Philips Hue Iris light full in-home review

By now we’re all familiar with smart lightbulbs. These colour changing automated lighting marvels can really change up the look of a room. But if you’re looking for more than just coloured lights on a timer, how about something like this? This is the new Philips Hue Iris light. With a bold, modern look and all the smarts of the Philips Hue lineup, this light is meant to be seen. I recently purchased this light for my home so in this review I’ll talk about what makes it special, including it’s unique design. What it’s good at and not so good at, as well as how to set it up and a few things you can do with it. There’s also one extra thing you’re going to need or this light won’t work in your house.

I’ll wrap things up with the pros and cons and I’ll let you know if I think I can recommend this smart lamp for you.

Philips Hue Iris light full in-home review

Philips Hue Smart Bulbs have been around for more than a decade, making the smart lighting ecosystem well worth investing in. However, even the most basic of smart bulbs carry a bit of a hefty premium compared to the competition. Even if you buy a bulb on its own, you can only control it via Bluetooth unless you have a Philips Hue Bridge which unlocks the full capabilities of the bulb and other Philips Hue lighting products in the household. Because of that high entry cost, several customers go for cheaper solutions that may even offer built-in Wi-Fi requiring no bridge at all. Any generic brand should suffice if you can control the light remotely or change the color, right?

Watch my FULL Philips Hue Iris video review

Philips is aware of those basic needs and the appeal of the budget segment. One approach to tackling it is by launching more stylish-looking products like the Philips Hue Iris. This unique-looking lamp could very well be the first Philips Hue building block to convince people to hop onboard the Philips Hue ecosystem. The model I have here is the Iris Copper Special Edition model which has a bit more of a premium flair compared to the regular models.

What is Philips Hue Iris?

The Philips Hue Iris is a spherical, dome-shaped table lamp that can provide ambient lighting to a smaller area.

It’s meant to sit on a surface or a floor at a slight angle, and to splash light upwards and out, onto a wall.

What’s in the Box?

Inside the Philips Hue Iris box, you get the lamp itself with the soft 2 meter fabric-wrapped cable permanently attached (unlike some other Philips Hue lights where the cable can be removed and the lamp battery powered). This light runs off AC power 24/7 and does not have any battery power or portability.

Design & Special Edition Differences

This light comes in several finishes; the basic options are black and white, and Philips has also introduced a special edition lineup which includes silver, gold, and rose-gold. Just don’t let product photos fool you, since the metallic finish is just coloured plastic and the light dome is also plastic and not glass. Fortunately, that also means the dome won’t shatter if you accidentally bump it off the desk. Since this is an object you’re going to look at from a distance and not really be touching a whole lot, it’s not going to be obvious that this is all plastic. In fact it looks legitimately like glass and metal, so kudos to Philips for creating a premium looking product without the breakables.

I chose the special edition rose gold finish for my home. The metallic special edition options do cost a bit more than the basic black-and-white, and will set you back about an extra $40 USD / $30 CAD. The special edition models sell for about $140 USD / $170 CAD.

Philips Hue Iris measures about eight inches tall and seven inches wide, making it a bit larger than its similar ambient lamp siblings, the Philips Bloom and Go.

Set up: Bluetooth or Wi-Fi

Getting these lights set up is incredibly easy. I’ve covered the Philips Hue lineup for many years and have never had an issue with setting up one of the lights.

This light is one of Philips Hue’s Bluetooth lighting line which technically means you can operate it without the Philips Hue bridge. While using Bluetooth only does limit some of the functions of the light, it does mean you can save a little bit of money by not purchasing the bridge.

Hue Bridge is definitely a must have piece of equipment particularly if you plan on building out your Smart home with Philips Hue Lighting. The Bridge connects to your home’s router or modem and is what will allow your lights to connect to Wi-Fi, and the Wi-Fi connection unlocks a lot more functionality in terms of scheduling, dimming ability and more. The bridge is not an inexpensive item usually retailing around $70 or so Canadian. Since I’ve had numerous Philips lights in my house for many years I already have the bridge.

To make the connection, you also need the Philips Hue app and to sign up for or sign into your account. Choose the option for adding a light and then follow the handful of steps which includes connecting your light to Wi-Fi. Because I already have an account and numerous lights in my ecosystem, I was set up in about three minutes.

Smart light

Smart lights are great because they give you way more flexibility with the lighting in your room. Not only can you change the brightness, but also the colour temperature of basic white light, making it warmer for cosy evenings in, or cooler for keeping you alert during the workday, but these lights also display a full array of colours as well. I love having different colour lights in the house and find that changing the colour of my smart lights can help a room feel warmer or cooler, or simply more festive.

Changing the colours on this light happens easily inside the Philips Hue app and you can save your favourite options. Using the app you can also set automatic timers, so your lights will turn on and off either with the sun or at prescribed times of day.

Of course this being a smart light you can also connect it to your preferred smart home digital assistant and use voice commands to make any adjustments also. I have connected my Hue lights to both Google and Alexa and both systems work flawlessly.

I will definitely say Philips makes this ultra easy to use inside the app. After using various Hue lights for over a decade I find this is one of the easiest to use and most reliable smart lighting systems on the market.

To really appreciate the lamp’s versatility you’ll want to play around with the positioning and settings.

Mood Boosting Ambience

The most common practice of angled ambient lamps is to shine them towards a wall like a spotlight and switch off the other lights to really see that mood uplifting soft color splash work its magic. That would make this light ideal for movie night.

Try out different colors and adjust the intensity to suit the mood or the movie! The lamp even works well in pairs where you can mix and match colors and angle them to the wall to create a unique effect while the lamps themselves serve as nice table décor.

I experimented with a few different placements in my home including in the living room where I splashed the light on the living room wall next to the sofa, as well as in my home office where I was able to get it to integrate into my background a little bit.

Something I will call out right away though is that the cone of lighting is quite small. This is not the type of light that is big enough or powerful enough to light up an entire wall. It’s more going to splash a little bit of accent colour over a small area, and in my home that area was really only about four or 5 square feet. In fact that’s another thing about this light; it’s going to be less about splashing the colour and more about turning the light into a beautiful colour shifting object itself.

The actual diameter of the light itself is far narrower than the overall size of this lamp would have you believe. There’s really only a 3 inch LED bulb inside here despite the fact the overall dome is about 8 inches wide. Because the back of the bulb is transparent it does cast a bit of a backwards glow also.

Brightness

Another thing to note about this light is that it is not incredibly bright. The Philips Hue Iris has a total output of 570 lumens and a warm to cool light color range of 2,000 to 6,500 degrees Kelvin, which is just a fancy way of saying it goes from pure white light to golden yellow light.

Even at 100% brightness it’s going to be more of an ambient or nightlight style of lamp as opposed to something you could use for dedicated task lighting.

Now well these may sound like a lot of complaints, they’re really not. I just want you to understand what you are getting with this light and how it works so that you can evaluate if it’s going to work in your space.

I actually quite love the design and think it’s beautiful and sculptural. And the ambient glow it offers is subtle. While I would certainly like a version of this light that I could use to splash across my room backdrop more effectively, that’s not what this is so it’s hard for me to complain about it.

Overall Thoughts: Philips Hue Iris Copper Special Edition Smart Table Lamp

Overall I am a big fan of the Philips Hue lineup. I’ve been using probably about 20 different Hue lights in my house for over a decade and they have been almost completely problem free. Let’s go over the pros and the cons of this light so you can see if it might be a good addition to your smart home.

On the pro side, Philips Hue Iris is a well-designed ambient lamp that can really boost the mood of any room. The Copper Special Edition makes for a great piece of sculptural light decor too. Yes, the lamp itself is an investment and you’ll likely want the Hue Bridge to unlock its full capabilities for a hefty price, but the convenience of a Bluetooth-only connection is still worthwhile.

I love the colour changing abilities and the scheduling means I can count on it to turn on and off all on its own. Also, even though it’s made of plastic, it doesn’t look like it and certainly doesn’t look cheap, and at the same time that plastic is going to make it potentially more durable for busy households. The light should last more than a decade thanks to its 25,000-hour bulb lifespan. I can confirm I have another Philips Hue lamp that I’ve already had for more than 10 years and it is still going strong, so I think that says a lot about these lights durability and longevity.

So what are the downsides? The lamp is not incredibly bright particularly for its size, and while it will splash ambient light on a wall or surface, the light does not cover a large area. This light would be more of an object or showpiece rather than a method of painting your room with light. Some folks also might find themselves disappointed at the plastic build and painted metallics.

I really like this light and think it looks fantastic in my room and is another great addition to my Philips Hue Smart home. For that reason I can definitely recommend it for you.

Philips Hue Iris Special Edition sells for about US$140 or C$170 while the basic black or white plastic versions go for $109USD/$139CAD, and you can purchase them from Philips or from Amazon and like I said I’m a big fan of the Hue lineup.

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