Philips Hue Unveils Updated Smart Button

We have’t featured any Hue products or news on this channel for a while, but it’s always good to see anything from the company – as long as it works with Apple Home of course! In this instance, the company has released version 3.0 of its smart button, with all the same functionality, but a new, more discreet design not dissimilar to an aspirin tablet.

Like its predecessors, the button has the ‘hue’ logo in the middle, is plain white, and uses a single CR2032 coin battery for a reported 2 years of average usage. It also uses Zigbee 3.0 (and Bluetooth), so a Hue Bridge is going to be required for a Zigbee connection and exposure to Apple Home. This also means that you should be able to expose it to Apple Home, as is the case with nearly all Hue Zigbee products, but also to any Matter compatible platform when using the Matter integration with the Hue Bridge.

In the Hue ecosystem, the button can be used as an on/off button for its own lighting products, as well as cycling through scenes, but long-press is also an option for dimming Hue lights for example, although only within the Hue app. For HomeKit use, only single press is offered unfortunately.

The button comes with a magnetic plate that itself can magnetically attach to metal surfaces, but also comes with an adhesive backing when magnetic surfaces aren’t an option.

Currently it’s only available to order from the company’s own website, but should eventually make its way to Amazon stores in due course. The current list price is US$32.99, which is a bit on the expensive side these days, if par for the course with Hue products.