Light strips are some of the easiest and best ways to add accent lighting to your home to give it a cool and futuristic look.

You can hide them under bars, under cabinets and counters, and even create cove lighting.

Basic light strips have been easily implemented for years now, however if you want colors, you’re going to end up with a little remote that has a bunch of different color buttons.

This was reasonable for 2004, but we live in 2018, and if you can’t control the lights with your phone or with your voice, then what’s even the point.

Luckily these days you are spoiled with options; so today we are going to take a look at the Koogeek LightStrip and compare it to the current king of smart home lighting, the Philips Hue LightStrip.

What’s in the box?

Let’s start with the light strips themselves, they’re both about 6.5 ft long ( 80” for the Hue Strip, 79” for the Koogeek Strip)

They both support 16million colors (Do we even know what these mysterious colors are? I only know about 10).

They come in fairly simple packaging, with the Hue strip having its own larger power supply, which can be a bit cumbersome if you really want to hide it.

The Koogeek doesn’t even include a power supply, however it’s just a USB plug that can be powered by any USB power supply (up to 2A). This was a bit of a surprise, but luckily I had a plethora of power plugs that have been accumulated throughout the years.

Setup and EcoSystem

Set up for both devices is about the the same, you make an account with each respective app, and add the device to your account. If you’re using homekit you can just scan the HomeKit code that’s on the device, and add it to your Home app.

The Philips Hue devices (light strip included) all support both Alexa and Google Assistants as well as Siri. Koogeek has Alexa compatibility but I was unable to get the light strip to reliably work.

This is certainly an area where the Hue devices have an advantage over pretty much everyone else. The full ecosystem of Hue is hard to compete with, especially with Hue Sync recently being released that can synchronize your lights to music and movies.

In a previous review, I mentioned how it was a benefit of the Koogeek smart dimmers that they didn’t need a hub. And I still believe that, because typically you’ll have less dimmers that you want to replace than other smart accessories.

The light strip is no different in terms of not requiring a hub. But like i mentioned in the other review, this can be a double edged sword.

It’s great not requiring a hub if you only want to add a few smart things, but once you want to outfit an entire house with smart devices, your WiFi and device reliability will suffer if you don’t have multiple access points for your network.

I wanted to reiterate this because on one hand it’s convenient to not have a hub for the Koogeek light strip, but on the other, it could become an issue down the road.

The actual performance of the light strips is comparable. I didn’t notice a particular difference in colors or brightness when I had Siri set them (to ensure it was the same exact color being displayed).

Both light strips fit nicely in aluminum channel diffusers with adhesive on the back so that you can stick it directly to the diffuser, or directly to a wall or wherever you want it.

Both light strips also have the ability to be extended, with the Hue lightstrip the option of another 33ft of light strip add ons.

Currently the Koogeek doesn’t support extensions, which is rather unfortunate, especially if you want a light strip around the entire perimeter of something. Hopefully this is some thing they can add in the next version of their lightstrip.

Finally we come down to cost, the Koogeek Lightstrip costs $35

The Philips Hue lightstrip costs $90, and requires the Hue Bridge ($47 on its own, or $70 as part of a starter kit) to connect to the various services and apps. Light strip extensions cost another $15 each for another 40”.

Are they worth buying?

It’s clear that the Philips Hue has more to offer via their wider ecosystem and larger array of support, however the larger starting price may be off putting to some.

The Koogeek has the benefit of a lower entry point, and can still offer great colors and reliability.

Ultimately while they are the same product, they are for different customers.

If, perhaps, you live in a smaller apartment or something, and don’t want to spend a lot of money to add just an accent light or two, then the Koogeek lightstrip is a great choice.

If you have a larger home, or plan on having many smart home products and accessories, the Philips Hue lightstrip, with all its peripherals and wide range of products, will be a better option in the long run.