I purchased a bunch of Phillips Hue bulbs and they have started to age out. I hadn’t paid much attention to the space and found out that Phillips was phasing the Hue ecosystem out in favor of just connecting everything to WiFi directly. I purchased two bulbs to give it a try and one has connectivity issues while the other has severe quality issues (flickering, refusing to turn off, etc)

I really like the Hue ecosystem but not being able to keep buying into it a mere 5 years later is a big turnoff.

One of the two newer bulbs from Philips supported Matter by updating the firmware. It wasn’t at all clear that would be the case when I purchased them.

Finally, I’ve learned to avoid anything that supports “Siri shortcuts.” I want actual support so my home app and thus HomePods can do the right thing out of the box.