I fail to see how this is the bright side. Both of those ways are worse at interacting with literally anything, especially compared to a dedicated remote for a TV. I'd try a foot controlled pedal for my TV before I'd be ok with using voice controls.
After having them installed for a few weeks, their benefit is mostly a wash. I'd rather just flip them on/off, but unfortunately one of the bulbs doesn't retain its "memory" of the last setting this way, so to use the features, I have to use the app and keep them on. Additionally, the app sometimes takes a second or to to connect to their service, so I'm standing in front of the lamp waiting several seconds just to be able to turn it on/off. This is definitely a case where a manual switch is so much better. It. Just. Works.
Yeah, my last smart light setup a few years ago had this problem too. I ended up running a script on Raspberry Pi that detected when a light bulb appeared on the network again and reconfigured it immediately.
But my ultimate conclusion from that setup was, smart lights make no sense without smart switches. You want to be able to both actuate physical controls and switch the lights through software.
To be honest I almost always use the switch, including changing the color. Cycling through colors with a button is still more convenient than opening an app and picking one. I really only use the app when I need to control individual lights.
Are there better places you could use the lights? Where the flexibility is more useful?
For instance, you're upstairs and you wish to watch a movie in your home theater in the basement. You hit the button on your phone and while you travel to the basement the lights lining the hallways and staircases come on (if off); the projector turns on and switches to the movie input; the receiver turns on and switches to the movie input; the theater recliner adjusts to your preferred position; the bias lighting turns on; and two minutes later the lights lining the hallways and staircases revert to their previous state.
Especially since this kind of thing has only been possible in really high end homes until now, so it feels exclusive. At least that’s my read.
The whole problem is that TV remotes keep changing. My TV now we have two remotes, one that came with the TV and one for Google TV.
I used the TV remote the other day out of necessity...and it took me about 20 seconds to find the mute key. On the GTV remote, it's one of like 5 buttons.
I'll always prefer physical buttons to menus, but not when the layout and meanings of said buttons change every year.
*a few years back now
So for my regular use, I wouldn't mind voice control for this, though voice assistants have trouble hearing you when there's extraneous loud noise, so volume control (especially when a really loud scene comes up and I want to lower it) would be difficult.
I don't like the idea of a smartphone app, because there's the hassle of unlocking my phone and finding/switching to the right app.
The author also mentions using gestures, which also seems very error-prone.
So I guess a dedicated remote control is the way to go, though I wouldn't mind having a single bare-bones power+volume remote, so I could toss the full-featured remotes into a drawer and only pull them out when (rarely) necessary.