Bulb recommendations? WiFi/Matter/Hue, BR30/E26, (RGB?)W

[open whale]

Looking for bulb recommendations for a bunch of recessed fixtures, replacing BR30/E26 bulbs.

Definitely looking for brightness control and white/color temperature, and would go for full color if it wasn’t significantly more expensive.

I have a hue bridge but I barely touch it anymore because it wants to force an upgrade with some critical change about accounts that I don’t want to deal with. I could probably add new bulbs through the API if needed.

I have good WiFi, including an IOT specific one with compatibilities turned on.

I have Matter with my Apple devices acting as border routers, and a fair number of devices in the mesh.

[midnight willow]

Your best bet might be the Philips Hue Essential BR30 bulbs. You can get colour for the same price as the white ambience version of the regular Hue bulbs, and all of the "Essential" series are guaranteed to support Matter over Thread (in addition to Zigbee) so you can add them directly to HA without needing to deal with the Hue hub.

(The current version of the regular Hue BR30 bulbs might support Matter over Thread, but I can't confirm that - and even if they do, some stores might still be shipping old stock that is Zigbee-only)

Could consider Nanoleaf, but their distribution isn't very good right now. Only available at apple stores in the US and they don't offer the BR30 version. Available online on the Nanoleaf store in Canada.

I don't have any experience with wifi bulbs :/

[open whale]

Decided to go look at the Hue Essentials stuff and Amazon is selling old-style Hue White Ambiance bulbs for $15/ea and so let's just hope they're not fakes when they get here 🤞

and that I can actually just use the API directly to add them 😅

[midnight willow]

note that the hue essential br30 are 650 lumen, and the hue br30 is available either in 1200 or 680 lumen (the cheaper ones you found are probably the 680 lumen)