Philips Hue used IFA 2025 to debut the Hue Bridge Pro, a major upgrade to its smart home hub. As someone who’s relied on the Hue ecosystem for years, what excites me most about this new bridge is the fact that it finally solves one of the most common annoyances of smart lighting: people leaving the room without turning off the lights. And it does this without forcing you to buy a bunch of new sensors.
The new feature, called MotionAware, uses the lights themselves to detect presence. With at least three Hue bulbs in the same space, the system can sense movement and automatically turn lights on or off. That may sound like overkill, but in real-world use, it addresses a real placement problem. I had great luck with sensors in my kids’ bathroom – where I was constantly turning off lights after them – but in their bedrooms, the light switches aren’t positioned to pick up movement. I’ve never wanted to clutter things up with extra motion sensors. MotionAware could be the perfect solution.
That said, I’m cautiously optimistic. Because you need three bulbs to make it work, placement will matter. A single fixture with multiple bulbs should be fine, but in larger rooms, I’ll want to test how well the detection holds up. Still, the idea of smarter automation without more hardware has a lot of appeal.
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Performance and usability improvements are also welcome. The Hue Bridge Pro supports more than 150 lights, 50 accessories, and 500 scenes – three times the capacity of the current bridge – while running on a processor five times faster. It also connects wirelessly to your router, which may sound minor, but for me, it’s a big quality-of-life improvement. My current Hue Bridge has been sitting awkwardly on top of my husband’s computer hutch because it had to be plugged directly into the router.
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Perhaps the most consumer-friendly move is that you don’t need to buy new bulbs. The Bridge Pro works with your existing Hue setup, and Philips Hue makes it easy to transfer your settings from the older bridge. That’s a rarity in smart home upgrades and something I really appreciate.
The Philips Hue Bridge Pro launches this month for $98.99 on philips-hue.com.
[Image credit: Signify]
