Want to jazz up your home or entertainment space with smart accented lighting that enhances the ambience and atmosphere? The Philips Hue Play light bars transform your living space instantly and easily provide immersive lighting to better enjoy your movies, games and music.
The Philips Hue Play light bars are an easy way to set up smart accented lighting to enhance the ambience of your entertainment space. Before (bottom) and After (top).
I’d installed a 65-inch Android TV from Prism+ in my living room a few months back and had been enjoying the big screen experience at home.
The basic box set for the Philips Hue Play light bar comes in a pack of two at an RRP of S$209. Currently selling online at S$146.
But that living space was a tad boring with the TV sitting on a plain cabinet against a blank wall – even though the yellow wall had been painted with an arty sponge effect.
To add some coloured ambient lighting, I got a pair of Philips Hue Play light bars and stood them on either side of the TV, atop the TV cabinet.
The light bars were really easy to set up and took all of five minutes: simply plug each light into the smart plug that came with the Hue Play light bar double pack, stick that plug into the power socket and switch on.
The Philips Hue Play light bar double-light set comes with two LED light bars, holders, stands, and sticky tape as well as a power supply.
Each smart plug can be connected to three Hue Play lights even though it plugs into a single wall socket – avoiding the mess of wires and hogging of too many power outlets.
Instant coloured lights to accent the TV.
Philips Hue Bridge
The Hue Bridge is the brain of the entire Philips Hue smart lights system and can control up to 50 Philips Hue smart light bulbs – the Philips Hue app is the interface to programme and control these smart lights via the Hue Bridge.
The Hue Bridge is sold separately (S$89) from the Philips Hue Play light bars but you’ll need only one for your entire home setup – more if you have a sprawling residence.
Set up and use of the Hue Bridge is really simple.
Check out my review of the Hue Bridge here.
To tap the smart and programmable features of the smart light bars, you’ll need to have the Philips Hue Bridge and use the free Philips Hue app on your Android or iOS device.
I already have the Hue Bridge and app set up because I already have other Philips Hue smart lights installed elsewhere in the home.
So for me, it was a matter of opening up the app after powering on the Light Bars, and using the app to customise and personalise the light bars to my heart’s desire.
The first step upon opening the app is to get the Hue Bridge to scan for new Philips Hue smart lights in the house.
Hue Bridge detected the new light bars almost instantaneously and the Hue app added the two newly “discovered” Light Bars to my home environment.
Within the app, I indicated that the light bars were located in the living room and named them “TV Lights”.
Syncing the smart lighting to movies, gaming and music
Going beyond static accented lighting, the Hue Play light bars can be synchronised to movies, gaming and music.
Installing the free Philips Hue Sync software on the PC or Mac will synchronise the Hue Play light bars to what you see on the computer screen, extending the gaming and movie experience beyond the computer screen or monitor.
The Hue Play light bars can also be synchronised to the content on your TV screen or PC monitor via a Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box (S$419).
The Sync Box connects up to four HDMI devices (eg. set-top boxes, game consoles, music source etc) to the TV and supports content with Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and 4K resolution.
That’s all – from there, I have access to ALL of the smart light controls within the app.
With 16 million colours or 50,000 shades of cool to warm white light to choose from, and the ability to dim the intensity from zero to 100%
The app transmits the settings to the Hue Bridge which executes the actual controls, turning on or off the lights at specific times with specific colours and intensities.
Fading designated lights out at the end of the day, or fading in the bedroom lights at dawn each day.
Check out the range of smart controls that is available from the Philips Hue app which was recently refreshed in June 2021.
The Hue Play light bars are flexible enough to be positioned in a number of ways.
Each light bar comes with a stand so that it can stand on its own either vertically or horizontally on a flat surface.
The Philips Hue Play light bars from Signify are ready to use out of the box and easy to set up, although you’ll need to purchase the Hue Bridge to enjoy the full smart controls for the lights.
The light bars instantly brightens up the living and entertainment space with vividly coloured lights – either direct or accented lighting – and can be synced to music, movies and gaming through the use of a Hue Play HDMI Sync Box and Hue Sync app.
A great way to start up a smart lighting system in the home.
The lights can face the room space for direct lighting, or face the wall for indirect lighting.
The light bars can also be stuck (holders and sticky tape provided) behind the TV itself on any flat surface on the back of the TV – for accented back lighting
You can stick them on on either side, or at the top and bottom of the TV.
The Hue Play light bar double pack (RRP: S$209) comes in black or white, has a 10-year (25k hours) lifespan and a 2-year warranty.
The energy-efficient LED lights have a brightness of 530 lumens and are instantly dimmable wirelessly.
Tags: HDMI, Home, Hue, IoT, light bars, Philips, reviews, Signify, Singapore, smart home, sync box
So once I’ve bought and set up the Hue Bridge for the light bars, I can just connect additional lights to the bridge?
Yes, each Hue Bridge can connect and control up to 50 Hue lights … unless your residence is so huge that you need more than one bridge.