If you’re new to using smart bulbs in your home, Philips Hue is a name that’s probably on your radar. This brand has become synonymous with smart home lighting thanks to strong app support, a wide range of features, and an ever-growing product line. What may confuse you when you decide to buy is seeing another Philips brand on the store shelf called WiZ. In 2019, Signify (a lighting company spun off from Philips) acquired WiZ to strengthen its lighting offering. Unfortunately, WiZ and Hue smart bulbs work differently, so you really have to go for one or the other to get a properly unified smart home lighting setup.
Hue uses a wireless standard called Zigbee, which has been around for a while as a means of low-power connections. Zigbee devices operate on a different frequency than Wi-Fi and require their own physical hub. This hub connects to a Wi-Fi router, which then connects to your phone. An Internet connection also allows for remote connectivity, so lights can automatically turn off when you leave the house, for example. Since its launch, Hue has added Bluetooth to its bulbs, so a hub isn’t necessarily needed. Although the Bluetooth range is basically limited to the room you’re in, this can save some time needed to connect to the hub over Wi-Fi.
WiZ forgoes Zigbee entirely. Instead, WiZ smart bulbs connect directly to your router via Wi-Fi. During setup, they produce their own little Wi-Fi access point that you connect to, at least to pass your home Wi-Fi network credentials. If you’ve ever set up a Chromecast, it’s the same idea. That’s one less hoop to jump through than the Philips Hue, making setup and expansion a bit easier. WiZ’s mobile app also differs from Hue’s in that it offers more features in some areas and less in others.
Let’s compare these two platforms and determine which one is better for you.
Function
Freak
Functionally, Philips Hue and WiZ are similar. Standard E12, E26 and GU10 sockets are available for both. Hue has several other bulb form factors in the form of plug and play lamps. The range of colors and brightness between brands is equally wide. The design, the organization of the room and the color recipes are up to par. Both can be activated via commands via Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Siri. Third-party support is a bit stronger for Hue, with apps like Hue Pro providing animation capabilities outside of the Philips app. In addition, the native WiZ app has some unique features out of the box, such as tracking energy consumption and setting transition intervals. Some of these animation features in Hue Pro are built right into the WiZ app.
Partnerships with Spotify for music syncing and strong TV backlight playback give Hue an advantage over WiZ, but those are pretty advanced features that aren’t necessarily a huge selling point for everyone. For the modest user, WiZ has a rich set of features that should satisfy everyday requirements.
longevity considerations
The real concern is long-term support, which is invaluable for a product that will be a part of your home for years to come. The last thing you want is to spend money and energy installing smart lights only to have the app (and most light features) stop working a few years later. Some smart home companies, like Sonos, have shown they won’t let that happen.
An established brand may seem like smart lights are more likely to work in the long run, if only because they’ll stay in business long enough, but they’re also likely to force you into arbitrary upgrades. For example, Hue has already disabled voice commands and app updates for all lights connected to its first-gen hub in an effort to get owners to buy its V2 hub. He could argue for the technical necessity of these upgrades, but for those of us who invest in LEDs for the good of the environment, it’s no good knowing that we’re expected to destroy one of our hubs every few years. For what it’s worth, the Hue smart bulbs in a 9-year-old first-gen hub still provide plenty of utility, if not their original set of full features.
As for WiZ, not having a hub gives it one less point of potential failure when it comes to support and obsolescence. However, since it’s a smaller brand, its ability to stick around long enough for the app to work is a bit less. It could be said that these two factors cancel each other out.
Price
The price difference between Philips Hue and WiZ is quite large and is probably the deciding factor between these two product families.
One of Hue’s starter kits with four colored bulbs and a hub is $270. The cheapest single white Hue bulb is $25. Meanwhile, a four-pack of WiZ colored bulbs is just $50, and you can get a single white for just $13/cc-set].
While WiZ bulbs may be cheaper, they can be more difficult to find in stock. Amazon currently doesn’t list any colored bulbs, and Costco only has four packs of flared reflector models. So you’ll most likely need to buy WiZ smart bulbs at Home Depot to complete your lighting.
The reduced availability gives the impression that Signify may discontinue WiZ in favor of Hue, but a whole new line of WiZ bulbs was recently announced. We can expect both lines to continue into the future and provide much-needed ongoing software support.
Conclusion
The bottom line here really comes down to price. There are some things that Hue does better and fewer things that WiZ does better. Advanced features like TV and music syncing could tip the scales in Hue’s favor. These functional differences are small compared to the huge difference in price. With WiZ, you can save a few bucks and not miss out on too much.
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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn