You pay $60 for two meters of low-density LED strip with poor brightness, but rich colors, and it has a number of limitations including how many you can join together.

Meanwhile, I can get 50 meters of dense, bright LED strips on Aliexpress that perform just as well — but don't work with Hue. I like the idea of all of my smart stuff working in the same place, but can't justify splashing out $60 to add more LEDs to the house.

This had me wondering: why not just make them myself? Well, until recently, it was nigh impossible to get this to work properly for various reasons, but I've found a few great options for those who are eager to find a way to get cheaper, better Hue strips that work just like the official ones.

With all of this in mind, these are my results, at time of writing, so please don't consider this a guarantee! I've made four different versions of the cheaper pick, and am still very happy, but your mileage may vary. Without further ado, here's the result:

Quick background

The reason the Philips Lightstrip Plus costs so much is it has great color accuracy and they are designed to color match with the Hue LED bulbs.

Philips uses a special type of LED strip called RGBWW (Red / Green / Blue / Warm White) which features a separate LED diode for the white colors, to produce the right hues of white, as well as great RGB colors. This drives the price higher, but results in better accuracy across the spectrum.

Since the Lightstrip Plus was released, the RGBWW strips have come down in price dramatically and it's actually possible to find them right now for great prices with better performance than the Hue. Philips, unsurprisingly, has not updated its strip nor lowered the price, which is why we're here.

I've explored a number of options, along with my friend Kees Plattel, and found a solid alternative that you can order today. Here's your options.

Expensive, quick, overkill

Skill level: I know how to use a screwdriver

Time: 30 minutes or less

The first option that kept coming up in my cursory searches for LED strips that aren't Hue's own was the FLS-PP LED ballast on Amazon for a whopping $50. This is a high quality controller, supposedly, that works with Hue, but it's almost the price of Hue's whole strip.

Many people have reported this option as working, but I think it's just not worth it at this price point unless you plan to drive a ton of LEDs off of this thing. For $50, you can build your own strips end-to-end, without soldering anything, so read on for more...

Easy, cheap, quick

$2 LED strip + $15 Alibaba controller = Hue LED strips that don't break the bank pic.twitter.com/LhPu0k7bBh

— ⚡️ Owen (@ow) April 26, 2018

Skill level: I know how to use a screwdriver

Time: 20 minutes or less

Every now and then over the last year I perused Aliexpress when bored to find a Hue-compatible controller with no luck.

Recently, however, I came across a new brand: Gledopto, which is advertising Hue and Tradfi compatible controllers that require zero soldering or software hacking to get it working, which sounded promising. I ordered the basic RGB version (read on for more about the options), which is cheapest, along with a roll of cheap RGB LEDs and waited.