You are correct in that fully diving into the Hue lights world is expensive, but there are benefits beyond just simple remote control and changing of light colors (and I will note that not all Hue lights change color).
I can turn my lights on and off from any where I have an Internet connection. I can have my lights turn on automatically when I arrive home. I can have my lights alert me to important events like severe weather warnings. I can turn on lights in just about every room in house from either my phone or a switch in my bedroom. I can turn on or off lights by voice if I have my hands full. And many more benefits.
So, it is really a question of whether those potential benefits are worth the expense. For some, it is worth it. For others, it is likely not worth it.
For me, I first started with Hue lights because I had a room with 4 recessed lights that were controlled by two switches. One switch controlled the two lights on the left side of the room when looking at the TV and the other switch controlled the two lights on the right side of the room. I wanted to be able to have the two lights closest to the TV on (i.e. one right light and one left light) while leaving the two lights furtherest from the TV off. This was because one of the lights was right above where I sat to watch TV and felt like I was getting interrogated. It was easier for me to pay the $200 for a Hue light set plug another $60 for a 4th bulb (they did not have the white only bulbs initially) than to try to rework the wiring of the switches (complexity was upped by the fact that virtually all of my light switches in the house are 50s era low voltage switches, which would have mean tearing about the ceiling potentially). I found them very useful (and even more so over the years when they added physical switches, IFTTT support, etc), so it just ballooned from there.
I can turn my lights on and off from any where I have an Internet connection. I can have my lights turn on automatically when I arrive home. I can have my lights alert me to important events like severe weather warnings. I can turn on lights in just about every room in house from either my phone or a switch in my bedroom. I can turn on or off lights by voice if I have my hands full. And many more benefits.
So, it is really a question of whether those potential benefits are worth the expense. For some, it is worth it. For others, it is likely not worth it.
For me, I first started with Hue lights because I had a room with 4 recessed lights that were controlled by two switches. One switch controlled the two lights on the left side of the room when looking at the TV and the other switch controlled the two lights on the right side of the room. I wanted to be able to have the two lights closest to the TV on (i.e. one right light and one left light) while leaving the two lights furtherest from the TV off. This was because one of the lights was right above where I sat to watch TV and felt like I was getting interrogated. It was easier for me to pay the $200 for a Hue light set plug another $60 for a 4th bulb (they did not have the white only bulbs initially) than to try to rework the wiring of the switches (complexity was upped by the fact that virtually all of my light switches in the house are 50s era low voltage switches, which would have mean tearing about the ceiling potentially). I found them very useful (and even more so over the years when they added physical switches, IFTTT support, etc), so it just ballooned from there.