The Philips Hue line of lights is gaining several new additions this summer, including a bright white bulb, a Bluetooth version of the Lightstrip Plus, and a revamped Hue Bloom.
Priced at $20, the new Philips Hue White A21 bulb is the brightest bulb in the Hue lineup with 1,600 lumen output that's equivalent to a 100W bulb. That's much brighter than the standard Hue White and Color Ambiance bulbs, which are 60W equivalent. The Hue White A21 bulb can fully illuminate a kitchen, garage, or other room, plus it offers wireless dimming. It will launch in late July.
Also new is the Bluetooth-enabled Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus, a Bluetooth version of the popular Hue Lightstrip Plus that connects to WiFi. This new Bluetooth model does not require a hub to work, though it is compatible with the Hue hub. Up to eight extensions can be added.
A two-meter Bluetooth Lightstrip will be available from Target for $79.99 starting this week, and it will come to other retailers later in the summer. A one-meter extension will also be available for purchase for $24.99.
Along with the new A21 bulb and the Lightstrip, the Hue line is also gaining a redesigned Bluetooth-compatible Hue Bloom table lamp, which features richer colors and an improved white light with brightness up to 500 lumens compared to the prior version. It has also been updated with a more consistent experience with the rest of the Hue range, and the color temperature can now be tuned from 2000K to 6500K.
The Philips Hue Bloom will be available in late July and it will cost $69.99. More information on all of the new announcements can be found on the Philips Hue website.
Friday October 24, 2025 2:30 pm PDT by Juli Clover
In the fourth iOS 26.1 beta, Apple added a "Tinted" option that reduces the translucency of Liquid Glass for those who prefer a more opaque look. I saw some comments wondering whether the setting might preserve battery life, so I thought I'd do some testing.
Test Settings
I did four separate tests using the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and I kept the parameters as similar as possible. Here are the...
Monday October 27, 2025 7:55 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more.
Below, we outline key details about iOS 26.1.
Release Date
Given that Apple has yet to seed an iOS 26.1 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, the...
Apple Maps could feature integrated ads as soon as next year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.
In his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman said that Apple's plan to bring more ads to iOS is moving "gaining traction," with the Maps app being next in line. The project will apparently give restaurants and other businesses the option to pay to have their details featured more prominently in...
Wednesday October 22, 2025 6:15 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more.
iOS 26.1 is currently in beta testing. The update will likely be released in the first half of November, and it is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and newer, but some...
Monday October 27, 2025 4:51 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple is designing an updated version of the Apple TV 4K, and rumors suggest that it could come out sometime in the next couple of months. We're not expecting a major overhaul with design changes, but even a simple chip upgrade will bring major improvements to Apple's set-top box.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
We've rounded up all the latest Apple TV rumors.
...
Monday October 27, 2025 9:15 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple this month refreshed the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, and higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are expected to follow in early 2026. However, these machines will represent the final update to the current design, with Apple reportedly developing a completely new version of the MacBook Pro packed with next-generation hardware...
Apple's upcoming iPhone 18 could feature 50% more memory than its predecessor, according to Korea's The Bell.
With its latest iPhone lineup, the iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max feature 12GB of memory. This is a significant increase of 4GB more their predecessors, largely driven by the demands of on-device artificial intelligence processing.
The iPhone 17 is the only new...
The first preview release of the Swift SDK for Android was published this week, allowing developers to build Android apps in Swift with official tooling and making it easier to share code across iOS and Android.
The SDK enables Android apps to be built in Swift using officially supported tooling rather than community workarounds. In June, it was announced that Apple's Swift programming...
Monday October 27, 2025 7:41 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
You will "soon" be able to add a digital version of your U.S. passport to your iPhone, according to Jennifer Bailey, vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet.
Bailey reiterated that the feature is coming soon during her keynote at the Money20/20 USA conference in Las Vegas on Sunday.
On its iOS 26 page, Apple says the delayed feature will be "coming later this year."
Apple's...
The whole smart lighting idea is nice. Too bad the lights themselves suck so badly. All the Philips Hue lights are rated CRI80 at 4000K. When dimmed and set to a warmer 2700K the CRI drops way below 75. Even fluorescent produce richer colours than this! Whenever I visit friends that have these Philips Hue lamps it looks like everyone ate some bad mussels or something.
The Philips master line have much cheaper GU10 lamps that are rated CRI97 at 2700K. Osram has a Clear retro look E27 lamp that is rated CRI90 at 2700K. Both of these are just a few bucks and produce much nicer light. Even when dimmed heavily. Why on earth would you want to mess around with these Philips Hue crap?
because the average person like me didn’t understand a single thing you just wrote. I am happy with my Hue lights and it was easy enough to set up. Love it
a Bluetooth version of the popular Hue Lightstrip Plus that connects to WiFi.
Just to clarify, no Hue products connect to Wi-Fi. The Bridge/Hub is a wired LAN device, and the wireless protocol between the devices and the Bridge (and each other) is Zigbee, not Wi-Fi (though, of course, you can control them with a Wi-Fi device if it's on the same network, e.g., using the Hue app or a third-party integration).
Further, the article didn't mention one of the best parts of the new Lightstrip: you could always cut it, but then officially you lost the part of the strip that you cut. Now they're including official connectors (there have always been third-party connectors and unlit "extension cables" of varying quality with or without soldering required--I'm curious what theirs will look like) so you can re-use these pieces.
Hue looks cool but they seem too overpriced. Many cheaper options on Amazon, probably not as easy to use or the quality a bit inferior but when it comes to value, I think they are hard to beat.
It seems overpriced at first, but the bulbs last practically forever, so in the long run it doesn't matter.
I bought all my Hue kit about for years ago and have spent $0 since then. Everything is still working great.
The whole smart lighting idea is nice. Too bad the lights themselves suck so badly. All the Philips Hue lights are rated CRI80 at 4000K. When dimmed and set to a warmer 2700K the CRI drops way below 75. Even fluorescent produce richer colours than this! Whenever I visit friends that have these Philips Hue lamps it looks like everyone ate some bad mussels or something.
The Philips master line have much cheaper GU10 lamps that are rated CRI97 at 2700K. Osram has a Clear retro look E27 lamp that is rated CRI90 at 2700K. Both of these are just a few bucks and produce much nicer light. Even when dimmed heavily. Why on earth would you want to mess around with these Philips Hue crap?
nobody can tell the difference between my hue bulbs and a incandescent bulb. I have to tell everyone they are led bulbs. All of my kitchen spotlights are also hue. Hues can match color from 2500-3500 pretty well compared to a normal bulb color. The led strips can do the same unlike Lifx that do horrible whites. Not too sure what you're talking about that colors are bad on these. They might not get as bright. I sometimes have two bulbs in one light but I think the colors are pretty accurate looking at an incandescent and hue side by side.
The whole smart lighting idea is nice. Too bad the lights themselves suck so badly. All the Philips Hue lights are rated CRI80 at 4000K. When dimmed and set to a warmer 2700K the CRI drops way below 75. Even fluorescent produce richer colours than this! Whenever I visit friends that have these Philips Hue lamps it looks like everyone ate some bad mussels or something.
The Philips master line have much cheaper GU10 lamps that are rated CRI97 at 2700K. Osram has a Clear retro look E27 lamp that is rated CRI90 at 2700K. Both of these are just a few bucks and produce much nicer light. Even when dimmed heavily. Why on earth would you want to mess around with these Philips Hue crap?
LED manufacturers can game CRI ratings without actually performing correctly. If you're picky about color rendition be sure to look for the TM30 ('https://www.energy.gov/eere/ssl/tm-30-frequently-asked-questions') metrics of your lamps. It's similar to the color gamut charts you can get on good computer monitors and any manufacturer that's serious about color rendition will publish theirs.
In any case, Hue lights are not bad at all, certainly fine for residential use. Sure, you probably won't find them in an art museum. Frankly I find I'm more annoyed with the lighting design/fixture placements in friend's homes than I am with the light source itself.
