TL;DR - see title.
I just decided to dip my feet in the smart bulb category and picked up a Hue bridge, some flood lights, and a couple of color bulbs. When I got home, I found out the color bulbs were not actually Hue; they are Philips Wiz, whatever that iz. The packaging looks very similar to the Hue, so this was obviously a mistake on my part, but… they only make the packaging the same to confuse you into thinking it’s the same thing. It’s not. I grabbed them because I saw the purple Philips box and thought they were the cheapest Hue bulbs. They aren’t; so that’s on me and now I have to waste a couple of hours returning them to Home Depot. (Would you believe Home Depot has a better Hue selection than the Best Buy across the street? Go figure.)
Wiz is supposed to connect via wifi/bluetooth rather than the Hue bridge, but Philips forgot to bake in HomeKit. They make you use things like IFTT, Siri, or Alexa. I don’t use any of those and have no desire to. If I can’t automate something with AppleScript or Keyboard Maestro, I’m probably not doing it. They only say it works with Apple stuff because it supports Siri. Siri doesn’t work 9 times out of 10 for me; I’m not going to rely on it for my lights. I want HomeKit like my other, non-light, gear. The Wiz lights go back.
Moral of the story, the packaging says that it’s compatible with Siri because that’s ALL it is compatible with. It will definitely not work with HomeKit. Don’t make the mental leap that I did and assume that because there is an Apple (Siri) logo on the package it will work with HomeKit. It won’t.