Philips leads many areas of lighting, and I appreciate a business that knows to specialise and do well in their chosen area.
I have been using a Philips 3520 Wake Up Light for over a year now. I find it very gently wakes me up, especially in winter, and suits my rhythms well. I hate sudden loud alarm clocks and this solves that problem well.
I recently bought a clever Philips Hue kit to play with and compare.
Both are high efficiency LED based units with some clever tricks. This should give you some comparison information.
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vs |  |
| Feature | Wake Up | Hue |
| Power Outage Behaviour | Forgets Time – No Battery Backup | Turns on Full Brightness.
It is VERY annoying to have lights turn on in the middle of the night after a power outage leaving you fumbling for your phone to turn them off. Does not forget time or schedule with power interruptions. |
| Gentle Wake Up | 40 Minutes, very gentle and pleasant. | 9 Minutes with harsh sudden start at about 30% brightness |
| Colours | Fixed | Huge variety |
| Programming | None | All sorts of clever options, especially with IFTTT |
| Style | Light comes from 80% from front of unit. | Use any fitting you like |
| Alarm (Sound) Function | I never use it | None |
| Reading Light | Very good.
Small fiddly buttons. Unfortunately easy to disable alarm by accident. |
Very Good. You need your phone handy. |
| Power | 24V DC | 220V AC |
| Comments | Light from the rear of the unit bounced off the wall would be much more gentle on the eyes.
It really needs a battery backup. I have actually hacked a 24V battery into mine to be sure it works no matter what. |
Powering on to full brightness after a short power outage at 2AM is very unpleasant.
The harsh startup is also a bit rough. I’m sure both of these could be fixed in software. |
If Philips merges these two products, they could be onto a really good thing. Some usability bugs could be readily improved.
Oh – and a good battery backup.