Philips Hue is launching a huge new product catalog at IFA 2025 this week, with the company’s new Bridge Pro unlocking more device support and features, while the new Philips Hue Essential series offers far more affordable light bulbs.
If there’s been one big complaint about Philips Hue over the years, it’s been the cost. Building out a Hue setup for just one room can cost hundreds, and for a whole house, potentially thousands. While there are many benefits to Hue, that cost can be a hard pill to swallow given that other brands often offer bulbs for half the price, if not even less.
That’s where the new Philips Hue Essential series steps up, with bulbs that start at $25 for a single color bulb. For that price, you’ll get a color bulb capable of 800 lumens of brightness and support for the E26/A19 common bulb socket. Buying in bulk drives the cost down further, with a 4-pack costing just $59.99. By comparison, a single Philips Hue White and Color bulb on its own costs $59.99, and the main difference between the two is simply brightness output. You’ll also get more accurate colors on the “normal” Hue bulbs.
Other lighting products launched by Philips Hue today include:
In addition to the usual Zigbee connection to a Hue Bridge, Philips has also updated a number of its “normal” bulbs with Thread support, enabling direct connection via Matter.
There’s also a new Philips Hue Video Doorbell which, among other features, can be set to activate lights when someone is at the door. The wired doorbell is “coming soon” for $170.
But perhaps the most long-awaited news here is the Philips Hue Bridge Pro, which costs $99 and brings a big upgrade to any Hue setup.
The Philips Hue Bridge Pro firstly addresses some key shortcomings of the prior Bridge. It supports 3x as many lights with capacity for over 150 lighting products, as well as over 50 accessories (such as switches). It also can now work over Wi-Fi instead of requiring a connection to your router.
The impressive new feature, though, is definitely “MotionAware,” which uses your light bulbs to create motion sensors in your home without needing any additional hardware. This requires at least 3-4 lighting products in a room, but can be used as a trigger for automations in the Hue app.
Philips Hue explains:
This exciting new feature exclusive to Bridge Pro empowers your lighting system to intuitively respond to your movements around the home. Using 3 or 4 lights in the same room, you can create a motion area that detects your presence and triggers any lights you assign to it. No separate motion sensor needed!
The system is thought to use the Zigbee radios in each light to detect when someone is in the room, which is extremely clever, and also means you can use this with essentially any Hue setup. Existing users will also be able to transfer from their current Bridge to Bridge Pro without having to re-pair everything.
The Philips Hue Bridge Pro is available starting today for $99 (also available on Amazon), and can also be included in starter kits.
More from IFA 2025:
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