Before we had to navigate our way to the other side of a open plan room in the dark to find a light switch, now the motion sensor triggers the Hue bulb.

Plus we have a dimmer without needing an electrician to install one, and can set other colors of light for the mood or to improve the atmosphere of a movie.

You can get started with Philip's Hue for $50 (on Black Friday) and at that price point it is well worth it for a lot of benefits/circumstances.

This would be easier to determine if I lived alone. When someone comes in, someone else could be sleeping, watching something in the dark, etc. There's a decision tree for which lights to turn on and how bright.

What I would expect the lights to do is more complex than I would want to spend the time perfecting. I like tinkering, but not with things that I actually rely on. That's why I haven't tried it. Well, that, and because I'm not willing to give an appliance an internet uplink.

You can get an ESP8266 individually for $5, and its only a few more dollars for a relay or a couple of MOSFETS depending on what you want to control. You can use the Homie for ESP8266 framework to take care of the boilerplate, and build functional device that communicates over MQTT in less than an hour.

Most open source home automation software supports MQTT and you can use habridge to emulate Phillips Hue devices if you want to integrate it with an Echo or other commercial device.

That's not a matter of trying them, it's whether you live in a house with a crappy installation. A switch on every entrance is a basic requirement. I agree that if you're renting, fixing those problems yourself for $50 can be useful, though.

For one example imagine if you're away on holiday but want to give the impression somebody is home, you'll need to invest in a timer, with Hue you've already got that.

You mean, pay $5? Plus it works for other stuff besides lights (we turned on a radio too).