It’s been a relatively quiet year for Hue compared to previous times, but they’ve still managed to pull a fair bit of product ‘out of the bag’, and with less than a couple of months until Christmas, the company has now announced its new Festavia String Lights.
As the name and the timing…) suggests, these are initially aimed at festive periods, like Thanksgiving or Christmas, but can of course be used all year round in the right circumstances. These have arrived at a time when Italian smart lighting manufacturer Twinkly, already has a solid grip on this area of smart lighting, with a large range of decorative lighting products. Both Hue and Twinkly are HomeKit compatible, although because of Hue’s own ecosystem that includes the Hue Sync box, the Festavia can be used to mirror the colours on your TV, which isn’t something Twinkly is capable of yet.
The string lights use Zigbee and Bluetooth as is standard for Hue products, and have five distinct colour zones, which has been a theme for the company’s other recently released products and is due to be released on November 15th for around US$160.