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I feel like the point of buying Philips Hue products and paying 4x the normal price is that everything is mostly set up out of the box and the app is very intuitive. All the non technical people I know use them and have no problems. If you want to go the Home Assistant route, you may as well go all the way and get a Zigbee/Matter hub and off-brand bulbs. That way you keep full control of the ecosystem and pay a fraction of the price.

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Their Hue bulbs are particularly high quality as light bulbs go, and their motion sensors are one of the PIR & Zigbee best in class available (a big thing being their short trigger CD).

It's separately a reasonable upgrade path for people becoming increasingly familiar with smart home tech, smart bulbs are a particularly easy entry point with clear added value with new features (white temperature is a personal favourite) and battery operated motion sensors, with a clear path to further home automation adoption with Home Assistant.

Yep, for me the reason to go with Hue is that the bulbs have good CRI, good colors, and the colors match between all the different types of fixtures. I've also not had a single Hue bulb fail in the 6 years I've been using them.

Maybe the point is for the people who already have it and want to avoid being locked in on proprietary ecosystem.

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