Philips Hue Twilight Review: The Ultimate Sleep Lamp?

We just got our hands on the Twilight, Hue’s new solution to a bedroom sunrise/sunset simulator.

In this article, we’ll review our testing results and my opinions after using it for a while.

My verdict

Twilight

This is a excellent, pricey, sunrise simulator. The down-firing LEDs are unique among the sunrise lamp category, making this more potentially effective than others. Couple that with its myriad of customizations and this is a good sunrise option for anyone with the money and comfort with smart devices in the bedroom.

• Pro: Small footprint overall, fits well on nightstands
• Pro: Down-facing sunrise light may be more effective than other models
• Pro: Sunrise settings can be very customized

• Con: It is more expensive than other sunrise simulators
• Con: Need an app for setup
• Con: No audio options
• Con: Emits EMF

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Introducing the Hue Twilight

The design is a little phallic… although I like it (not because it’s phallic mind you).

The Twilight features an unusual down-firing lamp for its main sunrise effect. We’ll go over this more later, but this alone potentially makes it one of the more effective and useful sunrise lamps out there.

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There’s also an LED array on the back that creates a more dynamic effect on the wall and helps to illuminate the rest of the room.

The Twilight comes in both a white and black version and has a minimal and modern appeal.

The bottom is made of cork which I thought was a nice touch:

The only controls are two buttons found on the top of the lamp:

The functions of these buttons can be changed within the Hue app, which we’ll review in a second. But here’s what they do out of the box:

• Hue Button
  • Press: Starts “Go to Sleep” automation
  • Hold: Stops “Go to Sleep” automation
• Dot Button
  • Press: Cycles through “scenes”
  • Hold: Turns off the lamp

Setup & App Features

To set up the Twilight lamp you’ll need the Hue app, which you’ll already have if you own any other Hue product. The great thing about Hue lights is they can be used over Bluetooth and don’t require the Hub. So you don’t need to buy that if you’re not already into the Hue ecosystem.

After pairing, the Twilight offers to control extra lights if you’d like:

After this you’ll be shown how to use the buttons:

Then you’re free to add and edit your sunrise automation and sunset timings by clicking on the automation tab at the bottom of the app.

Sunrise Automation

Let’s talk about setting up the sunrise.

Clicking on the wake-up automation, you’ll see timing, fade duration, maximum brightness (recommendations for this later), and how long the light stays on after it’s finished its sunrise.

You can set your sunrise duration anywhere from 10-30 minutes, and whether or not and how long you want the light to remain on after it completes its sunrise.

Sunset Automation

By default, the Twilight’s Hue button starts the “Go to sleep” automation. There are a few settings you can customize here:

The length of the sunset can now be set to 10, 20, or 30 minutes. You can choose to end this by turning the lights off, staying dimmed, or using a warm nightlight mode.

I think this is a nice feature.

Nightlight Mode

The Hue app also offers some other modes like “Nightlight” which I found quite pleasant.

At 6 inches, this mode only emits around 8 lux and contains almost no blue light.

Perfect for use at night.

Testing the Sunrise Simulation

The first thing we wanted to test was the Twilight’s total light output during its sunrise. For this, we placed it inside our integration sphere and ran a 30-minute sunrise.

After our test, we can see two things:

1. At 100% output, the peak brightness of Twilight is much higher than that of all the other sunrise simulators we’ve tested.
2. We see a very nice gradual curve, which I prefer for sunrises.

The Hue Twilight is unique in its sunrise effect. It starts at a dim blue, like a real sunrise, and slowly shifts to a warm 2000K before climbing back up to 2700 K.

Here we can see what that looks like:

Overall I think this creates a nice gradual sunrise effect that’s likely to work very well.

Testing Lux and Optimal Distances

But more important than its total output is its directional lux.

This is what you’ll need to know to fine-tune it for optimal waking.

To do this we placed the Twilight in front of our lux spectrometer and tested lux for various brightnesses every 6 inches.

We like to recommend folks start with a peak brightness of around 250 lux and adjust from there.

As you can see from this lux chart, at 1 foot away, you’ll want to drop the brightness down to around 60% to start, and perhaps up to around 80% once you get a foot and a half away.

One thing I appreciated about the Twilight design, is that it projects light down, while every other lamp projects horizontally.

This means that you’re more likely to get an effective dose in more head positions with Twilight than with other lamps.

Here’s a sped up video of the Hue Twilight sunrise:

Flicker

We checked the flicker on all of the lights we tested using a LabFlicker meter from Viso Systems.

This is so anyone with flicker sensitivities can make an informed decision.

The Twilight does have some high-frequency 4000 Hz flicker at full brightness, which shouldn’t be a concern for most people. It does increase quite a bit once dimmed:

But even still, this isn’t enough to bother most people in any way.

Here you can see that it’s still right in the no-effect zone on the IEEE’s 1789 flicker risk standard:

So unless you know you have issues with high-frequency flicker, I wouldn’t worry about this.

Overall Thoughts

What we’re primarily interested in here is whether or not this is a good sunrise simulator, and it is. You have plenty of sunrise customization options and scheduling, and the down-firing main LED module means that this lamp will be able to illuminate your eyes in more head positions than other lamps.

It emits tons of light, so much so that you’ll likely have issues with early waking if you use it at full brightness, but the slow ramp-up ensures that if you choose your peak brightness wisely it should wonders.

If you can stomach the cost, and the design, this is a great sunrise simulator.

Twilight

Compact and well-thought-out: small enough to fit any nightstand, a down-facing sunrise that may hit the eyes more effectively than upward-facing models, and deep customisation of sunrise settings. Trade-offs are the higher price, app-required setup, no audio options, and EMF emissions if that matters to you.

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