smart lights
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Philips Hue's new outdoor Dymera wall lights beam up and down
Philips Hue is expanding its outdoor smart lighting lineup with a new model called Dymera that beams both up and down, allowing dramatic effects for your home's exterior.
Nanoleaf does smart outdoor lights now
Nanoleaf, the company best known for its modular wall lighting tiles, is now moving on to the outside of your house.
Philips Hue lights are getting brightness balancing and better motion sensor automations
Philips Hue is introducing some new features that make it easier to match brightness levels on different lights and fine-tune motion sensor automation.
WiZ's motion-sensing smart lights can now monitor your home
WiZ has unveiled a new home monitoring system that uses its existing motion-sensing WiFi smart bulbs in combination with Wiz's new $70 (€90) Indoor Camera.
Nanoleaf LED shapes and light bars now sync with Corsair gaming products
Nanoleaf, known for its modular wall lighting tiles, has teamed up with gaming company Corsair to make gaming setups more immersive and colorful.
New Philips Hue smart lights include its first portable rechargeable smart lamp
Signify has also launched a new Sunrise effect for Philips Hue lights.
Philips Hue lights can now sync with Spotify
Starting today, you'll be able to link your Philips Hue smart lights with your Spotify account.
The best smart lights for your bedroom
Here's a list of the best smart lights to help you get better sleep, as chosen by Engadget editors.
Google Assistant can finally schedule your smart lights
Google Assistant already works with Hue and other smart lights, but functionality has been limited to turning them on and off, using them with alarms and a few other features. Now, you can schedule lights and other electric devices to turn on and off at specific and even general times.
Nanoleaf adds Triangles to its colorful Shapes light panels
Nanoleaf has unveiled the latest light panels in its Shapes series, this time in the form of a triangle. Like the previous hexagon models, you can put them together in different patterns and mirror your TV, sync to music or control them with Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Apple HomeKit.
Philips is adding voice control to its Hue light and TV sync box
We cheered when Signify launched the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box last September. At last, a dead-simple way to sync the company's smart lights with whatever is playing on your TV! The hardware wasn't perfect, though. It didn't have baked-in voice control, for instance, or any formal compatibility with Alexa, Siri, or the Google Assistant. For a $230 box -- and one released in 2019 -- it felt like a massive and inexcusable omission. Signify has recognized its mistake, though, and is working on a software update that will add support for all three assistants later this spring. Once it goes live, you'll be able to use your voice to turn the Sync Box on and off, change various Hue light settings and switch between HDMI devices. If you need a refresher, the svelte black slab has five HDMI slots -- one for your TV, and four for your favorite media players, game consoles and streaming boxes. The Sync Box analyzes the incoming image and then chooses the most appropriate colors and brightness settings for your smart bulbs. You can also fine-tune the experience with three different sync modes (video, music and games), a brightness slider and four intensity options (subtle, moderate, high and extreme) inside the Hue Sync app. The effect will vary, of course, depending on the number and type of Hue bulbs that you have set up. Some TV-attached lightstrips, for instance, might be more dramatic than a couple of bulbs placed behind your sofa. Don't care for voice control? No problem. Today, Signify announced that you'll soon be able to use infrared-based TV remotes to control the Sync Box. That includes basic commands -- turning the contraption on and off, and switching between different HDMI inputs -- and more complicated button inputs, provided you "teach" the Sync Box what each of them means through the Hue Sync app. Signify hopes this will make it easier to use the box everyday as part of a more complicated home theater setup.
Nanoleaf's modular light squares can be turned into smart buttons
Nanoleaf is launching an upgrade to its Canvas Smarter Kit lights that will let you turn them into buttons to control Apple Homekit devices, all with simply a touch -- and without your smartphone. The new feature, which is dubbed Touch Actions, is going to give you the ability to map Nanoleaf's funky, modular light squares to become smart buttons for your home, letting you do things like tap one square to turn off all the lights or another tap to turn down the temperature in your thermostat. The only caveat is this will only work with your Apple HomeKit setup, but for owners of the Nanoleaf Canvas Smarter kit, they'll now have quite a clever way to control their smart home.
New Philips Hue smart bulbs don't need a hub
The Philips Hue light bulb lineup is often recognized as the best smart lighting you can buy for your house. But if you're new to the smart home game, there's one catch: you need a hub to set up and control everything, which means an extra up-front cost and additional complexity. As of today, though, things are getting simpler with the Philips Hue with Bluetooth lights. As the name suggests, these bulbs have Bluetooth built-in, which means you can set them up with a smartphone app, no hub needed.
