The recent release of the new Philips Hue Ultra-Bright LED Strip Flux in New Zealand adds another option to home lighting. It landed in New Zealand recently, and I had the 5-metre light strip version for review.
Due to its brightness, this light strip is ideal for use in kitchens, dining areas, hallways and home offices. With an output of 4800 Lumen at 6500 K (a very cool white), it’s brighter than any other Philips Hue I’ve seen, including many different types of bulbs we use in ceiling and floor lamps around our house.
This means you can’t really expose it directly. The Philips Hue Ultra-Bright LED Strip Flux is designed for a concealed installation, creating a wall-washing effect. In our case, I placed it in the lounge area, behind the L-shaped sofa, sneaking around the back wall, giving a softer, indirect light, spreading through the wall and the floor, ideal for when watching TV or to create cool effects.
The Philips Hue Ultra-Bright LED Strip Flux is not limited to white, though, and it gives vibrant, powerful colours, allowing you great flexibility when creating those effects.
The design uses a soft, transparent silicone sleeve, with visible LEDs of RGBWWIC type (or RGB, warm white, independent control).
You can cut the strips at marked points and use connectors to reattach the pieces, as needed. I only found Hue-branded connectors on Amazon AU, as they don’t seem to be available on the Hue official website. There’s even a 90-degree corner connector, which allows you to easily mount the strip around a room, without risking breaking it.
Installation is easy, as it comes with its own power supply and a small power control. You only need to plug it into the wall power outlet to start setup. The silicone strip and the power control supply come with a double-sided 3M backing, so you can attach them to clean surfaces, according to your design.
The Philips Hue Ultra-Bright LED Strip Flux has an IP20 rating, so it’s definitely not recommended for outdoor use and should not be immersed in water.
Like other Hue lights, you control the light strip using the Hue app and can connect it via Bluetooth or using the Zigbee-based Hue Bridge. The connection via Hub Bridge gives you more control options, even when away from home. It also allows you to create local automations, like the presence simulation, which gives the impression of someone moving around the house by randomly turning lights on and off in different rooms, based on the room type and time of the day.
The app allows you to change colours in multiple ways, including creating effects with different colours along the strip to create colour gradients, or to create pulsating colour scenes to match your mood.
Since my current Hue setup is already connected to Alexa, adding the light strip to the Hue Bridge automatically added it to my Alexa devices list as well. A couple of taps on the Alexa app allowed me to add this device to the lounge area and include it in routines I have previously created for that room. Those routines included some voice prompts, such as "movie time" to automatically dim lights, and a “good night” routine that turns all lights off, except for a dimmed floor lamp.
The Philips Hue Ultra-Bright LED Strip Flux is available in New Zealand now, and it can be a clever piece of your decor.
