Hue is excellent from a build quality standpoint but if you value privacy or respect for consumers know that Philips is forcing consumers into a cloud model and changing the terms of service after the fact, for some people well over a decade after purchase.

In general your IOT shit should be isolated to a virtual lan that does not have internet access. As of right now if you buy hue hardware it will do this but eventually this will not work as it will require you to sign in to “Philips security” to activate and utilize lighting (you will need to maintain an active cloud connection.

The bulbs do have zigbee so you can always bypass their bridge of course but this is more complicated to setup and in my experience leads to performance that as not as solid as using the bridge. Also, the ethics of financially supporting a company that will change the TOS after sale to fuck you so they can worsen the product solely to harvest data for sale. Yuck