Every now and then I play games on my computer. Even though there's a much more capable console in the lounge, I like playing on my desktop. But one thing was distracting - if not downright annoying - and that was the light in my home office. The bright white light clashing with vibrant colours on a 34" curved monitor can be distracting and even reduce the time you can spend gaming.
But just recently a new addition to the Philips Hue series of smart lighting products landed here for review: the Philips Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip for PC.
And since I was going to test the light strip, I decided to replace the white light in the home office with a proper Philips Hue colour bulb and see how this setup would work.
As I found out, it works extremely well.
Since I already had some Philips Hue bulbs around the house, I had the pre-requisite Philips Hue Hub in place. This is a box that controls the smart lighting devices, via Zigbee. You manage your Philips Hue setup from your mobile using the Philips Hue app that sends commands to the Philips Hue Hub. I also have the Hub connected to Alexa, so I can also control these light bulbs by voice commands or using automated routines.
Installing the Philips Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip for PC is simple. It is basically a long LED strip encased in a rubberised tube that you can attach to the back of your monitor, using the plastic mounts provided (with 3M adhesive tape). These strips come in different sizes, depending on the monitor you will be using, so you have to choose carefully.
Once attached to the back of your monitor, you plug it into a power outlet and you are ready to add it to your Philips Hue setup.
Using the Hue app you create an "entertainment zone". It is not much different from a room but it can be just a subset of a room or even have lights across different rooms in one zone. This "entertainment zone" will synchronise with a video and audio source on your computer. Colours in this zone change depending on what is on your screen and in the case of the light strip it will also have a gradient effect, with parts of the strip having different colours, following the content on your screen.
The final piece is to download and install the Philips Hue Sync desktop app - available for both Windows and MacOS. This app will be in charge of analysing what's on your screen and communicating with the Philips Hue Hub, sending commands to change colours and brightness for lights in the target zone. The app is smart enough to identify multiple displays on your setup and you can select which one (or all) to be used as a source for the effects.
The result is amazing. The light strip projects light towards the back of your monitor, and this light reflects on the wall, giving it a glow that matches whatever is on your screen. And if you have other lights in your setup they all work together to create a really cool effect that basically spreads through the room.
And it's super fast, matching colours with on-screen action with no perceptible delay - so much so that there's even an option to introduce a delay, in case you are using a wireless display that is not as fast as a wired monitor.
You probably will use it mostly during a gaming session, but another interesting way to use this is to stream a colourful 4K video on full screen and have the lights change according to the video contents. You will find plenty of those videos on YouTube for example. You can have this running in the background during a party and it will certainly impress everyone in the room.
One thing to have in mind though: this setup is not compatible with protected video content (DRM) - so you won't be able to get your light strip colour to synchronise with a movie on Netflix for example (or any other protected content). This is because the desktop app can't see the content being sent to the screen. I tried this and it will actually cause a lot of trouble - I had to remove into my desktop from a laptop and use CTRL-ALT-DEL to be able to regain control of the desktop.
The Philips Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip is available in New Zealand now.
