I think this would be considered a deal since bulbs everywhere else are 25+
These still require a hub right?
I thought the white were always about $15…
Yes, @farlicimo - they need a hub for best results…
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I could not find these for 15 anywhere. Most places I looked (amazon) have these for 29.99. For best results yes you need the bridge. I am using them without the bridge but I need a simple on/off. I found some very useful threads on here about these. (I try to link it)
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Philips-60W-Equivalent-Soft-White-A19-Hue-Connected-Home-LED-Light-Bulb-455295/206633282 $15 is the regular price for these.
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Ok thanks for sharing. Everytime I tried HD it said out of stock online. Now I can add to cart. Thanks!
The " tunable white" are $30-$35, the dimmable white are " ALWAYS" $15 .
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You can save $5 on the $15/white when you purchase the portable dimmer remote/white bulb set.
The hue whites have always been $15 at Best Buy and Home Depot. For some reason Amazon frequently has them at a higher price, I’m not sure why, they may be confusing them with the color tunable Hue white ambience. ( Phillips is great at making bulbs, but terrible at naming them. 
)
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/philips-hue-a19-smart-led-light-bulb-white-only/4374300.p?skuId=4374300
JD, so far I’ve been using Cree bulbs, they seem to work w/out issue, and don’t require a separate hub.
Aside from the tunable/color features (which haven’t been a priority for me to date) are there other reasons to spend the additional $ and have additional complexity of another hub to use the Hue lights? (I know you can run them w/out a hub but if I’m going to use them I’d prefer to use them as intended.)
Thanks!
The Hue bridge (for technical reasons, it’s a bridge, not a hub) gives you a lot of flexibility as far as using the hue bulbs with other systems as well as SmartThings. That includes IFTTT, HomeKit, etc. you can also use it natively with Alexa.
There are couple of advantages of doing it that way besides extension into the additional systems.
One) SmartThings just isn’t very good at automating either changing color or setting up scenes for colorchanging bulbs. By leaving the bulbs on the hue bridge, you will get access to scenes set up through the hue app. You can use the scenes through IFTTT or Alexa or core.
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The hue bridge runs locally but the SmartThings/Hue integration does not. That means when the SmartThings cloud is acting up, if you use the bridge you can still use Hue with Alexa, for example.
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if you join the hue bulbs directly to the SmartThings hub there’s a danger that you will not be able to reset the bulbs again. This could be a problem if you wanted to move them to a different SmartThings hub or back to hue bridge or just if you had a problem with a particular bulb. This is much discussed in the forums. It won’t affect every customer, and there is an additional device you can buy that would reset the bulbs, but it’s the main reason that the official position is that you should only use the bulbs with the bridge.
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support won’t help you if you have a problem with the bulbs and you are not using the bridge.
https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/200848024-How-to-connect-Philips-Hue-devices
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SmartThings doesn’t do groupcasting at the present time which means that you will have more of a “popcorn effect” with bulbs connected directly to the SmartThings hub.
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there is a weird problem that occurs when zigbee bulbs of a number of different brands are connected to the smart things hub. You can think of it is something like a buffer overflow. The bulbs are identified as zigbee repeaters, but when message traffic is high they have a bad habit of losing some of the messages they are being asked to repeat. There’s nothing you as a customer can do about this. The end result is it can seem like some of your sensors or other battery operated Zigbee devices are not working when in fact they are, it’s that the bulbs are losing the messages.
In contrast, when the bulbs are connected to a Hue bridge they form their own mini network and only repeat for each other, and that all seems to work just fine. Your other zigbee devices like sensors will then find a different repeater to use.
This is mentioned in the official support article on Osram bulbs.
https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/214191863-How-to-connect-OSRAM-LIGHTIFY-Bulbs
Note: OSRAM LIGHTIFY bulbs have a known firmware issue that can occasionally cause them to fail as ZigBee repeaters. This can potentially cause other ZigBee devices to fail to update and/or respond.
Quite a few community members have ended up moving even third-party brand bulbs onto the hue bridge just to avoid this problem and get their sensors functional again.
Some of those are minor issues, some of them are more serious, but the end result is that you have more functionality when you use the bridge. 
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Thanks, really helpful…may pick up a starter kit and give it a try.
Does what you say below apply to Google Home as well? Or will I always need to use IFTTT/cloud to use GH to manage the Hue bridge/Hue bulbs?
Thanks!
Edit: @JDRoberts, your fault!! 
Hue-ing.
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I bought Cree brand from Homedepot for ~$15 and working with ST, no issue
Yeah, I’ve had up to four Cree connected bulbs in my system, and they work fine, didn’t have any issues.
I will throw my 
for Cree Connected bulbs. I have 16 of them running throughout the house. Excellent bulbs.
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I bought a pack of 3 on amazon for $ 40, takes time to ship, mine will ship on 17th:
I also bought one from google.com/express using a friends code and we both got $10 off, got free shipping with trial 3 month express offer, so one hue bulb costed $ 6, added a $1 in ear phones to make the order $15 for free shipping, pls signup using my code “SVACBY4HR” or use this link google.com/express/invite/SVACBY4HR so that we both get $10 off (hope i can post it here without any violations):
Three pack Gen 1 (800 lumens, 10W) bulbs available for $31 on Amazon now. Just one three pack available at that price.