Philips Hue Festavia review Christmas tree lights

Some people use a smart plug to turn their Christmas tree lights on and off. Nice, but you actually want your Christmas lighting to offer more and the Philips Hue Festavia offers that string lights absolute. Philips Hue is of course the name in the field of smart lighting, including the Philips Hue Inara and Calla lamps for outdoor use.

Philips Hue Festavia
The box of the Philips Hue Festavia contains the 20 meter long cord with no fewer than 250 LED lights. That cord also has a connector and a fairly large 40W power adapter, the latter of which you only connect to the connector after you have placed the cord in your Christmas tree. The cord up to the connector is nice and sturdy and then it is also of good quality. Please note that the Philips Hue Festavia is for indoor use only. But knowing Philips Hue, I expect that in 2023 there will also be a version for outdoors. (text continues below the image).

Incidentally, Philips recommends to place the Festavia from bottom to top, but we did that from top to bottom and that worked fine.

to install
The installation of the Festavia is done via the well-known and fine Philips Hue app, which is available for both Android and iOS. Installing is easy, especially if you already have other Hue products so you ‘only’ have to add the Festavia. You can choose in which room and/or zone you place the Festavia, with the advantage that you can easily switch all smart lamps on or off at once.
And if you already have a Hue Bridge, you have the advantage that the possibilities are much greater. This way, more functions are possible and you can also operate it via Apple Homekit. Here we operate the Hue Festavia via Bluetooth and that also works fine.

Scenes and effects
In addition to scheduling the times when the Christmas tree lighting can be switched on and off, you can also choose from many options within the Hue scene gallery. That’s how you find there Default scenes, Winter Holidays (of Snow glare and also Under the tree), Peace, Romantic and also example Party atmosphere if you use the lighting for a party. You can choose from dozens of options. What is also special is that you can divide the Christmas lights into three zones, namely top, middle and bottom. This way you have three different areas where you can also apply a nice color change: you can decide for yourself whether and how fast the color goes up from the bottom (and which goes all the way down from the top).

Sparkle effect and Diffuse style
Philips Hue recently introduced the new Sparkle effect that makes every light on the cord sparkle, creating an extra festive look. For a cozier setting, users can opt for the existing one Candle– or Open hearth-effect. With Festavia you can also choose a new style: Diffuse. While the default linearstyle for the Gradient range of products gives a beautiful color transition from one end of the cord to the other, the Diffuse style spreads up to five colors randomly across the cord for a colorful, festive experience.

Spotify
A great function is the possibility to synchronize the Festavia with music service Spotify. For example, the 250 LEDs can blink, dim and light up along with your favorite song or playlist. Unfortunately, you do need a Hue bridge that we borrowed from the neighbors for this. This option also indicates that you can use the Festavia well for a party and that it is suitable for, for example, an adolescent room.

Conclusion
In my opinion, the Philips Hue Festavia is the nicest and most beautiful Christmas tree lighting there is. There are dozens of options to make the 250 lights shine and your Christmas tree really is the radiant center of your room. Partly thanks to the Spotify synchronization, you can also use it for a party or adolescent room. The two downsides are that it’s pricey and can only be used indoors, but we’re hoping for an outdoor version by 2023.

Philips Hue Festavia
MSRP: €159.99

+ dozens of color options with 250 lights
+ 3 lighting zones
+ easy operation
+ synchronization with Spotify
– pricey
– indoors only