Review: Philips Hue Adore bathroom lamp: the most beautiful in the country?

pWe mainly know hilips Hue from lamps for the living room and the garden, but it also has light for the bathroom. The series for the bathroom consists of a large series of ceiling lamps, but there is also a special lamp available for the washbasin: the mirror lamp Philips Hue Adore. Does he live up to his name?

This is the Philips Hue Adore

If you just want a small mirror with a light to do your makeup, this is not the lamp for you. It is in fact quite a big thing that is also considerably less easy to install than most Philips Hue equipment. You load this mirror lamp not on either: it needs to be connected to your internal power. More on that later.

The Philips Hue Adore is a large device. With a diameter of 56 centimeters you have both enough mirror and enough lamp. The mirror is a round-shaped mirror in the middle, behind which the lamp shines only in shades of white. You can adjust the color temperature from very cool and blue white light to warm yellow white light: 5000, 2200K (sunset/rise), 2400K (extra warm white), 2500K (extra warm white), 2700K (warm white), 2800K (warm white), 2900K (warm white), 3000K (white/warm white), 3100K (white), 3200K (white), 3450K (cool white), 4000K (cool bright white), 5500K (daylight white), 6500K (daylight white).

This is important, because very white light is good for putting on make-up to see the color differences well, while in the evening when brushing your teeth you probably prefer a slightly yellower light to give your eyes a rest before going to sleep. If you like taking mirror selfies, those different colors of light also make a world of difference. The maximum amount of light is 2250 lumens, so you can expect a lot from this mirror lamp in that regard.

Installation

The lamp comes in as a kind of bowl on which you mount the mirror yourself. That part is not that complicated, but in terms of installation this lamp is a challenge. That’s because you have to install it directly to the electricity in your home. This means that you have to have holes in the right places in your bathroom tiles to be able to hang the mirror lamp. The power cables should come out of your wall exactly where the lamp should hang, because the back is flat, without a channel and has a hole exactly in the middle for the cables.

Of course you can also hang it in another place in the house, but in any case, the installation does take some time. It is somehow a pity that Philips has not opted for a rechargeable copy, because then only a screw or hook in the wall would have been enough. Now there is a good chance that you will have to change a few things for it and you cannot have the mirror hanging within two minutes.

It’s not a disaster, but it’s not what you would expect from the installation of a Philips Hue product. No power cable, but a terminal block. To install it, you must first unscrew the cover with a Phillips screwdriver and then insert the copper wires into the terminal block and tighten it with a 2.5mm flat head screwdriver. It also lacks the hardware to hang the lamp on the wall, making installation more challenging than you probably expect.

Works well with the app

However, once you have completed the physical installation, you will notice that you are dealing with a Philips Hue product. The mirror lamp is easily found in the app and you can immediately set the brightness of the light. Incidentally, this product is so new that it does not yet have its own icon, but that does not hinder the installation. The difference between hard white light and atmospheric warm is very good, including all shades in between. For example, you can start with bright light to wake yourself up in the morning, but if you look good before going out and you want to take a sultry photo, turn the light a bit more yellow. There are no colors, but they probably wouldn’t be used much with a bathroom lamp like this. Plus, those who like to look like a Smurf or Shrek can find plenty of filters on social media.

Switch included

However, there is still a logistical problem with this lamp. If Adore is your only lighting in the bathroom, no problem. A Philips Hue switch is included and you could use it to turn the lamp on and off, so you no longer need the regular light switch in the bathroom. You can of course also use the app or switch on a timer to turn the mirror lamp on and off. However, it becomes a problem when, for example, you also have an ordinary ceiling lamp.

Then you are still forced to use your old light button, which does not work so well with your Hue, because you then have to do something separately in the app after switching the button to control your Hue. The only way to solve this is to also purchase a Philips Hue lamp as a ceiling light. Then your entire bathroom lighting is smart, because combining a stupid lamp with a smart lamp ensures that you eventually have to work in the ‘dumb’ old way before you can get back to work smartly.

No Hue bridge required

An advantage of the lamp is that it does not require a Hue bridge to work. With the bridge you have more options to add more lamps, but it is not necessarily necessary to have that device at home. That makes Adore a significantly more accessible device. The bridge also ensures that you can control the lamps with voice assistants such as Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri.

Conclusion

Mirror mirror on the wall, is Philips Hue Adore the most beautiful in the country? In principle yes. It’s a good size mirror and the lamp does a great job. Philips Hue Adore has a very professional appearance and the device is very easy to use. It fits exactly into the Hue line and in the app it happily joins in with the rest. The quality of the mirror is good, the light quality is fantastic and the round design ensures that this lamp mirror fits into many different interior styles. There is a price tag to all this, because it has a suggested retail price of 269 euros. Moreover, to use the most beautiful in the country, you have to jump through a few hoops.