Philips Hue began expanding into outdoor lighting last year, and now the smart lighting line is adding a few more options. That includes a pair of flood lights, more wall-mounted lights and lanterns, and a motion sensor that can be used to automatically flip the lights on.
The Hue Outdoor sensor goes on sale for $50 next month. It can detect motion up to 39 feet away and can be stuck anywhere you want and powered with just a battery. Given that people frequently use outdoor lighting just to illuminate a driveway or pathway when they arrive home at night, this sensor ought to make the outdoor Hue line a lot more useful.
Google Assistant integration can fade in lights to wake you up
The other new outdoor lighting goes on sale for between $110 and $140, also launching next month. The cheapest is a white flood light, in the middle is a series of color-changing lanterns, and at the high end is a color-changing floodlight.
These are all pretty small and steady additions to the Hue line, but they’re filling in missing gaps. For the time being, that’s more than enough to maintain Philips Hue’s lead in the smart lighting space.
In addition to some new lights, Hue is also gaining some new Google Assistant features to help with falling asleep and waking up. You’ll now be able to set Hue lights to sync with your morning alarm, so that they’ll slowly turn on before the chime goes off. At night, they can also be set to fade out after a specific time. Those features are supposed to launch in March.