Nanoleaf Lamps Are Powered by Dopamine LEDs
I buy and test a lot of smart devices for my home and yard, and many of them do important things like heating and cooling; securing your home or cleaning your home. But the smart home tech that has made me happiest this year—the only one I buy for friends (and buy a lot of)—is just lighting up. Nanoleaf lights are my pick for the best smart holiday purchase. In a world where there are a lot of dark things going on right now, Nanoleaf is LED dopamine.
Unlike many smart technology companies, Nanoleaf does just one thing: really cool lighting. And perhaps because of their focus, they do it very well. Their main retail products are LED strips and wall panels. These are broad spectrum LEDs with infinite colors that use backlighting to create subtle or dramatic illumination on walls, ceilings, under sofas, behind mirrors… wherever you place them.
Nanoleaf Screen Mirroring Kit.
If you watch TV, movies, or play games, you’ll want to start with the Nanoleaf 4D Screen Mirroring Kit ($79.99). It comes with a small camera that you can attach to the top or bottom of your TV, and a strip of LED lights that you attach to the back of the TV frame. The camera captures the colors from the screen, and the light strip replicates those colors behind the TV. Using the settings, you can make the light brighter or darker, and also synchronize it with sound.
The movie aspect is very nice and not distracting, but personally I prefer to just use the color schemes in the app – you can create your own too. The light can still respond to sound, so if you’re just playing music, it will respond subtly to the rhythm.
Nanoleaf Mold Kits
Nanoleaf sells sets of flat wall tiles ($79.99-$149.99) —triangles, octagons, lines, etc.—that will adhere to the ceiling or walls. No matter where they are in a room or even a house, they can replicate the 4D screen mirroring effect that the mirror screen kit above has – you tell the app where in the room the additional panels are and it continues the spectrum to those panels . You can mix and match shapes and add any Nanoleaf products you want.
The panels are made from hard plastic in black, white or wood, all with a matte finish that doesn’t look cheap on the walls. They are so small that they barely come off the wall and are attached with amazingly strong glue. The sets come with multiple tiles and you can choose how to arrange them to create all sorts of sculptural effects. The shapes themselves also respond to touch, so you can use them to control lighting. Distribute the lights among groups or rooms, and you can have each group act independently or all together.
Access from computer or mobile phone
Nanoleaf works with Matter, Threads, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi; Any time you want to add a device, all you have to do is scan the QR code on the device itself into the app. Initially, I had no problems pairing devices. For the most part they remain paired, although there have been a few times where they have shown as disabled while still functioning. The app required a bit of a learning curve—the settings for each device were hidden in two possible subpanels—but in truth, once the lighting was set up, I almost never had to go back to change settings. There is a screen mirror calibration tool that allows you to group lights together or control them as groups or individually.
Nanoleaf also figured out what many smart technology companies haven’t: mobile apps are good, but desktop apps are a great bonus. I loved being able to change the lighting from my desktop when I was working on Sonos or Hulu.
Bottom line: These smart lights are for everyone.
I’m not a gamer and never thought neon was a sensible home decor item, so if I were explaining Nanoleaf to myself, I’d probably think they were bright and not my thing. If they hadn’t sent me these devices to test, I would never have bought them for myself. But after living with them for a month, I would have to die so that these lanterns could be removed. They make you frivolous and carefree. When I turn them on, I feel much calmer. Sometimes when I go to bed and all the lights are off, I turn the Nanoleaf back on to create a northern lights effect in my room. It’s amazingly peaceful.
In the past few weeks, I’ve purchased kits for friends with young children on the autism spectrum, several friends going through a divorce, and a friend in her 70s recovering from surgery. The excitement each of them felt once they were up and running was measurable. There’s something happy about the lighting. Smart technology can do many wonderful things to provide accessibility, efficiency, and connectivity to people. But technology can rarely bring happiness.