Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance LightStrip Plus Dimmable LED Smart Light, Requires Hue Hub, Works with Alexa, HomeKit, and Google Assistant

Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2016

Love, love, love this Hue lighting system. I was going to pay an electrician $500+ to install under cabinet lighting in my home. My son talked me into trying Hue. For about $280 not only did I get under cabinet, I got over cabinet as well. I'm a senior and these were super easy to install. Love the fact that I could place the switch anywhere I wanted without worrying about whether the spot was wiring accessible. Love the funky colors! My husband couldn't believe we installed everything ourselves in just a couple of hours. The biggest drawback for me is the fact that I do have a plug and wire showing--something I'd hoped to avoid. But with the cost savings and many other features I wouldn't get with a hard wired system--I can live with the plug and six inches of wire showing--hide it behind a coffee pot! I did receive one faulty strip and had to wait a couple of days for a replacement, but even the return was super easy with Amazon.

762 people found this helpful

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Kevin Whitley

These are soooooo much better, more responsive

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2016

Verified Purchase

One star down for the absurd price that Philips is charging for this, but 4 up for the improvement over the previous gen lights. These are soooooo much better, more responsive, can go much lower in brightness (and infinitely more color control), can be easily chained together, and even synced up with other strips. I have two strips (with extensions), reaching about 45 feet around my bedroom crown, and have zero issues (aside from the cost).

Love the ease of connection, the quality of the LEDs, and the color control! Keep it up Philips, but lower your blasted prices...

In the image, the 2nd gen ones are up top (crown) and the older first gen strip is under my bed. Huge difference in light quality (which I definitely notice as an artist/photographer)!

161 people found this helpful

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Customer9

Reconnecting cut sections

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2016

Verified Purchase

If you are handy with a soldering iron you can cut your lightstrips and reconnect with 6pin Ribbon wire [search for Ribbon Cable - 6 wire (15ft)]

Here's how
1. Don't cut on the dotted line, instead cut through the center of the solder points right next to the dotted cut line.
2. Strip and tin your ribbon wire with solder and connect each wire to each one of the solder points on the lightstrip (you will need to strip back some of the rubber covering on the lightstrips itself) make sure you connect the same color wires to the same solder points on the next section of your lightstrip. If you get the order wrong this hack will not work
3. Cover your work with electrical tape and you're done.

Creating blackout strips like this is a great solve for under cabinet lighting. Good luck!

604 people found this helpful

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Ryan Williams

Beware: extensions dim the strips!

Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2017

Verified Purchase

I've bought a ton of hue gear and mostly liked it, though the value is questionable at these prices.

I discovered to my amazement today that the total brightness of light strips are capped at 1600 lumens / 22W power draw, due to the power supply and controller.

There are some useful posts on reddit and even developers.hue.com about it, but no one seems to have come up with a reasonable way to swap in a different power-supply/controller to get any more brightness out of an extended strip than was in the original 2m one.

The fact that hue doesn't explain this, and advertises the strips as 800 lumens, seems almost definitely illegal.

In the attached photo, you can see one strip with 5 extensions and one with none; hard to get a sense of just what the difference is this way but it's obvious in the picture and to the naked eye.

151 people found this helpful

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R. MorrisTop Contributor: Smart Home

Good for primary light and also works well with Hue features

Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2017

Verified Purchase

I've been using the Lightstrip Plus as the primary source of light in my living room (which lacks any built-in overhead lighting--I have this attached to a wall near the ceiling on one side), and it is great. I occasionally supplement the light with a floor lamp (a "regular" A19 Hue bulb), but if I had to pick one, the Lightstrip Plus lights the room much better because it's a bit brighter--and you can extend it to make it longer and brighter if needed. As with most Hue products, I like that I can change the color of the light. I can do a cool white during the day and warm white at night. This product produces all shades of white light very well, and it has much better color capabilities than the first- and second-generation A19 Hue bulbs in terms of being able to make more saturated blues and greens (which the third-generation "richer colors" bulbs have more or less caught up to now). I liked it so much I bought a second one for my bathroom and am using it with a motion detector (via SmartThings, but you could do this with Hue itself now) to turn the light on to a medium white during the day (and most of the morning and evening) and a very dim light in the middle of the night if needed. It is able to dim quite low.

If you have a fist-generation Lightstrip (the second-generation was renamed "Lightstrip Plus"), you'll notice a lot of differences. First, this one is much brighter. Second, it is capable of producing not just colors but also white light in typical color temperatures (like the regular Hue bulbs), so, like me, you can use it as the primary source of lighting in a room if needed. Like the first generation, you can also cut these smaller if needed, though you will then lose the ability to do anything with the part of the strip you've cut off (adventurous solderers aside).

As with many Hue products, unless you always have your phone handy, there are a few Hue accessories that might enhance your experience, such as the Tap or Dimmer if you want to be able to have some sort of physical switch you can use to turn on/off the light or activate any of various "scenes" you can set up in the Hue app. (But note that, like the bulbs, the strip will "reset" itself to a default of warm white light at full brightness if unplugged and plugged back in, or if it loses power. So, if you have an outlet controlled by a switch--as living rooms built during certain decades often do--you can probably get by with using your existing switch for everyday lighting and using the app or other methods for special occasions.) If you have a second-generation Hue Hub and an iOS device, you can use Siri to change the lights via HomeKit as well. If you have an Echo, you can turn on/off lights with Alexa as well (first generation hub is fine for this), and enabling the Hue skill will let you activate scenes or turn on/off rooms as well. Philips now makes Hue motion detectors which you may find useful as well, though I am doing something similar myself via SmartThings and have been for long before Philips announced these products.

Perhaps the only con of this product is the price: it's much more expensive than the Hue bulbs and more expensive than most other LED lightstrips I can find, but if you need a strip as opposed to a bulb and value the features of Hue, this is still a good option. (I tried the SYLVANIA LIGHTIFY by Osram LED Flex Light Strip RGBW at first because it was cheaper, but it wasn't bright enough for me and would have exceeded the Hue price if I bought an extension to try to help, though it's not a bad product and has a few advantages like different connectors for the extension strips compared to Hue; see my review there for more.) I also didn't find the built-in adhesive useful, but it's easy enough to come up with your own solution--maybe mounting tape or cable clips. Other than that, this is basically all of the nice things about Hue--plus a little more brightness than their standard bulbs--in a different form, which I really like and wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone.

25 people found this helpful

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SmyrnaMama

Check gap between molding and cabinet frame to see if you need to caulk

Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2016

Verified Purchase

I purchased these light strips to use under the cabinets in the kitchen.

Before attaching the lights to the cabinets with the adhesive, I held the lights up and noticed that light shone through where the bottom molding met with the cabinet. I ended up having to caulk under the cabinets so that light would not show through.

126 people found this helpful

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Computer Geek

Stopped working after 5 months - 2nd generation Lightstrip +

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2016

Verified Purchase

I have a few of the Hue lights and lightstrips. Five months ago I purchased this from AMZ and this week the lightstrip started blinking and then stopped working entirely. I plugged the lights into another power source and they worked fine so the problem is in the power adapter. I'm contacting Philips for a warranty replacement and will update with the information.

Update - after a long call with Philips they agreed to replace the power adapter since the lights work fine. And guess what - the promised power adapter never arrived. Ultimately the warranty was useless so I am out $$ and have an extra extension strip. It's not worth my time to try to get through to their customer service again as that was difficult to begin with. Philips for the #fail.

40 people found this helpful

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K. Conroy

Exactly what I needed for kitchen under cabinet lighting

Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

I'm really happy with this lightstrip. I bought a kit with a bridge and two color bulbs at the same time, later adding a dimmer switch. My kitchen cabinets don't have a light rail; they have trim that sits about half an inch below the bottom of the cabinet, but is flush with the walls of the each cabinet. After some testing and googling I ended up using a hand saw to make small cuts about 2mm wide in the walls of each cabinet and mounted it on the inside of the trim facing the backsplash. Even reflecting off the backsplash the light is brighter than I thought it would be and is perfect as extra light for food prep. I'm not using a diffuser, but reflecting it diffuses the light really well. Luckily I was able to hide the cable pretty well by running it along the underside of a cabinet, up an empty space between two cabinets, and then down through a hole I drilled into the cabinet over the microwave that has an outlet. I tested the lightstrip facing straight down and didn't like that you could see the LEDs while sitting at the kitchen table. Even when not prepping food, leaving the lights on 50% brightness makes the kitchen look so much cleaner and open. I set it to night light overnight and have it turn off automatically before sunrise. Connected the strip to the Hue bridge was very easy.

7 people found this helpful

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Garrett Clark

Repeated Updates to Break the Product, Warranty is not honored

Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2018

Verified Purchase

The products are fine as of lights; however, the repeated "Updates" repeatedly break any and all integration, the repeated having to re-name the lights in the app, in google home etc. and the excessive "SCENES" for every room showing up as an object creating 40 bulbs into 200 objects within smart home integraiton apps is ridiculous.

Furthermore when the lights fail the Customer Service from Hue draws out any warranty for months on end. I have 3 lights (out of 40) that failed (they repeatedly turn on, and will never turn off) in one of the most common failures (youtube full of videos). There is a 2 year warranty, maybe if they draw out the conversation longer than 2 years they can deny the warranty claim? I have been back and forth via email for 3 months with them. I have 45+ lights and they wont warranty 3..

Update:
After 31 emails and 3 months, I received 3 replacement bulbs for those that were under warranty. Unfortunately someone at HUE has come up with the bright idea that Quality Control Rejects are suited for Warranty Rejects. The bulbs molding was damaged or discolored.

Way to go Hue.

4 people found this helpful

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B. Robie

Adapter Started Smoking

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2021

Verified Purchase

After 3 years, the power adapter popped and started smoking. Smelled disgusting. After contacting customer service they quickly seemed to determined if it was out of warranty and once they knew it was, offered no help. They do not sell the adapter separately, so I would need to purchase another light strip. Not something I want to do every 3 years and after being an “all in” customer with over 50 lights, I’d rather not purchase from a company that leaves you high and dry.

2 people found this helpful

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5 star		72%
4 star		10%
3 star		7%
2 star		4%
1 star		7%

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