Philips Hue Twilight Smart Sleep and Wake Up Lamp review

Price When Reviewed

$279.99

Best Prices Today: Philips Hue Twilight

If the winter months are tough on you, there are a couple of devices that could help. Problems such as poor sleep, difficulty waking up in the mornings and tiredness can all be caused, or exacerbated, by a lack of daylight.

The first useful device is a SAD lamp, which is designed to mimic the outdoor light you miss over the winter months, and which can help you fight lethargy and low moods.

You can’t use any old light for this. SAD lamps are designed for this purpose, and have a brightness of 10,000 lux. You can see our top recommendations in our round-up of the best SAD lights we’ve tested.

The second life-changing device is a light alarm, which will help you wake up feeling more energised. Instead of being shocked out of sleep by your standard, blaring audio alarm, a light alarm will wake you gently, by degrees, by mimicking a sunrise. Many light alarms also have a sunset function, to help you get ready for sleep at night.

You can see the best light alarms we’ve tested in our round-up, and see how they compare to the Philips Hue Twilight Sleep and Wake Up Lamp, which we’re looking at in this review.

We’re testing this lamp primarily as a sunrise alarm. If you own a Philips Hue Bridge, and use the Twilight lamp as part of your smart lighting setup, you’ll be able to open up more functionality than if you buy the lamp alone.

Design and Build

• Front and back lights
• Plastic build
• On-device and app controls

Light alarms sometimes look like traditional alarm clocks, in a skeuomorphic way, and sometimes like a child’s drawing of the sun, but rarely like actual lamps.

The Twilight lamp, on the other hand, is decidedly lamp-like. It has a simple and lovely organic shape, with a lot of character.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

You can choose between a black or a white model and both look equally good.

It’s around 33cm/13in high and is intended for a bedside table. When you see it in pictures, it looks ceramic but it’s, in fact, made of matt plastic, which is a slight disappointment. It has a cork base that won’t scratch the surface it’s placed on. It weighs around 990g, and most of that weight is in the base, so it’s not easy to knock over.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

There are two sets of lights: front and back. The front light is behind a smoked panel, but the three banks of LEDs at the back are only covered by a pane of transparent plastic. It’s designed to throw rays of coloured light against a wall, which it does to impressive effect.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

However, the lights themselves aren’t particularly attractive.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

When choosing a routine, you can opt to use the front, or back lights. The scenes can use them all.

On top of the light are two buttons. One switches the light on and off and toggles between different scenes. Scenes are brightness settings and there are six to choose from, so you can use the Twilight as a bright light, a reading lamp, or on a warmer, more relaxing setting. You can even swivel the lamp head from left to right to point it at your book.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

The other button starts a go-to-sleep automation, which gradually decreases the light’s brightness over a period of time, to help you to get into sleep mode.

The buttons have different tactile features, so you can tell them apart in the dark.

App and Smart Features

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