Philips Hue
Philips Hue White & Colour Ambiance A60 E27 (1100 lm)
- Zigbee
- Bluetooth
Verified September 2026
Still the benchmark UK smart bulb: the native Hue integration is platinum-grade, fully local via the Bridge, and push-based so state changes are instant. Also available in B22 bayonet for older UK fittings, and it pairs directly with Zigbee2MQTT/ZHA if you'd rather skip the Bridge. At around £45 it costs roughly six times IKEA's £7 KAJPLATS colour bulb, and that gap buys real colour accuracy — Hue's Gamut C renders deep reds and blues more convincingly than budget RGB LEDs, plus a matured ecosystem: Entertainment sync for gaming/TV, Hue Labs, and Bridge-side dynamic scenes. Best for feature lighting and colour-critical rooms, not bulbs you'll barely notice.
In Home Assistant
| Control | Type | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Effect | Select | Firmware-level effects — colorloop, candle, fireplace, sunrise, sunset — present under all three pairing methods since they run on the bulb, not the Bridge. |
| Dynamic scene | Service (Bridge only) | Activates a Bridge-stored scene with crossfading between palettes computed on the Bridge; only exposed by HA's native hue integration, not Z2M/ZHA. |
| Colour | Colour (xy) | Full Gamut C colour control and 2000K-6500K white tuning; identical range and precision regardless of which integration is used. |
| Transition | Number (seconds) | Crossfade duration on turn-on calls; offloaded to the Bridge's push engine on the native integration, handled via repeated Zigbee commands on Z2M/ZHA. |
| Colour temperature range | Attribute | Reports the bulb's supported white range so automations like Adaptive Lighting can clamp requested values to what the hardware supports. |
Pairing straight to Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA keeps the bulb's own effect library (colorloop, candle, fireplace, sunrise, sunset) since those are firmware-level commands, not something the Bridge computes. What's lost is anything that runs as server-side logic on the Bridge itself: Hue Entertainment sync (a proprietary low-latency stream only the Bridge speaks), Hue Labs formulas, and Bridge-side dynamic scene crossfading. Firmware isn't a dead end off-Bridge either — Z2M can push Hue's own OTA files directly once paired. Colour gamut is unaffected by pairing method since it's a hardware property, not an integration one, so colour accuracy is identical either way. An evening-ambiance automation calling the Bridge's dynamic scene service offloads continuous colour crossfading to the Bridge's own engine rather than HA looping turn_on calls, so the effect keeps running smoothly through an HA restart — but that only works via the native hue integration, not Z2M/ZHA.
Specs
- cri
- ≥80
- fitting
- E27 (also sold in B22 bayonet)
- wattage
- 8.1 W
- lifespan
- 25,000 hours
- brightness
- 1100 lm
- energy rating
- D
- dimmable range
- 0.2%-100%
- colour temperature
- 2000-6500K, plus full RGB colour (16 million colours)