Notable smart lighting brand Philips Hue unveiled new Matter products at its IFA event, including Matter-compatible light bulbs and the Hue Bridge Pro.
Hue Bridge Pro
A more powerful Hue Bridge that supports 150 lights, doubles as a Matter border router, and comes with modernized hardware and USB-C power.
After heavy investment in Matter by Signify, Hue now finally offers native Matter support. Its sister brand Wiz has supported Matter over Wi-Fi for almost all of its products. For consumers, this release adds high-quality options to Matter light bulbs and further enriches the Thread ecosystem alongside offerings from Nanoleaf and Aqara.
Philips Hue A19 bulb
The new Matter-over-Thread light bulb comes in the regular A19 shape, in nine variants. It can connect directly to Matter apps and platforms without requiring specific Hue or third-party Zigbee bridges such as the Ikea Dirigera or ThirdReality Smart Bridge MZ1.
The design retains the classic Hue look; the only visible change is a numeric Matter setup code printed on the bulb.
The Thread badge is missing from the packaging shown at the event, leaving only the Matter logo, which may be less intuitive for consumers when they are unaware if they have Thread border routers (TBRs) at home.
The bulb supports Bluetooth, Zigbee and Thread. Within the Hue ecosystem, it uses Zigbee and Bluetooth for native connectivity and Thread for Matter. A Signify staff member told Matter Alpha that the new bulb can connect to the Hue Bridge and Matter platforms simultaneously, with Thread and Zigbee radios “co-existing”. This makes Hue one of the first to support multi-pan features on end-devices, a capability we typically see only on gateways and hubs such as the Samsung SmartThings Station.
It will be available in White Ambiance, White and Color Ambiance, and White versions, with lumen ratings ranging from 810 lm (equivalent to 60 W) up to 1 600 lm (100 W).
Philips Hue Pro smart home bridge
Philips Hue also introduced a new Pro Bridge, which resembles the previous V2 model in black. It features 1 GB of memory, 4 GB of storage and a 1.7 GHz quad-core SoC. The new bridge uses a USB-C power adapter instead of the traditional DC connector. Power over Ethernet is still not supported.
It supports up to 150 lights and 50 accessories, up from 50 lights on the previous model. The bridge will serve as a Matter border router, exposing Hue lights to Matter ecosystems for basic controls and automations. However, it does not include Thread capability in software and does not open the Hue ecosystem to third-party Matter lights.
Signify told Matter Alpha at the event that Hue will continue to focus on Bluetooth and Zigbee within its own ecosystem for now. Some new features, such as motion-aware, will remain exclusive to the vendor’s platform.
Availability
All Hue Matter products are launching in September in Europe, the UK and the US. Bulb configurations and prices may vary slightly by region. Prices range from 15.99 to 79.99 eruo in Europe and the UK, and from US $ 15.99 to US $ 79.99 in the US.
The Hue Bridge Pro is priced at 89.99 eruo in Europe and the UK, and US $ 89.99 in the US.
(Source: Signify, Image Source: Signify, Matter Alpha/Ward Zhou)
