Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsUnreliable- Good idea, Bad execution.
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2022
I wanted to like this product. Unfortunately, Philips switch module has some problems. For background, I have a ton of the Hue products, and I love the Philips Hue brand. But this is one of the rare exceptions where I think they have really missed the mark.
Lots of other reviewers have covered the basics, so I won't rehash that information too much. This thing is NOT terrible, which is why I still gave it 3 stars. The switch module isn't too hard to set up, and it USUALLY works as advertised. I think they are on the right track, if they could address a few issues, described below.
PROBLEM- Switch does not work reliably.
The switch module intermittently fails to respond at all. The lights will not turn on/off, as though the "message" had never been sent to the hub. I can try again, flipping the switch back and forth, but once it gets "stuck" like this, the switch module will usually not work correctly for the next 10-20 seconds, no matter how many times you flip the switch.
I have isolated the problem, and it is definitely an issue with the switch module- The exact same lights respond immediately when I pull out my phone in frustration, to turn the lights on or off from the app. This same problem DOES fix itself automatically though. When I try to use the same switch later that day, it will usually work, without me having to "fix" anything myself.
As an engineer myself, I tried to do my own troubleshooting first. But I have been unable to figure out a specific pattern, or any likely cause for these intermittent problem. Maybe the switch goes into some sort of "sleep mode" to save battery power, and doesn't properly wake up? It shouldn't be a range issue. This switch module isn't too far from the hub, certainly much closer than several of my other Hue lights. I suppose it could be a signal/interference problem... but I don't have this same problem with any other smart home stuff in my house. Maybe I have really unlucky timing, and my neighbor is always using their microwave at the exact moment I try to flip my light switch? Maybe my switch covers are secretly made of Faraday cages?
PROBLEM- Switch configuration is based on "toggles", not "state".
This is much less severe than the reliability problem above, but is nonetheless still a pretty annoying design flaw. Basically, you can configure the switch to either "change scenes" or "toggle on/off". The problem, is that the Hue Switch module use physical changes of the switch position as a "signal" back to the Hue hub. Why is that a problem? Because it results in some weird inconsistencies, whenever the switch "misses" a message (which happens relatively frequently). Sometimes the "up" position means "off", sometimes it means "on".
I would much rather have the option to configure the switch for something like "When I flip the switch to UP, go to scene A. When I flip the switch to DOWN, go to scene B." Instead, you are stuck with "When I 'change' the switch, go to the other scene." I understand why they chose the design they did- Handling scenarios where someone else is changing the state of the same light, from the app, or another switch. But it would have been nice to have it as a configuration option. This would be LESS of a problem, if the Switch Module worked more reliably, but it frequently "misses" switch events.
So I like what Philips was trying to do here, but until the reliability problems are resolved, I can't recommend this product. Hopefully these can be addressed in a v2 model.
