By Stacey L Nash | Updated September 1, 2021 at 11:50 AM

Philips is a major player in the global lighting industry. We provide everything from traditional lamps and tubes to LED strips that I have tested. They are always on top of the latest and greatest lighting features.

Light strips, such as Philips Hue light strips, are a relatively new lighting technology. The strip adheres to the surface with the adhesive backing. Models like Philips Hue go far beyond the light strip, it can change several colors or provide different lighting modes for additional functional light sources.

The Philips light strip is connected to the hub via Bluetooth, and you can control multiple Philips light strips and devices through one application. I tested Philips Hue in the kitchen and used them as lighting under the cabinets. This light strip provides impressive lighting (super bright), multiple light colors and controls, but it has its limitations, which may or may not make them the best light strip for you.

Obtain Philips Hue light strips at:

The Philips Hue light strip is part of the starter kit, which includes a hub, an 80-inch coated light strip and the connection cable between the two. The hub can control up to 50 lights and 12 Hue accessories. The app controls everything from turning on the lights to setting the schedule and changing the color scheme.

There is no remote control or manual control on the wires of the strips, and you can't even turn them on and off. Unfortunately, this is where the lighting is a bit problematic, but I will talk about it later.

The Philips light strip can be used as general task or accent lighting, depending on the selected brightness level. Most light strips cannot provide enough light for food preparation or cooking, but these can certainly be. They are bright enough that I have to turn them down for general use. In one of the darker settings, they will provide a lot of accent lighting.

In the app, there is a long list of color options, from basic warm and cold light to lighting schemes based on mood, room, or time of day. The plan is added to the profile, so you can easily select these favorites without scrolling through all the options.

The installation is where this originally bright and beautiful light belt develops to the south. The actual lamp installation is very simple. I peeled off the adhesive backing and pressed the LED strip into place.

My kitchen cabinet has seams, which makes installation more difficult. It also affects the adhesive of the strips. At each seam, the adhesive strip must pass through the next cabinet, so the adhesive will not directly contact the bottom of the cabinet. Later, this lack of contact affected the adhesion of the adhesive.

However, the physical installation is not the difficult part. It turns out that connecting hubs and applications is challenging. The hub must be directly connected to my router. Unfortunately, my router is full, so the hub occupies one of the remaining ports. After connecting, it takes a long time for the hub to operate. I don't know why, but the application is difficult to connect to the hub. It took me 2 days to try a few times to get it to work.

After connecting, the hub must be updated. However, even if the hub is directly connected, it cannot be connected to the router for updates. I actually gave up the first time and tried again the next day. After uninstalling and reinstalling the app, I finally got the hub updated and the app worked. Finally, I can turn on the lights.

But the next day, the application will not connect to the hub again. I uninstalled and reinstalled the app again, and turned on the lights that morning. To change any controls, such as light colors or patterns, I have to reinstall the application. Every. time.

The ease of use is based on the Bluetooth connection and the application with this LED light bar. As I have already mentioned, connectivity is an issue and remains an issue throughout the testing process. If I can't connect to the app (I can't connect most of the time), and I can't open, close, or adjust the schedule. There is no direct manual control on the lamp, so I am stuck. Sometimes, I just unplug them because I am tired of mixing with apps.

When I can get the app to run, it's very cool to use. You can choose from millions of colors (literally) using settings that include the time of day, season, and location as inspiration. You can also set the light according to your favorite color, and then you can adjust the brightness.

The app makes it easy to set up a schedule, such as turning on the lights before going home from get off work or when you wake up in the morning. I set them to open at 7 AM and close at 10 PM every day, and they will do so even if I can't get the application to run. You can set up multiple schedules for different days of the week.

I tested several light strips with Philips Hue at the same time, and Philips Hue provided the brightest and strongest lighting among all the lights I tested. They are brighter or brighter than the ceiling lights in my kitchen, which makes food preparation and cooking easier.

I also appreciate that if I want to, I can adjust the "temperature" of the light from cool blue to warm white. However, I am not limited to white people. There are mixed colors of pink, green and blue, and I can dim or brighten it as needed (of course, if I can make the application run).

This strip is definitely not just for accent lighting. It is also bright enough for the task lighting I like.

The lighting under my kitchen cabinets poses some challenges, but this is an area I think is worth testing because my kitchen cannot be the only place where there is a seam between each unit at the bottom. The lights must pass through every seam, so they can only be connected at certain points rather than in uninterrupted strings.

The adhesive begins to lose its grip near the seam point. I don't think this is too bad, except that there is a cabinet area without seams, and the adhesive there needs to be re-attached. These lights have a thick coating. Compared to other light strips I have tested, they are quite heavy, and the weight will pull on the adhesive. Therefore, I had to press them back many times.

Philips Hue light strips are currently one of the more expensive options. The brightness and schedule settings are very good, bright and high quality. However, the connection problem is a deal breaker. Without the app, I cannot control the lights, and the app cannot connect to the hub. In general, it just doesn't work.

I have some other questions. The 80-inch strip is not very long. The lights of this strip are more powerful than other strips, so maybe there is no need to have as many lights as other strips. However, most of the other light strips I tested have longer light strings. You can cut off the light string at a designated point without interrupting the lighting of the remaining lights, so there is at least some installation flexibility.

Finally, I think the price is a lot of money for short light strings that are difficult to control. So in my opinion, I would say no, they are not worth the price.

Philips Hue has many alternative qualities, such as light quality, brightness, and beautiful color scheme options. It can earn bonus points through automatic plan settings, and turning on the lights before you get home is also a good safety feature. Philips light strips provide all these functions.

However, I don't want to spend my morning time turning on the lights, nor do I want to fiddle with the app to turn off the lights at night. When the application can't connect to the hub, all other useful functions don't make any sense, or-as I have experienced-successfully update the hub. It took 2 days to connect everything, and I still reinstall the app every day to make the lights work. In my opinion, this is too much for a string of lights.

The disappointing part is that if the app and hub are working properly, I would think these lights are great. They added great lighting to my (some) dark kitchen.

I hope I can say that I will install them again, but not because of current connection issues. There are other strip lights there. They may not be as bright or provide the same rich light quality, but they will work when needed.

Obtain Philips Hue light strips at:

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