In a move that won’t come as a surprise to anyone, given that Hue accidentally leaked the announcement, the Hue Bridge Pro is now official.
While the old Bridge was limited to 50 lights, the new Bridge Pro can support up to 150 lights – three times more. Additionally, it can support up to 50 accessories.
For those firmly invested in the Hue infrastructure, the Hue Bridge Pro has been a long time coming. While support for 50 lights sounds like a lot, it’s a limit that’s surprisingly easy to hit. A room with multiple spots, strip lights, and lamps, for examples, contains more lights than a ‘dumb’ room. Multiply that out across a house and garden, and 50 lights suddenly isn’t much.
Faster and more features
The Hue Bridge Pro isn’t just about supporting more devices, it’s also got a more powerful processor (five times faster) and 15 times the memory of the original. This should allow for faster response times, while the Bridge can support up to 500 scenes.
It also adds in a new features, Hue Motion Aware. By analyzing interference patterns in Zigbee, the technology can turn your existing lights into motion sensors. That’s similar technology to motion sensing baked into the Wi-Fi Wiz smart bulbs (Wiz, like Hue, is owned by Signify).
Although the Bridge Pro was leaked, we weren’t sure how easy it would be to upgrade from an old Bridge. Now, we have the answer: really easy. For users with a single Bridge, all settings can be transferred from an old Bridge to a new one.
Users with multiple Bridges will have to wait a little longer: the ability to transfer multiple Bridges to a Bridge Pro is coming before the end of the year.
The Hue Bridge Pro will be available from September for £79.99.
Hue Secure Video Doorbell
Alongside the Hue Bridge Pro, Signify announced that the Hue Secure Video Doorbell will join the existing security camera. This doorbell has a 2K resolution and offers two-way talk, motion-activated recording; everything you’d expect from a smart doorbell, really.
While there’s a subscription charge for long-term video recording, all Hue owners with cameras will receive an upgrade to 24 hours of free cloud video recording. The Hue Secure Video Doorbell will launch in October in the UK for £169.9 alongside a plug-in chime (£49.99).
It will be joined by a new wired 2K video camera, which will also launch in the UK for £169.99.
New lights
Philips Hue also announced a range of new lights. The Essentials line is designed to get those new to smart lighting hooked on the system, offering slightly lower performance at a more affordable price point.
For those that want the best out of Hue, the new Philips Hue OmniGlow light strip will be of interest.
This is described by Hue as “our first perfectly spot-free strip based on CSP (chip-scale-packaging) technology, delivering a smooth, premium light effect for any application”.
This light strip will launch in Q4 and will cost £119.99.
There’s also a new range of Flux light strips, including an extra bright model, permanent String lights, and Festavia globe lights.
Sonos voice control
If you have a Sonos system and use Sonos Voice Control, you’ll soon be able to use the system to control your Hue lights. That could be useful if you want voice control in your home, but don’t like the idea of having an Alexa, Google or Apple-powered device in addition to your existing smart speakers.
We’ll have full reviews of new products once samples are available.
