Hive Light Colour Changing Smart Bulb with B22 Bayonet-Works with Amazon Alexa, 9.5 W, White

We've had a hive thermostat second generoration for over a year and its revolutionised our heating bring our bills down and making our central heating easy to control where ever we are so we thought we'd give the bulbs a go while they were on offer to replace our existing bluetooth LED bulbs and we're not disappointed these are great and much brighter than the bulbs they replace and with a wider brightness/dimmer range. The product information says they have technology that makes the light fill the room better and they do, it's hard to explain but the rooms just feel more filled with light. We bought 2 of the colour changing bulbs and the colour range is the full spectrum colours and the whites have a full range from cold white right through to day white and warm white. If you have an echo they work with that through the hive skill. You do need to have WiFi and the hive hub to make them work other than on & off in their default white setting. You can control them like the heating through the hive app whether your at home or not.

My first dabble into the world of smart home devices. This works with my smart phone and my new Amazon Echo Dot. It has an impressive range of colours to create any mood in the room as well as a bright white and warm white. The Hive control app works smoothly and I find it quite exciting asking Alexa to turn my lights on or off - simple things please simple minds.

The hive bulbs are very bright and do offer a lot of colour choices. I wish there was better integration with the Google Assistant. The Google Assistant has a lot a preset colour choices for lights such as "forest green" but these aren't recognised by the hive bulbs. I also wish that the colour transitions were smoother. When selecting a new colour, they very abruptly change from one colour to the next. The same is said for bulb brightness. When dimming the bulbs, it doesn't smoothly dim to what you've selected, it's a very abrupt change.

* You need a hive hub for these to work with Alexa Echo/echo dot as this gives all the information to Alexa* This was so easy to set up! Just pop the bulb in and switch on. It will flash twice then wait about 3 mins then will flash again and that's it connecting to the hive hub. I went onto my Alexa app and selected smart home from the menu then selected devices then discover. A few moments later my light appeared I selected it then renamed it to what I want Alexa to know it as and save. That's the set up now done. The command for Alexa is " Alexa tell hive to switch lamp on" (or whatever you have named your device) she then does this and after a few times I now only say "Alexa Lamp on". If I want to change colour you need to make sure you use the correct command... I for the life of me could not get her to change the colour but now I say " Alexa set the lamp to blue" and it works. I absolutely love it!! Amazing and can work just the same from the hive app! Where I see my heating and other devices too! I just hope they bring the cost down as these are expensive compared to hue bulbs (another system that doesn't work with hive) but I certainly recommend these 🙂 Will be really cool at xmas and during the winter.

So super quick to install and fantastic connectivity with my hive and Alexa. The colour change aspect is great and helps with my sons light sensitivity

I have the coloured bulbs and they are just the height of coolness. Everyone loves them and thinks that they are the coolest things ever. The only thing is that do I really need an app to turn my lights off? I have to find my device, login, fire up the app, select the bulb in question and select off. It really is easier to get up off my butt and flick the switch.

Very pleased with the colour Hive light bulbs. They connected to Hive very easily and the colour control works well. I could also switch them on and off with voice control with Amazon Echo immediately. I did expect to be able to choose a dynamic colour effect (e.g. select a colour range to cycle through), but I couldn't do that in the Hive app.

Great for entertaining. Can remotely & subtly change the colours & ambience in the room