How Philips Hue got the smart home right

On Version History: How a very expensive, very fancy lightbulb figured out what we really want from our homes.

The state of the smart home can be frustrating, because it is just so obvious how things ought to work. You should be able to control everything from everywhere. Your spaces should adapt to what you’re doing and how you’re feeling. Making your home smart shouldn’t require renovating, and the smarts should be mostly invisible. All of this is, of course, incredibly hard to pull off — but the goal is pretty clear.

Until now, maybe no product has come closer to nailing the smart home than Philips Hue. And on this episode of Version History , we dig into all the things Hue got right. The Verge ’s David Pierce and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy are joined by smart home journalist and expert Richard Gunther to discuss Hue’s origins, which have an awful lot to do with the rise of the smartphone. They also talk about Hue’s early embrace of practically every smart home platform, its somewhat shocking price tag, and what it takes to make a smart device that actually just... works.

This is the fifth (and next to last) episode of the fourth season of Version History . If you haven’t yet checked out the story of the Harmony remote , the Roomba vacuum , the Nest thermostat , or the Keurig coffee maker , make sure you catch up! It’s smart home season this season, and there’s so much to get into. Here’s how to get every episode, and all our other fun stuff, as soon as it drops:

If you want to know more about Hue, here are some links to get you started: