This little dial is my favorite way to control my smart lights

I have so many ways to control my Philips Hue lights at home—my Google Nest Hub, my Pixel Watch 2 or Pixel 8 Pro (or my Apple Watch and iPhone 14 Pro Max, whichever is closest to me)—that you’d think I’d have no reason to look at yet another device to control my lights. Because why?

But if the Philips Hue Wall Tap Rotary Light Switch came, I was immediately intrigued and decided to grab one with the expectation that I would probably return it. But the opposite happened. I use it every day instead of all the other methods I used to use.

The Dial will set you back $50 and is rarely on sale, though plenty of other Philips Hue bulbs get discounted for big sales like Prime Day. But if you’re not so keen on Hue’s typically hefty price tags, you can find even deeper discounts on Govee bulbs for sales events like Prime Day.

What I like about this light switch

The Dial itself looks like a hockey puck with four buttons on the front, with a rotating outer wheel for brightening or dimming your lights. The four buttons each have little dots numbered 1-4 on them, so you can feel which button you’re pressing, even in the dark. The buttons can be assigned to a single light scene, cycle through all of them, or trigger an automation you’ve created in the Philips Hue app. The amount of customization you can do with this thing is pretty impressive.

There’s something interesting about going back to a physical object to control your lights, when the idea was to get away from your light switch. There’s a more traditional light switch plate that you can mount on your wall (I have mine next to my dusty, neglected light switch). The puck itself is magnetic, so you can easily place it on the plate or stick it on your fridge or wherever.

If I had one complaint about the Dial, it would be a very specific one, and it’s that it only works with one room or “zone” in your home at a time. While you can assign the Dial to a different room from the app, I would love it if each of the buttons could control different scenes for different rooms. I typically only use one button, since it cycles through my scenes, leaving the other three buttons largely untouched.

That particular complaint probably won’t interest most people, and yet it doesn’t stop me from Philips Hue Wall Tap Rotary Light SwitchFor more information, check out some of our favorite smart home deals.