who are ready for the connected home,” said Filip Jan Depauw, senior director for Philips Lighting, in a statement(Opens in a new window).
Supplementing Philips’s fancy lightbulbs is a brand-new means for turning them on and off. The Hue tap, priced at $60, is a four-button switch that one can use to activate one’s Hue lights. That also includes flipping a number of lights to a pre-set mood or theme (for example, perhaps you’re feeling particularly colorful and want to set up an all-green mood for certain times).
That’s not really the cool part of the Hue tap(Opens in a new window), however. As the name somewhat implies, the switch runs entirely off the kinetic energy one uses to press the buttons themselves no batteries need apply, though owners will have to already have a Hue hub in order for their switch to do anything. The tap will retail for $60 once it debuts sometime this summer in the U.S.
Rounding out Philips’s announcements are its 3D-printed lamps. Designed in collaboration with WertelOberfell and Strand+Hvass(Opens in a new window), the not-so-inexpensive lamps will all benefit from the fancy color technology otherwise found in the company’s Hue lightbulbs. They’re more artsy than anything else, as they come with quite a bigger price tag to justify their design: around $3,500 for table lamps and north of $4,000 for pendant lamps. Pre-orders start on March 31.
Also in conjunction with the Light + Building show, Samsung debuted its first-ever “smart” LED lightbulb.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/news/philips-tips-new-hue-smart-bulb-3d-printed-lamp