Philips Hue gets new scenes, a demo mode and an impending price increase

Philips Hue is still the defacto choice for smart lighting with the most mature ecosystem of any such product. The hard work continues to make the system even better, but it’s not all good news. Alongside some small but still interesting updates within the companion application, it looks like Philips could be making some fairly significant price increases to Hue products.

Starting with the good, within the last few days two updates have been pushed out to Philips Hue. Specifically, versions 4.16 and 4.16.1. The usual dry update text was applied to the app — because why would you tell your users what awesome new stuff you’ve been working on — but Hueblog has summed up the details.

In the first update, those pesky bug fixes were joined by a couple of new scenes — Rio and Cancun. Perhaps more interestingly, the first signs of support for multiple bridges from the same account also appeared. It doesn’t seem to be complete yet and it’s pretty buried in the settings, but it’s a change sure to please those with large setups.

The second update seems to have added a demo mode into the Discover portion of the app. Existing users probably won’t ever touch this, but for those just dipping their toes into the Hue ecosystem, it’s a useful addition. It can be pretty overwhelming to beginners.

The not-so-good news, also surfaced by Hueblog, is that a fairly sizeable price increase looks to be on the way. A round of increases already hit some products in recent months, but the rest of the lineup is set to be affected. The actual increase is reported to be around 16%, which naturally means the extra spend will be more noticeable on the most expensive Hue products.

It’s not totally surprising, Philips isn’t the only electronics manufacturer having to raise prices. Unfortunately, it’s the nature of the beast right now. The component shortage lives on and things just cost more to make. To grab the latest update for your Hue system head on over to the Google Play Store and the App Store.

via Hueblog (1), (2)

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