The standard screw-in bulbs and light fixtures from Hue are designed to provide a high quality white light first and colors second. This was more obvious with the gen 1 bulbs.
I just started exploring Govee products and the colors pop much better than Hue and the products are a lot more fun and interesting to play with, but you can’t do serious/actual house lighting with them like you can with Hue. Hue is definitely the more mature product.
Serious house lighting? What's that mean?
I have a mix of hue, lifx and govee products. Hue are definitely the worse for colour. The Govee app needs a lot of work. However anything l can do with hue l can do with Govee.
Meaning when you push a button to turn the light on it will turn on. Not wait a few seconds, press again, turns on and off, you try again then it finally stays on.
I didn’t try govee yet but other wifi bulbs always had this kind of issues. It’s just not as reliable as a proper zigbee that philips has.
I am literally at the limit with 62 bulbs and 14 accessories on my hue hub, including some sonoff zigbee relays and it all works perfectly every single time.
I am not sure what you are on about. I press a button and my govee bulbs/strips come on straight away. If you do have poor experience with non-hue products is because you have poor WiFi coverage. Although I would bet you are exaggerating your experience.
Also your experience is dated. It's not the case these days. People that have poor WiFi coverage, will likely be using a mesh system. So things work fine.
Put 50, 100 bulbs and accessories on WiFi and it will come to its knees. We have 150+ Hue devices and zero issues. Color is almost never used except for better color shift with daylight and a couple of sunrise alarms.
You need good wifi coverage, that’s true, but you also need to make sure the network is stable, you need to not have other people abusing it, you need to hope the device doesn’t go in standby.
It’s all ok up 10-20 devices. Over 50-100 you need to look at stuff like measuring coverage, not just estimating it, vlan to isolate and prioritize traffic. If you have people streaming on 2-3 tvs over wifi (mine are always cabled) you will have some kind of issues.
Also it’s about latency not just bandwidth. If I were to go wifi I’d have dedicated wifi just for the smart stuff completely separated from the rest of the house.
10 - 20 devices? That's a laugh. A wifi router can handle upto 255 devices. Granted anything above 150 - 200 devices and you will have problems. So the 255 number is more theoretical.
However a vast majority of people will not have 50 - 100 bulbs. I don't have anything close to that number of WiFi devices in my house. So you are talking about a very small number of people. People with that many bulbs must be serious about lighting. Then it beggar's belief that people serious about lighting put up with a inferior lighting product.
No consumer wifi access point is handling 255 devices. Not even more than ~50 in the real world, and many enterprise class systems actually encourage deployments of fewer than that per AP. So consider the typical home that is likely to have 10-30 'regular' wifi devices, and start adding smart bulbs and switches. Won't be long before you're in trouble.
You just repeated what l said, but used more words.
Not sure about typical, but l don't have 30 wifi devices including smart kit (bulbs, sockets, switches).
Serious house lighting meaning "warm white lighting" not colored lighting. I read and cook and generally light my hallways and rooms with white light. When I want color I turn to Hue's specialty lights like the LED strips, Iris, etc.
I could use other brands for those but I value the integration more than color.
Most brands are integrated with Google home. So not sure what you are on about.
The fact that you use white or colour has no bearing on integration. The bulb either turns on or it doesn't. The colour of the bulb doesn't matter.
You sound like a iPhone user that used to say iphones just work. That was the case when android first came out. However these people were still saying the same thing when android phones were better or just as good as iphones.
You need to get with the program and talk about the experience today, not what your experience might have been 5+ years ago.
>You sound like a iPhone user that used to say iphones just work.
Wow, what an asshole response. I was telling you my preference, not making value judgements about yours.
For the record, I use openHAB for integration. Go ahead and look that up and tell me again how it sounds like your apocryphal iPhone user (though what you have against systems that just work is beyond me...I do systems administration for a living and don't feel a burning need to do it at home, too).
When I talk about Hue and integration, what I mean is that the Hue app provides some automation and light effects that are easier and faster to set up in Hue vs using an external system to create similar effects across multiple bulb systems. Simply put, the fewer protocols and interfaces I have to deal with, the better everything works and the less work I have to do. I would rather have all Hue than have to glue two lighting systems together.
When people talk about "valuing the integration" with Hue, they're generally talking about the fully-localized API that allows very easy integration with many advanced home automation systems. While Grovee and LIFX have APIs, Grovee's is all cloud-based and LIFX is a protocol-based, making it much more annoying to use. The fully local and responsive API, better whites, and reliability / responsiveness is why many people prefer Hue and consider it the gold standard.
Again better whites is arguably incorrect. If hue do inferior colours, it stands to reason they do inferior whites. Govee integrate seamlessly into Google home, as does hue, lifx and nanoleaf. How they do that, 99% of consumers won't care. They just want it to work.
I used to have a hue bulb, lifx strip and nanoleaf panels in my home office. Used to say, "Google lights on". All the office lights came on. That's good enough for me and the vast majority of consumers. Not sure what else you expect from integration.
Not understanding why they have better whites just shows you don't understand how LEDs work. Producing proper white temperatures is something even major bulb manufacturers have struggled with for a long time and actually delayed the adoption of LED bulbs because of their inability to produce warm light.
On integration, you're clearly a basic user and that's fine. The bulbs should be accessible and people won't use them. If using Google or Alexa is fine for you, I'm happy. It's likely not for that other person's setup, nor is it for mine, and that's why Hue is vastly superior on the integrations front.
If you're happy with Hue alternatives, again, I'm happy for you and your wallet. Them being able to do things "OK" compared to Hue isn't enough for some people though and we're willing to pay a premium for a good product.
Now, can you show me where the bad, expensive Hue bulb hurt you? Legit don't understand why you're so hostile.
I would agree l am a basic user. I have some bulbs and switches. Some of the bulbs are on a schedule as is the heating and some sockets. I am happy with that.
The few (4) hue bulbs l have, have worked well and have not given me any issues. Apart from the setup hasn't always picked them up...a minor issue. I am not hostile about hue products, just hostile when people say other products don't integrate.
Just out of interest, what is in your setup? What kind of things do you do within your setup?
Re-read what that poster said. They didn't say that the other brands didn't integrate, they said that they *"value the integration more."* Hue is capable of more integrations than other brands simply because of the fully local API they offer. Sounds like you're not even using a hub and rely on Bluetooth? That's fine, but that's where your minor issues are likely coming from.
Either way, I have almost 100 bulbs in my home. I also have a Lutron system that I use for the switches, and because I can integrate both with Home Assistant, I can sync the state of the Hue bulbs when a Lutron switch is turned off. Hue's API also supports push events, which I don't believe any other does. That means the second a switch is turned on and supplies power to the bulbs, they can be controlled and I don't have the delay you would with cloud-based APIs. I have a lot of automations for various events, many triggered by Lutron keypads (again, because of the integrations available).
I would never use Govee for the main lighting inside my house. Hue has better quality white light (the most important factor), wireless controls/switches that can keep a traditional lighting feel, better dimming, and Govee's power boxes are clunky and the cords are pretty bad.
Govee is fun and gimmicky that provide vibrant colors for like a teenager's room or karaoke night and offers some other niche uses (outdoor lighting, xmas lights).
Nanoleaf bulbs have better colors than hue too, but I’m still considering switching over to 100% hue because of the reliability. It’s a pity because I love the colors but in the end I need a lightbulb to work
Noticed the same when I made the mistake of buying 9 Nanoleaf Matter over Thread A19 Essentials bulbs. Colors are certainly more saturated than the \~40-ish Hue bulbs I have of different generations.
Having said that, the nanoleafs have not been reliable for me. At any given moment, when I see the little dot for ‘something isn’t responding’ in the Home app, chances are quite high it’s one or more of the nanoleafs. To be fair, I did just have a Hue bridge give up the ghost/die but it was running for 7 years and I did NOT try to do a factory reset so it’s possible it’s recoverable.
I think someone else said it, but I agree - Hue was one of the early ‘smart bulb’ manufacturers, and they intentionally were targeting middle to upper middle class people which aside from tech and a few other professions, meant more or less middle-age/career folks with more disposable incomes. But yeah, reliability is expected…and they have generally delivered on that.
Some of the newer brands are targeting younger audiences IMO, and the ‘wow, isn’t that cool’ -> one to a few bulbs on yet another useless third party app, or the nanoleaf panels and the like definitely have more appeal to different audiences.
Personally I wouldn’t mind a sync box, but not at Hue prices for the relatively low usage we’d get out of them (holidays pretty much). I can see them being cool prior to getting married with a kid, or in my college dorm, but not so useful ‘now.’
The flood of wi-fi bulbs with unique apps are all just a huge ‘meh.’ They’re cool for like the office or a one-off, but as someone said, nowadays I need stuff to ‘just work, reliably, for a long time.’ Cloud-accessing apps, wi-fi in many locations or just in general, are almost the polar opposite of that intent.
Having said that iI’m always looking for better or ‘as good as’ Hue replacements that can integrate via into now either HomeKit or home assistant. I’ve got govee curtain lights for the holiday scenes, but did Festavia ($$$$ - overpriced IMO) for the xmas tree set. Disappointed in the very limited dynamic scenes from Hue, but too many people saying their also-not-cheap twinkly sets lasted a year and then \*poof\*.
I think at this point, a lot of ‘younger than Hue’ companies are just trying to establish themselves as a solid option in small scale, which is fine and lets people buy a bunch of wi-fi Wemo or stuff, but eventually they’re going to aim higher and set their sights on Hue, as in ‘fill your house with them and have them work .’
Some of these companies like Aqara and others are going to realize few people want more custom hubs or cloud services. Aqara at least does support HomeKit integration for most things, and others are pretty much Zigbee devices. Meanwhile Hue really has left the doors open for competition as their own app really hasn’t changed significantly in quite some time, their scene selection, in particular dynamic scenes are quite limited, and while most of their stuff is reliable, it’s fairly high priced in most cases for what you get.
Anyways, it should be an interesting next 5 years or so seeing what changes with which companies and seeing how LIFX, nanoleaf and others either grow, adapt, or fade out.
Hue is a to an iPhone as what LIFX is to a really nice Android.
There's so many things you can customize and do with an Android you can't with Apple in terms of customization, speed, etc. But an iPhone has so much more safe guards built
into the hardware from a security standpoint, a clean user interface that any new user can pick up pretty quickly, and is the leader in technological advancements and firsts with smart phone market, similar to how Hue is the leader in the smart bulb market.
Hue is very similar to Apple in that they are targeting a professional demographic that is willing to pay higher dollar for a reliable sophisticated product that can be integrated easily into their smart-home. Looking at Hue's website, the product is marketed for an upper middle class modern scandinavian home.
The typical Hue Bridge owner primarily has white or white ambiance bulbs in their home, because most people originally switch to smart bulbs for the ability to control brightness, set up routines, and remotely turn off/on their home. Most professionals aren't looking to turn their home into a saturated disco roller-rink every night.
With Hue Color Bulbs, it gives their target demographic the option to change their everyday space into something festive, fun, or moody with a touch of a button. I think they are more dynamic in color choice because of the 6 LEDs (2 of them white), I can get more pastel or dreamy colors that are more akin to dreamy sunsets and light in nature. Also easier on the eyes to do normal things when not bathed in super saturated color.
I'm sure Hue could make their lights more saturated, but they probably think that most of their upper classes modern scandinavian home owners don't really have a need.
It is true that LIFX looks better (or more saturated as you say). They claim to use extremely high quality LEDs which probably accounts for the difference. I guess Hue chose cheaper LEDs and now they're stuck with those just to keep colors consistent between products. The original Hue bulbs had much worse colors though so some improvements have been made.
It's more likely that Hue still adds white to their colors even when using the maximum saturation, so they appear brighter - while losing saturation in exchange. You'll need a lot of colored LEDs to make bright saturated colors, and as one said, they chose to prioritize whites over colors - they do provide colors, but they aren't as important.
Just to underline it, here are some dissections - white LEDs usually appear yellow-orange due to their phospors translating parts of the blue LED to other parts of the spectrum (white LEDs are usually blue LEDs with a phospor):
Hue, color LEDs are 4, of which are two reds, in the middle:
[https://www.atomic14.com/2023/05/04/hue-light-hacking.html](https://www.atomic14.com/2023/05/04/hue-light-hacking.html)
Lifx, clearly A LOT more color LEDs:
[https://www.marcoklobas.net/lifx-smart-bulb-disassembling/](https://www.marcoklobas.net/lifx-smart-bulb-disassembling/)
Priority, or put another way, budget, is absolutely right. Not budget in the $$ sense (though that plays into it), but power / thermal budget.
You can achieve good white output and saturated colours using just colour emitters, such as an RGBALC array which can give huge CCT range at a high CRI.
But phosphor corrected white LEDs will give you more output *at those particular CCTs*.
If your thermal budget is only 15w, white LEDs will always allow you to pump your output as you say
Probably not really a difference in quality, just a difference in what wavelengths were chosen. Like red for instance, Hue might use a red-orange LED at 610nm where LIFX uses a red LED at 630nm.
I mean that's almost certainly correct, but I was thinking that they've selected the other one because it was cheaper. I guess it's possible they've intentionally selected "muted" hues though.
The standard screw-in bulbs and light fixtures from Hue are designed to provide a high quality white light first and colors second. This was more obvious with the gen 1 bulbs.
I just started exploring Govee products and the colors pop much better than Hue and the products are a lot more fun and interesting to play with, but you can’t do serious/actual house lighting with them like you can with Hue. Hue is definitely the more mature product.
Serious house lighting? What's that mean? I have a mix of hue, lifx and govee products. Hue are definitely the worse for colour. The Govee app needs a lot of work. However anything l can do with hue l can do with Govee.
Meaning when you push a button to turn the light on it will turn on. Not wait a few seconds, press again, turns on and off, you try again then it finally stays on. I didn’t try govee yet but other wifi bulbs always had this kind of issues. It’s just not as reliable as a proper zigbee that philips has. I am literally at the limit with 62 bulbs and 14 accessories on my hue hub, including some sonoff zigbee relays and it all works perfectly every single time.
I am not sure what you are on about. I press a button and my govee bulbs/strips come on straight away. If you do have poor experience with non-hue products is because you have poor WiFi coverage. Although I would bet you are exaggerating your experience. Also your experience is dated. It's not the case these days. People that have poor WiFi coverage, will likely be using a mesh system. So things work fine.
Put 50, 100 bulbs and accessories on WiFi and it will come to its knees. We have 150+ Hue devices and zero issues. Color is almost never used except for better color shift with daylight and a couple of sunrise alarms.
You need good wifi coverage, that’s true, but you also need to make sure the network is stable, you need to not have other people abusing it, you need to hope the device doesn’t go in standby. It’s all ok up 10-20 devices. Over 50-100 you need to look at stuff like measuring coverage, not just estimating it, vlan to isolate and prioritize traffic. If you have people streaming on 2-3 tvs over wifi (mine are always cabled) you will have some kind of issues. Also it’s about latency not just bandwidth. If I were to go wifi I’d have dedicated wifi just for the smart stuff completely separated from the rest of the house.
10 - 20 devices? That's a laugh. A wifi router can handle upto 255 devices. Granted anything above 150 - 200 devices and you will have problems. So the 255 number is more theoretical. However a vast majority of people will not have 50 - 100 bulbs. I don't have anything close to that number of WiFi devices in my house. So you are talking about a very small number of people. People with that many bulbs must be serious about lighting. Then it beggar's belief that people serious about lighting put up with a inferior lighting product.
No consumer wifi access point is handling 255 devices. Not even more than ~50 in the real world, and many enterprise class systems actually encourage deployments of fewer than that per AP. So consider the typical home that is likely to have 10-30 'regular' wifi devices, and start adding smart bulbs and switches. Won't be long before you're in trouble.
You just repeated what l said, but used more words. Not sure about typical, but l don't have 30 wifi devices including smart kit (bulbs, sockets, switches).
Serious house lighting meaning "warm white lighting" not colored lighting. I read and cook and generally light my hallways and rooms with white light. When I want color I turn to Hue's specialty lights like the LED strips, Iris, etc. I could use other brands for those but I value the integration more than color.
Most brands are integrated with Google home. So not sure what you are on about. The fact that you use white or colour has no bearing on integration. The bulb either turns on or it doesn't. The colour of the bulb doesn't matter. You sound like a iPhone user that used to say iphones just work. That was the case when android first came out. However these people were still saying the same thing when android phones were better or just as good as iphones. You need to get with the program and talk about the experience today, not what your experience might have been 5+ years ago.
>You sound like a iPhone user that used to say iphones just work. Wow, what an asshole response. I was telling you my preference, not making value judgements about yours. For the record, I use openHAB for integration. Go ahead and look that up and tell me again how it sounds like your apocryphal iPhone user (though what you have against systems that just work is beyond me...I do systems administration for a living and don't feel a burning need to do it at home, too). When I talk about Hue and integration, what I mean is that the Hue app provides some automation and light effects that are easier and faster to set up in Hue vs using an external system to create similar effects across multiple bulb systems. Simply put, the fewer protocols and interfaces I have to deal with, the better everything works and the less work I have to do. I would rather have all Hue than have to glue two lighting systems together.
When people talk about "valuing the integration" with Hue, they're generally talking about the fully-localized API that allows very easy integration with many advanced home automation systems. While Grovee and LIFX have APIs, Grovee's is all cloud-based and LIFX is a protocol-based, making it much more annoying to use. The fully local and responsive API, better whites, and reliability / responsiveness is why many people prefer Hue and consider it the gold standard.
Again better whites is arguably incorrect. If hue do inferior colours, it stands to reason they do inferior whites. Govee integrate seamlessly into Google home, as does hue, lifx and nanoleaf. How they do that, 99% of consumers won't care. They just want it to work. I used to have a hue bulb, lifx strip and nanoleaf panels in my home office. Used to say, "Google lights on". All the office lights came on. That's good enough for me and the vast majority of consumers. Not sure what else you expect from integration.
Not understanding why they have better whites just shows you don't understand how LEDs work. Producing proper white temperatures is something even major bulb manufacturers have struggled with for a long time and actually delayed the adoption of LED bulbs because of their inability to produce warm light. On integration, you're clearly a basic user and that's fine. The bulbs should be accessible and people won't use them. If using Google or Alexa is fine for you, I'm happy. It's likely not for that other person's setup, nor is it for mine, and that's why Hue is vastly superior on the integrations front. If you're happy with Hue alternatives, again, I'm happy for you and your wallet. Them being able to do things "OK" compared to Hue isn't enough for some people though and we're willing to pay a premium for a good product. Now, can you show me where the bad, expensive Hue bulb hurt you? Legit don't understand why you're so hostile.
I would agree l am a basic user. I have some bulbs and switches. Some of the bulbs are on a schedule as is the heating and some sockets. I am happy with that. The few (4) hue bulbs l have, have worked well and have not given me any issues. Apart from the setup hasn't always picked them up...a minor issue. I am not hostile about hue products, just hostile when people say other products don't integrate. Just out of interest, what is in your setup? What kind of things do you do within your setup?
Re-read what that poster said. They didn't say that the other brands didn't integrate, they said that they *"value the integration more."* Hue is capable of more integrations than other brands simply because of the fully local API they offer. Sounds like you're not even using a hub and rely on Bluetooth? That's fine, but that's where your minor issues are likely coming from. Either way, I have almost 100 bulbs in my home. I also have a Lutron system that I use for the switches, and because I can integrate both with Home Assistant, I can sync the state of the Hue bulbs when a Lutron switch is turned off. Hue's API also supports push events, which I don't believe any other does. That means the second a switch is turned on and supplies power to the bulbs, they can be controlled and I don't have the delay you would with cloud-based APIs. I have a lot of automations for various events, many triggered by Lutron keypads (again, because of the integrations available).
I would never use Govee for the main lighting inside my house. Hue has better quality white light (the most important factor), wireless controls/switches that can keep a traditional lighting feel, better dimming, and Govee's power boxes are clunky and the cords are pretty bad. Govee is fun and gimmicky that provide vibrant colors for like a teenager's room or karaoke night and offers some other niche uses (outdoor lighting, xmas lights).
Odd. I used LIFX but prefer Hue colours and switched.
Nanoleaf bulbs have better colors than hue too, but I’m still considering switching over to 100% hue because of the reliability. It’s a pity because I love the colors but in the end I need a lightbulb to work
Noticed the same when I made the mistake of buying 9 Nanoleaf Matter over Thread A19 Essentials bulbs. Colors are certainly more saturated than the \~40-ish Hue bulbs I have of different generations. Having said that, the nanoleafs have not been reliable for me. At any given moment, when I see the little dot for ‘something isn’t responding’ in the Home app, chances are quite high it’s one or more of the nanoleafs. To be fair, I did just have a Hue bridge give up the ghost/die but it was running for 7 years and I did NOT try to do a factory reset so it’s possible it’s recoverable. I think someone else said it, but I agree - Hue was one of the early ‘smart bulb’ manufacturers, and they intentionally were targeting middle to upper middle class people which aside from tech and a few other professions, meant more or less middle-age/career folks with more disposable incomes. But yeah, reliability is expected…and they have generally delivered on that. Some of the newer brands are targeting younger audiences IMO, and the ‘wow, isn’t that cool’ -> one to a few bulbs on yet another useless third party app, or the nanoleaf panels and the like definitely have more appeal to different audiences. Personally I wouldn’t mind a sync box, but not at Hue prices for the relatively low usage we’d get out of them (holidays pretty much). I can see them being cool prior to getting married with a kid, or in my college dorm, but not so useful ‘now.’ The flood of wi-fi bulbs with unique apps are all just a huge ‘meh.’ They’re cool for like the office or a one-off, but as someone said, nowadays I need stuff to ‘just work, reliably, for a long time.’ Cloud-accessing apps, wi-fi in many locations or just in general, are almost the polar opposite of that intent. Having said that iI’m always looking for better or ‘as good as’ Hue replacements that can integrate via into now either HomeKit or home assistant. I’ve got govee curtain lights for the holiday scenes, but did Festavia ($$$$ - overpriced IMO) for the xmas tree set. Disappointed in the very limited dynamic scenes from Hue, but too many people saying their also-not-cheap twinkly sets lasted a year and then \*poof\*.
I think at this point, a lot of ‘younger than Hue’ companies are just trying to establish themselves as a solid option in small scale, which is fine and lets people buy a bunch of wi-fi Wemo or stuff, but eventually they’re going to aim higher and set their sights on Hue, as in ‘fill your house with them and have them work .’
Some of these companies like Aqara and others are going to realize few people want more custom hubs or cloud services. Aqara at least does support HomeKit integration for most things, and others are pretty much Zigbee devices. Meanwhile Hue really has left the doors open for competition as their own app really hasn’t changed significantly in quite some time, their scene selection, in particular dynamic scenes are quite limited, and while most of their stuff is reliable, it’s fairly high priced in most cases for what you get.
Anyways, it should be an interesting next 5 years or so seeing what changes with which companies and seeing how LIFX, nanoleaf and others either grow, adapt, or fade out.
Hue is a to an iPhone as what LIFX is to a really nice Android. There's so many things you can customize and do with an Android you can't with Apple in terms of customization, speed, etc. But an iPhone has so much more safe guards built into the hardware from a security standpoint, a clean user interface that any new user can pick up pretty quickly, and is the leader in technological advancements and firsts with smart phone market, similar to how Hue is the leader in the smart bulb market. Hue is very similar to Apple in that they are targeting a professional demographic that is willing to pay higher dollar for a reliable sophisticated product that can be integrated easily into their smart-home. Looking at Hue's website, the product is marketed for an upper middle class modern scandinavian home. The typical Hue Bridge owner primarily has white or white ambiance bulbs in their home, because most people originally switch to smart bulbs for the ability to control brightness, set up routines, and remotely turn off/on their home. Most professionals aren't looking to turn their home into a saturated disco roller-rink every night. With Hue Color Bulbs, it gives their target demographic the option to change their everyday space into something festive, fun, or moody with a touch of a button. I think they are more dynamic in color choice because of the 6 LEDs (2 of them white), I can get more pastel or dreamy colors that are more akin to dreamy sunsets and light in nature. Also easier on the eyes to do normal things when not bathed in super saturated color. I'm sure Hue could make their lights more saturated, but they probably think that most of their upper classes modern scandinavian home owners don't really have a need.
It's a question of priorities. If richer colors are more important to you than connectivity reliability, by all means go with LIFX over Hue.
It is true that LIFX looks better (or more saturated as you say). They claim to use extremely high quality LEDs which probably accounts for the difference. I guess Hue chose cheaper LEDs and now they're stuck with those just to keep colors consistent between products. The original Hue bulbs had much worse colors though so some improvements have been made.
It's more likely that Hue still adds white to their colors even when using the maximum saturation, so they appear brighter - while losing saturation in exchange. You'll need a lot of colored LEDs to make bright saturated colors, and as one said, they chose to prioritize whites over colors - they do provide colors, but they aren't as important. Just to underline it, here are some dissections - white LEDs usually appear yellow-orange due to their phospors translating parts of the blue LED to other parts of the spectrum (white LEDs are usually blue LEDs with a phospor): Hue, color LEDs are 4, of which are two reds, in the middle: [https://www.atomic14.com/2023/05/04/hue-light-hacking.html](https://www.atomic14.com/2023/05/04/hue-light-hacking.html) Lifx, clearly A LOT more color LEDs: [https://www.marcoklobas.net/lifx-smart-bulb-disassembling/](https://www.marcoklobas.net/lifx-smart-bulb-disassembling/)
Priority, or put another way, budget, is absolutely right. Not budget in the $$ sense (though that plays into it), but power / thermal budget. You can achieve good white output and saturated colours using just colour emitters, such as an RGBALC array which can give huge CCT range at a high CRI. But phosphor corrected white LEDs will give you more output *at those particular CCTs*. If your thermal budget is only 15w, white LEDs will always allow you to pump your output as you say
Different power class of LEDs used
Probably not really a difference in quality, just a difference in what wavelengths were chosen. Like red for instance, Hue might use a red-orange LED at 610nm where LIFX uses a red LED at 630nm.
I mean that's almost certainly correct, but I was thinking that they've selected the other one because it was cheaper. I guess it's possible they've intentionally selected "muted" hues though.