In living color: Ars reviews the hacker-approved Philips Hue LEDs

In living color: Ars reviews the hacker-approved Philips Hue LEDs:

Philips LED-powered Hue lights are awesome. Even after a couple of weeks of almost non-stop fiddling, the programmable multicolored bulbs continue to surprise me, though probably not in the ways that Philips originally intended. It's taken an alarmingly short amount of time for me to grow to consider them an indispensable component of my home office. I'm even starting to incorporate them around the rest of the house too. Being able to control the color, brightness, and timing of your lights from your phone or computer—and tying the lights together with your own on/off schedule—is addictive.

The kit

The fancy wirelessly controlled devices launched just before Halloween this year and are currently sold only at Apple Stores. They're available as both individual bulbs and in a three-bulb starter kit. The starter kit also contains the wireless bridge you need in order to actually use the lights as anything other than plain old on-off lights. The starter kit retails for an unfortunately steep $199.95; the individual lights are $59.99 apiece.

Enlarge / The front of the Hue box, with its wheel. OMG IT SPINS.

Lee Hutchinson

The starter kit, pictured above, features a picture of a Hue bulb on the front backed by a color wheel, which you can slide around to make the bulb change colors. It's a neat way to show the functionality of what's inside.
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