Philips Hue Play Light Bars Give Your Home Theater a Colorful Makeover

Smart, color-changing light bulbs are a fun and simple way to elevate entertainment in your home—especially since we’ve been stuck there for so long.

Philips Hue lighting has been at the forefront of the smart lighting revolution since it debuted nearly eight years ago, and its Hue Play Light Bars can give your home theater area a much needed, playful boost with a wash of customized, dimmable lighting.

Price and Availability: Hue Play Light Bars come in a starter pack of two lights and a power supply. You can buy them now at Philips, Amazon and Best Buy for $129.99. Extra Light bars can be purchased for $59.99. However, if you don’t already have a Philips Hue system set-up in your home, you’ll also need a Hue Bridge, which is sold separately for $59.99.

Why We Chose It: Since Covid, our living room TV has become the hub of our lives in ways we never would have expected. It is where we gather nightly after dinner to watch TV shows and movies and come together after days spent on our individual computers for work and school. The Philips Hue Play Light Bars were an easy way to add personalized home theater ambience lighting rather than conventional, all-over illumination.

Who It’s For: The Philips Hue Play Light Bars are for anyone who wants to kick their home theater up a notch in a less conventional way. These color-changing LED smart bulbs, which can produce around 16 million colors, can be laid down flat or propped up vertically in the included stands behind your TV—with the bars casting light towards the wall rather than forward into the room.

This creates a pop of color, which can be changed using the accompanying app’s color palette tool and controlled to match your entertainment—or your mood. You can also use the preset routines and scenes if you need some inspiration. And, of course, you can leave them on as decorative lighting as well.

Why You Need It: The set-up for the Light Bars is surprisingly easy, with the app connecting everything automatically while it walks you through the steps. Once you hook it up to whichever display you’re using (yes, you can use them with a computer or laptop as well), you can start to play around with the almost infinite amount of color combinations and watch as lights spread evenly behind your entertainment area.

Create scenes by syncing both bars or get creative with different color combinations on the individual bars. For instance, we rocked blue and red for Wonder Woman 1984 and green and pink to stream The Muppet Show. With mood lighting like this, you might even start to miss the movie theater a tiny bit less. It certainly made our evenings in front of the TV more exciting—and interactive.

What Others Are Saying: CNET especially appreciated the change these Light Bars offer from the usual Philips smart lighting. “With a directional design that draws attention to the pool of light that these fixtures cast instead of drawing it to the fixtures themselves, the Play light bars offer an interesting change from the usual bulb-based Philips Hue approach.

PC Mag loved how easy they were to install as well as the excellent color quality, adding “The Philips Hue Play Light Bars make it easy to bathe your walls in colorful lighting and add some pop to your movie, music, and gaming activities.”

Final Conclusion: These Philips Hue Light Bars will give your streaming TV and movies some extra, added oomph, at a time when we can all use it. They are simple to set up and add simple mood lighting to any room or home theater set-up
Buy the Philips Light Bars on Amazon