New effects and effect setting options for Philips Hue

The firmware update no. 1.122.2 recently rolled out by Philips Hue for Bluetooth-enabled Hue lamps enables additional effects. You can select the four new effects via version 5.28 of the Philips Hue app - and it is possible to edit all effects. As most Philips Hue smart lamps are Bluetooth-enabled, almost all lamps will benefit from the update.

Effects are a preset for more dynamic lighting. They then not only display one colour or a uniform colour sequence, but follow a predefined pattern of colours and brightness. The "Fireplace" effect, which has been available for some time, causes a lamp to flicker in orange tones, for example, to simulate a crackling fire.

You can find the effects as an icon with three small stars under the colour circle in the colour selection area of your lamp.

Another new feature is that the "Diffuse" style of the Festavia fairy lights is now available for all Hue gradient lamps. With this style, five adjustable colours are distributed across the segments of the lamp.

Four new effects

The new effects are called Underwater, Cosmos, Sunbeam and Magic World. They join the six existing effects. The app now offers three to four preset colour variants for most of them. I have tried out the new effects and only recognise slight differences between them.

With the Sunbeam effect, the lamp lights up in the basic colour and after a certain time briefly changes to a warm white light, which is probably intended to represent the sunbeam. The Magic World effect seems to alternate through all saturation and brightness values of the basic colour. The cosmos effect is very similar: here the lamp plays the basic colour between "off" and "maximum brightness".

I find the preset underwater effect quite nice: here the lamp changes through the colour tones close to the base colour and only varies slightly with the brightness. I have three ceiling spotlights in one room and each can use a separate underwater effect. Together, the play of colours is reminiscent of the play of light on the water in a pool or aquarium.

Adjustment options for the effects

Until now, the effects could not be edited any further. With the new software version, you can change the basic colour and the general brightness of the effect as required and set how quickly the dynamic change should occur. This means that the simulated fire can appear blue, for example, and flicker more wildly or more slowly.

The new lighting effects are a step in the right direction. Hue is lagging behind other manufacturers when it comes to effects. As far as I know, it is still not possible to group several lamps together and assign an effect to the group. So far, I have to assign the effects to each lamp individually and instead of playing together harmoniously, all the lamps stoically reel off the same sequence at the same time.