The Philips kit provided the best experience, but for a dramatically higher price — and the base model doesn’t even include lighting. Arthur Gies/NYT WirecutterIf you’ve got money to spare, or if you’re already invested in the Hue ecosystem, this HDMI-based option offers the smoothest, most nuanced lighting effects we’ve seen.If you’ve already gone hog wild on pricey Philips Hue smart-lighting gear — that is, if you’re like me — or if you’re willing to pay a lot more for better results, the Philips Hue Play Sync Box 8K is the most impressive, accurate, and granular lighting setup around. It has the price tag to match: It’s generally $400, which doesn’t even include lights (though Philips does sell a kit including its TV backlight set). But whereas Govee and other manufacturers limit you to a specific LED backlight strip and a few accessories with their boxes, this Hue system lets you add any Hue-branded light to your TV setup. The Philips Hue Play Sync Box 8K has four HDMI inputs, so you can plug in and switch inputs from a range of devices. Arthur Gies/NYT WirecutterIn fact, hypothetically, if you really wanted to, you could sync every Hue light and bulb in your house to the action playing on your TV. I wouldn’t recommend doing that, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t tried it. (Spoiler: It looked like my apartment was haunted.)I connected the Hue Play Sync Box 8K with a Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip (which lists for $300 but is often on sale) and threw in a Hue Smart Play Lightbar for lighting below my TV ($80). I also synced up my existing collection of Hue smart LED bulbs (which sell in sets of three for about $150) that I use in my living room for ambient lighting. Before I even realized what was happening, I had configured a lighting system with a price tag of around $1,000, or nearly the same cost as the 55-inch version of Wirecutter’s 4K OLED TV pick. And I have to stress once again that the Hue Play Sync Box 8K requires an existing Hue Bridge (which you should have, if you already have Hue lights in your home). With backlighting, the movie-watching experience can be far more immersive. Arthur Gies/NYT WirecutterBut if you have the requisite gear, you’re in for a treat. No TV backlight systems instantly shift based on what’s on your screen — there’s always at least a bit of lag in what you see and what the lights do (since the hardware between your TV and the light kit has to communicate). But Hue’s Play Sync Box 8K, combined with Philips’s newest Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip, came the closest to a seamless transition from my screen to the wall behind it; its colors were also the closest to what I was seeing on screen. The effect is striking, immersive, and really, really cool. Movies like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Doctor Strange have bright, screen-spanning color palettes that are a thrill to see splashed in perfect replication across the wall behind your TV. And the Hue Play Sync Box 8K also cuts out lights for black edge areas (while correcting for content with aspect ratios wider than 16:9, which adds black bars to the top and bottom edges of your display), producing an even more seamless presentation. The Hue Play Sync Box 8K corrects for the black bands at the top and bottom of the screen. Arthur Gies/NYT WirecutterHowever, even if you have that kind of money to spend, it isn’t a total guarantee that the Hue system will work exactly how you expect all the time. I’ll admit that my home theater setup is complicated. I have an Apple TV, a 4K blu-ray player, an Xbox Series X, a PlayStation 5 Pro, and a Nintendo Switch 2 — already too many devices for the four HDMI inputs of the Hue Play Sync Box 8K — connected to an 8K-compliant AV receiver with a Dolby Atmos setup. I won’t get into everything here, but the video running out from my receiver to the Hue Play Sync Box 8K to my TV sometimes wouldn’t handshake correctly. It was a problem that I could troubleshoot, but I still haven’t gotten things fully and consistently ironed out, even using various tricks and recommendations from the Hue enthusiast community. (To be fair, this is an issue present in other HDMI 2.1–compatible lighting products.)
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