I see this all the time, people that say use Hue, use Zigbee, use Matter and all of them I use and all of them have pros and cons.
I’m skipping Zwave here because this is really about smart bulbs.
Hue
I’ll start with Hue, the OG smart bulb really or, it is to most people and for many served as the gateway drug for smart home stuff.
I’ve been using Hue since Hue went on sale. A long time.
In that time I’ve had, from a couple of dozen bulbs, had a couple fail on me and one Hue Bloom out of two. But, considering they’re all over a decade old there’s no way to slag them off for that nor to say that they were in any way bad value for money, even if they were expensive.
Brightness and colour reproduction is great as is often said about Hue though, newer competitors bulbs do now get brighter.
One thing that Hue products do have nailed is ease of use for non-techie people, they just work, they’re desperately easy to use and keep on working.
Uniquely and, I have used this, you can get bulbs and some lamps to synch with an Ambilight TV which is an interesting effect that some people will like and want, some won’t.
Also from the Hue app you can get “living scenes” that gently and subtly animate some light scenes. Again it’s an interesting effect I’ve not seen elsewhere that some people will like, some won’t.
Confusingly Hue uses the Zigbee protocol with their hub and Bluetooth but, I’ve not used any of their products with Bluetooth. But it’s a kinda Hue specific Zigbee.
And some of the newer lines can also be controlled by Matter.
Zigbee
For those of us that have been into smart home stuff for a while Zigbee is nothing new, it’s been about for many years at this point and, generally, it’s good. And, it encompasses much more than smart bulbs, locks, just about any sensor you can think on, switches, dimmers, mains sockets… the list goes on and on.
I get that it’s apples and oranges to a degree as you can have a cheap Chinese E27 bulb for example that’s less than £5 on Ali Express yet the Philips Hue version is more than £50, ten times or more expensive.
It is true that the colour reproduction might not be as accurate on a cheap Zigbee bulb as it is with Hue or, the Zigbee one might not be as reliable in terms of response etc but, ten times cheaper is incredibly compelling.
Even more so if you’re replacing a bunch of GU10 bulbs that are £40 odds fro Hue but oyu can pick up a generic Zgbee one for less than £3!
Whilst the generic Zigbee bulbs are not as good as Hue in my experience, they are massively cheaper and by no means ten times worse.
If you have a requirement to own “the best” and money os no object sure, get Hue bulbs but for everyone else, the generic Zigbee ones are good enough for most people and a damn sight cheaper.
I also have used a number of LED strips, some I managed to get the Hue app to recognise and use that are a fraction of the cost of the Phillips versions and, in real world use, it’s hard to tell the difference.
Matter
So far, I’ve only used a dozen GU10 Matter bulbs from Moes that have been superb thus far. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between these and Hue bulbs.
The kicker is, these are less than £5 a pop!
So my dozen bulbs cost me less than £60. The same bulbs from Hue would be way over £250 best case.
It is very hard to argue for spending the money on Hue bulbs in the face of that kinda disparity in pricing between the two.
The Matter bulbs react extremely quickly, I’ve had no issues at all with them and again, whilst the colour reproduction might not be quite there or, as good as Hue, they’re not far enough away to justify the additional cost in using Hue instead of these.
Conclusions
It is probably very obvious by now, it’s really hard to justify the price being asked for Phillips Hue bulbs over the much cheaper alternatives.
Unless you need the living scenes, the Ambilight features or you want the absolute best colour reproduction. If you need any of these it’s likely you’ve no option but to go with Hue.
Zigbee, traffic can get busy and I suspect that’s what slows down messages and may be why that Hue, until the pro bridge was released, was limited to around fifty devices. But, you still come back to the equivalent generic Zigbee bulbs are a tenth of the price. You can live with the slight delay.
Matter I’ve not experienced that issue, the bulbs seem to react just as quickly as Hue ones and aren’t far enough away from performance overall to justify paying for Hue.
I have been a big supporter of Hue until recently and only because it’s gotten harder and harder to justify the huge cost of them compared to rivals. They do look nicer and they are, I’d say, better built with slightly better colour in some respects but not enough to justify the cost.