The Philips HUE Smart Plug is on its way and accidental postings on several European websites have more or less confirmed its availability and price. Found by Hueblog.de, the listing of the Philips HUE Smart Plug was found on several websites with a price of 29.99 Euros. Considering Amazon sells its Alexa Smart Plug for $24.99 on its website, this price seems right in line with what we’d expect from this type of product, especially when it features the Philips HUE branding.
The Philips HUE brand is known for its quality, interoperability and, most begrudgingly, expensive price. You certainly get what you pay for when you buy a HUE product, though. Most HUE lights are significantly brighter than their competition, and they’re quite a bit more color-accurate, too. The new Philips HUE Smart Plug isn’t going to help your existing lights’ brightness or color-accuracy, but it will enable those fancy lamps and other gadgets to gain a bit of intelligence via the Philips HUE system.
The number of tie-ins that HUE has with other electronics on the market is unparalleled. This part of the HUE branding is what you’ll be paying for, specifically, when buying the Philips HUE Smart Plug for your existing devices. That means that your existing lamps, fans, and other devices can now be in-sync with your existing Philips HUE bulbs and their connected devices, helping your home operate as one cohesive smart home.
As with other new Philips HUE bulbs and devices, this new Philips HUE Smart Plug is shipping with the additional Bluetooth module inside, giving additional ways of connecting to the plug locally without having to connect to the Internet via the Philips HUE Bridge. Bluetooth is inherently more secure than an Internet-based WiFi connection simply because it’s not open to attack from the rest of the world if a security vulnerability is found and not patched.
It’s also a less-expensive way of getting into the HUE ecosystem because you won’t have to buy that $60 HUE Bridge, although it means that you’re getting a lot less functionality. Using the Philips HUE app to connect to your HUE devices via Bluetooth only means they won’t have a way to talk to each other.
The only concern that’s apparent with these smart plugs is in their size. Most smart plugs are rather large, and this new Philips HUE Smart Plug doesn’t seem to address those concerns at all. The one pictured appears to only have a European-style outlet on it, but we surmise that Philips will be adding more outlet types in the near future. The store listing for this particular plug shows September 10th as the initial availability and the 29.99 Euro price tag is a reasonable start.
Philips has a ton of new products launching this Fall, and they’ve even come up with a new line of bulbs that don’t require a Bridge to connect to WiFi either. Philips is keeping this product line separate from its HUE line, but it offers a compelling way to enjoy the quality of Philips products with a little lower investment cost.
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Source: ndroidheadlines.com