Philips Hue smart lights have a new competitor and it's inside the house: Philips Smart LED Wiz Connected. These new smart bulbs may be known as Wiz, the brand under which they have been marketed until now. Among its advantages is a much more adjusted price, but what are the disadvantages. we see this cheap alternative to philips hue.
Signify has new bulbs and they are not Philips Hue
In 2019 Signify, the company behind the Philips Hue brand, acquired the Wiz brand. This had a catalog of smart bulbs whose main attraction was their value for money. If they were compared to the popular Philips Hue, they won by far. And it is that some RGB bulbs from Wiz could cost about 15 euros while an RGB from Philips Hue went to about 50 euros.
The difference between the two bulbs, beyond the quality of the LEDs (something always questionable), the electronics itself, the percentage of the CRI index, etc., was mainly in the connection method. Philips Hue bulbs are based on the Zigbee standard and Bluetooth connectivity for the latest models. The B'sWiz smart bulbs in the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.
Better Zigbee plus Bluetooth or WiFi plus bluetooth? Well, here it will depend on the needs of each user, but it is true that the Zigbee standard itself is much more interesting than the rest. First, because it avoids problems when the number of devices to be controlled is high, and also because it does not saturate the WiFi network that we use to connect other more important devices such as laptops, consoles, mobile phones, etc. And finally, because compared to bluetooth it has a greater radius of action.
However, having these characteristics allowed the brand to offer more competitive prices. So for Signify it was a good option to buy it in order to have more presence in the market. And that is now beginning to materialize with the new Philips Smart LEDs, smart bulbs that you will see next to the logo Connected by Wiz.
With the name change, the company gives a boost to the Philips brand in terms of light bulbs and new options for users who will have cheaper solutions under a trusted brand: Philips. Although there are differences that you should know.
The dark side of Philips Smart Led bulbs
Although both have the Philips brand in their names, there is a difference between the two families of smart bulbs that makes the Philips Hue and the new Philips Smart LED incompatible with each other. First of all, due to the different standards to use, we'll see when Matter arrives and we know if only the new models will update to support it or it will be all (this last thing is unlikely).
The second and most important is that although the Philips Hue has always been the preferred option for Apple users who are committed to HomeKit, Philips Smart LEDs don't integrate as well. They support the use of Siri Shortcuts, but voice assistant compatibility is optimized for Google Assistant and Alexa.
Luckily, to support these bulbs you can use Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi, although you can also install it on a Synology NAS. Something that we have already talked about on more than one occasion and surely you are interested in expanding your ecosystem of home automation products to be controlled with HomeKit.
A catalog full of options
El Wiz or Philips Smart LED catalog to be more exact, it is made up of a total of 36 types of bulbs smart. They come in different shapes, cap types and even types of light (color or just white with the option of regulating intensity and temperature, etc.)
The old packages arrive with the Wiz brand, but the new ones already with their blue background reveal the name of Philips Smart LED. That's just again, Philips Smart LED bulbs are incompatible with Philips Hue. They can be combined, but the experience would be somewhat strange. The same as if you combined those same ones from Hue with the xiaomi light bulbs or similar.
Until the final arrival of Matter and the support that each brand decides to give to their past products, we will not be able to say anything more.
When is Matter expected to arrive and what would be its effects of its arrival?