Philips Hue introduces $25 "Essential" and $99 Bridge Pro bulbs

The Hue Bridge Pro and a new range of more reasonably priced Hue Essential bulbs were the highlights of Philips Hue's significant modernization of its smart lighting lineup at IFA 2025.

One of the biggest complaints about Hue over the years has been cost. Outfitting a single room can set you back hundreds of dollars, and scaling that up across an entire home often runs into the thousands. Notwithstanding its benefits, Hue's premium ecosystem is difficult to sell since rival companies regularly undercut it by offering bulbs for half as much or less.

The Hue Essential series aims to solve this. Starting at $25 for a color bulb, these lights deliver 800 lumens of brightness and fit standard E26/A19 sockets. A four-pack comes in at $59.99, significantly cheaper than Philips Hue’s current White and Color Ambiance bulb, which itself costs $59.99 for a single unit. The main difference? Brightness and color accuracy—the premium Hue bulbs still produce richer tones.

New additions to the Hue ecosystem

Alongside the Essentials, Philips also announced updates and fresh hardware:

• Several existing bulbs have been refreshed with Thread support, enabling direct connections via Matter in addition to traditional Zigbee.

• A brand-new Hue video doorbell is on the way, priced at $170. Among its features: the ability to automatically trigger lights when someone approaches your front door.

• But the star of the show is the Hue Bridge Pro.

Hue Bridge Pro: the major upgrade

The $99 Hue Bridge Pro addresses the issues of the original Bridge. It can now handle 150+ Hue lighting products and 50+ accessories (like switches), tripling the capacity of the previous hub. It also supports Wi-Fi connections, meaning it no longer has to be hardwired into your router.

But the standout feature is something completely new: Motion Aware. Instead of requiring a separate motion sensor, the Bridge Pro uses the Zigbee radios built into Hue bulbs themselves to detect movement. With at least 3–4 bulbs in a room, the system can define a “motion zone” and trigger automations in the Hue app—turning lights on or off in response to your presence.

Philips explains it this way:

“A Bridge Pro-only feature called Motion Aware enables your lights to respond naturally to your movements throughout the house. By grouping 3–4 lights in the same room, you can create a motion area that detects your presence and activates any light you assign—no standalone motion sensor required.”

Crucially, existing Hue users won’t have to reconfigure their setups. It is easy to switch from the existing Bridge to the Bridge Pro.

The Philips Hue Bridge Pro is available starting today for $99 and will also be bundled into select starter kits.