Philips Hue isn’t the only Philips lighting brand anymore – here’s what’s changed

Philips Hue will probably always be known as the premium smart lighting brand. It’s why it tops so many of our best smart light guides, and why it even has its own dedicated best Philips Hue lights roundup. However, things have started looking a little different recently, and it hasn’t been entirely obvious why.

The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted yesterday’s article covering a new range of products from Philips Smart Lighting. The even more observant probably noticed two things straight away – they weren’t branded Philips Hue, and they were also significantly cheaper than most Hue products usually are.

Naturally, I went away and spoke to the brand directly to figure out what’s actually going on, and thankfully the answer is much less dramatic than some people probably feared.

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Is Philips Hue going anywhere?

For Philips Hue fans, the good news is absolutely not. Philips Hue remains Signify’s premium smart lighting ecosystem and continues to focus on advanced connected lighting experiences and its bridge-based smart home setup.

In other words, your existing Hue setup isn’t suddenly being replaced, phased out or merged into something else. Hue is still very much Hue, and it’s clearly continuing to sit at the top end of Signify’s smart lighting portfolio.

So...what actually is Philips Smart Lighting?

This is where things get slightly confusing. The first thing worth knowing is that Philips Smart Lighting isn’t technically brand new – it just hasn’t really been pushed very heavily until now.

Under the surface, Philips Smart Lighting is essentially built on the existing WiZ platform and app. Unlike Philips Hue, which relies heavily on the Hue Bridge, Philips Smart Lighting focuses more on simplicity, accessibility and an easier Wi-Fi-based setup.

What Signify is effectively doing now is expanding the Philips Smart Lighting portfolio into more expressive and entertainment-focused products, whilst still using WiZ technology behind the scenes. Since WiZ products have also sat below Philips Hue in terms of cost, Philips Smart Lighting products are more affordable too.

Where does WiZ fit into all this?

WiZ itself isn’t going anywhere either. Instead, it’s becoming clearer that WiZ is effectively the platform powering Philips Smart Lighting products moving forward.

That means Philips Smart Lighting devices will continue working through the WiZ app and ecosystem, alongside standard WiZ products you may already own. However, they won’t directly integrate into the Philips Hue ecosystem in the same way Hue products do.

So essentially, Philips Hue remains the premium bridge-based ecosystem, whilst WiZ technology continues powering Philips Smart Lighting as the simpler, more affordable alternative.

The launch we covered yesterday simply marks a much bigger expansion of what Philips Smart Lighting is trying to become.