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Today we’re having a good look at the Impress model of the Philips Hue Outdoor range.

Have we become a fan yet of the Hue ecosystem now that we’ve reviewed half a dozen different products in that segment?

Is it time to be Impressed?

More than a hundred years ago the Philips brothers Gerard and Anton started the production of carbon-filament lamps only a few miles from my parental home in Holland.
The brothers would have been impressed with the current Hue system of lighting products for our home, a system made famous by their ability to create mood lights in about 16 million colours.

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The recently formed Signify company just brought out the Philips Impress and Fuzo models for outdoor use. They are really focussing on this outdoor segment and we’ve seen that in our earlier reviews of the Lily Spotlight and Calla Bollard.

There’s not much in the Impress models that differs from our earlier reviewed types apart from styling and I point to those reviews for more background info.
They all work with a Hue Bridge, the “central nervous system” which can handle 50 different types of luminaires. I’ve currently got about a dozen units running off 1 Bridge.

The Bridge and the Hue app allow you to play with the colours and dim the lights. Other features, like creating zones and scenes and schedules are easily set up and controlling things is also easy with the various voice assistants that play nice with Hue.

The Impress is a sleek, very well-built unit with 2 LED lamps behind tempered glass. Output is 1200 lumen or 2x8W (around 49 Watt on the old scale). They have a long life of up to 25,000 hours which is a good thing as the bulbs are not replaceable. It’s obviously weatherproof (IP65).

This contemporary design can be spiked into the ground (plastic spike included) or screwed into a deck.
In my case I’ve decided to have the 40cm high units elevated onto a couple of side tables at either end of the verandah.

The base unit comes with a 24V power supply, a 5m extension cable and a T piece connector.

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Base unit is priced at around 350 and extension units at 260.
The Hue Bridge costs 90. Make sure you get the V2.0 model if you need Apple HomeKit (it indicates Apple HomeKit on the box)
That’s pretty pricey but the good news is the actual retail sticker is a lot cheaper (JB-HiFi sells the base unit for 261 and the extension unit for 194)

Any gripes?

We’ve mentioned in earlier reviews that updating the bulbs is a lengthy affair. Being a smart system you can expect the occasional updates which can take literally hours(?!).
This is not really acceptable for such a simple update.

Conclusion

The Philips Hue Impress models are delivering a great customisable mood lighting system in a nice, modern design.

The only downside is the hefty price tag but as indicated above online retailers are happy to give you a good deal.

My personal experience is that the more Hue lights you have the more uses you’ll find for them around the place. And the more impressed we are with the Hue ecosystem…