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Philips Tips New Hue Smart Bulb, 3D-Printed Lamp

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Philips Tips New Hue Smart Bulb, 3D-Printed Lamp

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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