Philips Hue Bridge 2.0 (HomeKit) - Unboxing, Setup, Siri!

The new Philips Hue Bridge is available and we take it out of the box, transfer settings from the old Hue bridge to the new one and try out a few holiday-themed scenes with Siri.
Buy the Hue Bridge - amzn.to/2eGXzie
Hue Starter Kit - amzn.to/2dL7Kku
Recommended Smart Home Products - amzn.to/2kc1Tde
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Aside from the obvious physical changes, new internal hardware and firmware, not much has changed with the new Philips Hue bridge aside from adding support for Apple’s HomeKit home automation framework. The widely-acclaimed Philips Hue line of products is one of the larger line-ups of home automation products to get HomeKit support. Of course, as HomeKit requires new encryption and new chips to control it all, existing Hue users must upgrade to the new bridge for Siri commands to work with their iOS devices.
Existing Philips Hue users can get a discount on the new Hue HomeKit Bridge, see this page for details: www2.meethue.com/en-us/product...
It’s widely believed that this new bridge will also work with Nest’s home automation platform, Weave/Brillo/Thread-say that five times fast-but no official word yet from Philips.
The new HomeKit-enabled Philips Hue Bridge is simple to setup, and transferring your lights, scenes and settings from an old Hue bridge is seamless and easy. The process takes roughly five minutes or so, which is mostly edited out in our video. Once your new bridge is setup, the app prompts you to reset the old bridge, and that’s it…you’re done!
We made a few new Halloween and holiday-themed scenes to show off Siri and HomeKit in action and demonstrate controlling aspects of a single light, too.
We’ll have a full review of the new Hue HomeKit Bridge coming up soon, and check out our Lutron Caseta review to see more of HomeKit in action! • Hands-On: Lutron Caset...

[@camarykaren]

Awesome review. I'm sold or should say buying.

[@IAmNotAFunguy]

Do an unboxing and close look of Philips Hue Beyond & Hue Phoenix.

[@SmarterHomeLife]

+IAmNotAFunguy Thanks, these are higher-priced, specialty products from Philips and don't fit into our current plans. We may write an informative article or two about them but not a hands-on review unless Philips sends us evaluation units.

[@anthonydelagarza9276]

Hey Joe, MERRY CHRISTMAS! :-P It's okay to say that again! Thanks for the videos, very helpful btw! :-)

[@SmarterHomeLife]

Thank you :)

[@llrainll]

Amazing. So we don’t need the HomeKit. We can just control the lights through Siri, once you have the Philips Hue Bridge and the app? 😭🙏

[@keeloraz9452]

You know Iam concerned about the brightness and colour of the latest hue bulbs. How does it compare to for e.g a CFL bulb in terms of similarity in colour and brightness ?

[@dylanbroome7596]

a typical CFL bulb is around 1300 lumens. the old phillips hue lights are 600 lumens, and the new ones are 800. hope this helped!

[@edbug007]

Looks good might pick one up. How about giving your old hub away just a suggestion. Keep the videos coming love the channel.

[@SmarterHomeLife]

+Eddie Torres That's definitely a possibility! :-)

[@Gustavosg77]

Hi, I have a problem trying to connect my bridge, it only turns up the first led on my bridge, and the other 2 leds indicators doesn’t come up, I check a lot pages, and it doesn’t have information about how to troubleshot this problem, I tried to reset the bridge and it hasn’t respond, could you help me please!

[@Russhopson]

Hey, when you are using siri through your watch, can you only set the scenes that are allocated to widget/watch??

[@SmarterHomeLife]

+Russ Hopson We haven't tested this specifically, but with Siri / HomeKit, it should allow control of any scenes you've enabled for HomeKit. The app for Hue on the watch only has the scenes that you designate to it via the Hue app on your iPhone. Rule of thumb: if you can activate a scene via HomeKit / Siri on your iPhone, you should be able to do it via the Watch as well.

[@seanmayfield1015]

Do you have to have the Hue lights for the bridge to turn them on and off?

[@SmarterHomeLife]

Yes

[@Abdullrahman_HA]

can i connect to bloom to android and change coolor and adjust settings without the bridge !! can i use it without the bridge ?

[@SmarterHomeLife]

+Abdullrahman H. Abdullradah Bloom can connect to Android, but you still have to control the Hue devices via the bridge. The lights themselves only have Zigbee radios and can't talk via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

[@valueStocks]

That link is for another product. My Siri will not work and would be nice to see how yours works.

[@SmarterHomeLife]

+Treasure Hunt Which link are you referring to? Happy to correct it, just let us know.

[@valueStocks]

+Lighting Answers Oh you just said that that link was to help set up hue but its for a different product.

[@mbnbzb]

Do I need a internet service to use these lights?

[@SmarterHomeLife]

+mbalcerek25 Nope. If you have Internet, you can control from outside your home, but that isn't required for their basic operation. You just need a smartphone (iOS / Android / Windows Phone) to control them.

[@mbnbzb]

Thanks!!

[@baswazz]

Can i connect the hub to my wireless network or do i need the utp cable?

[@SmarterHomeLife]

+Bas Kardinaal The hub needs to be connected via Ethernet cable, unfortunately.

[@baswazz]

+Lighting Answers Thank you for your quick response.

[@Digikidthevoiceofreason]

Seems quite slow to respond. Hope it speeds up. I ordered my new bridge through Apple Canada.

[@SmarterHomeLife]

+DigikidForever Sometimes it is slow and other times quicker. It's all software and should get better over time.

[@NiklasForsman1]

+DigikidForever Sems to be the voice control thats slow.. whats your experience?

[@jameswilkinson150]

Bought this, had the old one. Tried to copy light recipes from my old one, didn't work at all so sent back.

[@SmarterHomeLife]

Did you run through the process that prompts you to move the various lights and recipes from the old one to the new one, and/or contact Philips for support?

[@Alex-om1be]

James Wilkinson guggy

[@jameswilkinson150]

Smarter Home Life yup, tried all that stuff, just didn't work.

[@zainraz4]

Did you buy them or were they sent out to you?

[@SmarterHomeLife]

+Zain Raza We purchased these. Some products are sent to us for evaluation purposes, some we buy.

[@zainraz4]

Okay, Thanks!

[@neek247]

when you said "hey siri" it didnt do anything to my iphone, because i think its setup to know my own accent/voice

[@williamcarter5264]

Good

[@SmarterHomeLife]

+William Carter Thank you

[@sollux4131]

+Lighting Answers why are you not showing us the code? HuhHuhHuh?!

[@SmarterHomeLife]

+Evan “blogsandvlogs” Poole Code? Which code do you speak of?

[@mogawa451]

i bought a light without knowing you needed a bridge.there goes 50$

[@Engineer9736]

I will never use Siri. People just want it because it was in Star Wars or similar movies. But in reality it's just very troublesome, slow, takes more time and effort than pushing a button.