Starting at $229.99, the Play Gradient Lightstrip is a costly addition to the Philips Hue smart lighting family, albeit a fun one. The flexible strip attaches to the back of your TV and smartly syncs with on-screen action. It makes for an immersive viewing experience, and one that home theater enthusiasts and big-screen gamers will appreciate, but it’s a lot more expensive than basic backlights. You also need some accessories, including a Philips Hue Bridge ($59.99) and the Hue Play HDMI Sync Box ($229.99), so be prepared to spend big. If you’re already all-in on the Hue system, the Gradient Lightstrip is a good way to pump up your home theater and impress guests. If you can live with a basic backlight, we recommend you pick up the TP-Link Kasa Smart Multicolor Light Strip instead, as it doesn’t doesn’t require a hub and costs just $69.99.
Gradient Lightstrip Sizing and Features
As with most Philips Hue products, the Play Gradient Lightstrip light needs a hub, which allows you to connect and control up to 50 lights and accessories. If you don’t already have one, a Hue Bridge costs $59.99, and it’s required to get started. The LightStrip also works best when connected to a $229.99 Hue Play HDMI Sync Box, which tells it what’s playing on your TV so the colors can properly sync. It’s a fancy trick that’s not just pretty, but also beneficial to your eyes, as keeping some ambient light behind your TV reduces strain when viewing in an otherwise darkened room.
The Play Gradient Lightstrip measures 0.67 inches wide and comes long enough to fit TVs that are 55 inches ($229.99), 65 inches ($249.99), and 75 inches ($279.99). It’s made of flexible silicone so the strip can bend and wrap along the edges of your TV without damaging the LED circuitry inside. The Lightstrip isn’t extendable, so make sure to buy the right size for your TV.
No matter the size, the Play Gradient use color-changing LEDs to deliver a range across the visible spectrum. It supports 16 million distinct hues, and can be set as a white light across a cool 2,000K to warm 6,500K temperature range. It outputs 1,100 lumens, draws 20 watts of power, and has an expected lifespan of 25,000 hours.
The dynamic range of colors flow naturally into one another, blending together and shining against the wall for a unique effect behind your TV. It’s pretty mesmerizing, and the Philips Hue app for Android and iOS has a multitude of preset gradient schemes for you to choose from. The defaults are the usual Energize, Nighttime, Reading, and Rest settings you get with other Hue lights, but you can also choose from different visual vibes around the world like the Aurora Borealis, Lake Placid, and even the street lights of SoHo and Tokyo.
Installing and Using the Gradient Lightstrip
Installing the Play Gradient is relatively straightforward. The box comes with five mountable clips, all with arrows to indicate where to place them on your TV. The clips adhere using Command brand adhesive strips, included. The Lightstrip clicks into the clips with ease; I had it set up on my TV in a few minutes.
The strip has a small power adapter at one end. It connects to the included power adapter, suitable for standard power outlets. Once it’s plugged in you’ll use the Hue app to sync it with your Bridge. From there you can set the room in which you’ve installed it, and give the Gradient a custom name and icon. As with the physical installation, the app setup is painless. Once you’ve got it up and running, you can change the name if you like, or set color and brightness. If you have other Hue lights in the house, they can sync together to create a cohesive, dynamic lighting scheme.
The Lightstrip worked well in testing, delivering excellent color quality and brightness. It also did a good job of responding to my on/off requests using the app and Google Assistant voice commands, and watching the colors flow from one scene to the next is quite delightful.
To get the best use out of the Lightstrip, you need to connect it to the Philips Hue HDMI Sync Box. Suitably named, the Sync Box allows the lights to sync up with what’s happening on your TV, with separate lighting options for video games, movies, and music. From the app, you can adjust the speed, brightness, and intensity of the lights. It’s a cool feature that works well, though movies with constant scene changes will cause the colors to change a bit chaotically, especially on higher intensity settings.
You’ll also need to feed the Sync Box content for it to work. If you just watch media on a smart TV without an external device to pass through the Sync Box, there’s no point—the lights won’t have any way of knowing what’s on the screen. The Sync Box is meant to sit in between your Blu-ray player, media streamer, or game console, and your TV. It analyzes the video coming in and changes the colors of the ambient lights to match.
This shouldn’t be a problem for home theater enthusiasts using quality media streamers and 4K UHD disc players, or for gamers connecting a PlayStation or Xbox. The Sync Box supports all the formats you care about, too—Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision, and HDR10+ all pass through fine. But it does mean that if you use your TV’s built-in apps for streaming, or cast directly to its screen, you won’t get matching lighting.
Fun Lighting With a Serious Price
Even if you’ve already started down the Philips Hue lighting path, the Play Gradient Lightstrip is a splurge. It’s a fun one, no doubt, and if you spend a lot of time watching movies or playing games on your TV, you may find it worth your while. There’s no questioning the wow factor of seeing lights react to on-screen action. There’s a practical benefit, too—putting some light behind your TV reduces eye strain when watching it in a darkened room, without adding any glare to the screen.
The start-up cost is the real barrier to entry. You’ll need to budget somewhere between $230 and $280 for a strip of lights, depending on the size of your TV, and add another $230 for the Sync Box, and $60 for the Hue Bridge. Ultimately, it’s why we recommend a more basic, and affordable, lighting option for mere mortals. Our Editors’ Choice winner, the TP-Link Kasa Smart Multicolor Light Strip (KL430), doesn’t sync with the content on your TV, but its $69.99 asking price is a lot more palatable.
