Nanoleaf Smart Lighting Review: Bright Colors, Thread Connectivity and Improved Setup

Nanoleaf Smart Lighting Review: Bright Colors, Thread Connectivity, and Improved Setup

Nanoleaf offers a wide range of smart lighting for homes and offices. Standard builds and floods leverage the Matter standard, which improves the management of smart devices and the connectivity experience.

What we like

Pros

• Support for multiple home automation ecosystems
• Bright with a rich color palette
• Energy-Efficient
• Reasonably priced
• Fun

Nanoleaf bulbs and other smart lighting go beyond the original bulbs and systems that only worked with Bluetooth, their own app, or limited services, usually Amazon’s Alexa. The Nanoleaf A19 (806 lm) and BR30 (730 lm) bulbs, which service the majority of lighting in most homes, bring new simplicity and extended reach to smart lighting. There is no turning off-and-on a light to put it into pairing mode. There is no attaching to a Wi-Fi signal from the bulb and then sharing network credentials before switching a phone or tablet back to its normal settings.

To pair the A19 or BR30, follow the following instructions (via Nanoleaf):

1. On the Dashboard, tap the pencil icon in the top right corner.
2. Tap “Add Device +”.
3. Select the Essentials tab and then “Start Scan” on the model being paired.
4. Tap the Pair button on the device you want to pair with.
   1. The magnifying glass can be used to flash the device to identify it. This is disabled 15 minutes after the light is powered up for security.
   2. If you don’t want to flash the device, the three characters at the end of the device name can be matched up with the characters next to “ID:” printed on your light near the Matter code as well as on the front of the quick start guide.
5. Scan the Matter QR code on the light or on the quick start guide. Alternatively, select Pair Manually, input the 11-digit pairing code, and tap Next.
6. The Nanoleaf app will pair with the device and ask you for permission to access your network to check for available Thread networks and then provision the device to Thread if one is available.
7. Name your device and assign it to a room.

I had no issue with this process. The bulbs all paired quickly and responded immediately to commands.

As a default, I set my two BR30 bulbs to soft white. They are on a different switch from other bulbs in my kitchen, but by location, they are contiguous with the other lights in the ceiling and blend in well unless I’m playing with them. One of the biggest gets is their individual addressability. My wife likes a light on when we get home. Now we can just tap or talk to turn on the light at the kitchen door without burning watts while we are out.

I then added the bulbs to my other ecosystems, Apple and Amazon. Apple was immediate. Amazon took some searching and a reach out to support. The links in the What could be improved section reference those resources.

Once installed, it’s time to have some fun.

The energy-efficient bulbs run at 9W (A19) and 8.5W (BR30), which is not what Amazon’s data listing says. It rates them not just as 60W equivalents, for instance, on the A19, but as using 60W. Sometimes, “facts” need to be checked against multiple sources before the actual facts can be determined.

As for price, the Nanoleaf bulbs run far less than similar bulbs from Philips. A single Nanoleaf A19 runs $19.99 on Amazon. The Philips Hue bulb lists for $49.97. The BR30 from Nanoleaf runs $39.95 for a 3-pack. A Philips Hue 2-pack lists for $99.99. Bulbs from both brands regularly sell for discounts on Amazon.

Both bulb types and the lightstrip offer dimmable, danceable, and ogleable static and dynamic lighting effects. My granddaughter Shana is always up for a light show, and the bulbs and apps make it easy for Gaga (my grandfather moniker) to deliver.

On the sustainability front, Nanoleaf does the best it can with plastic in its build. The packaging is all recyclable—no plastic overwrap on boxes. And, of course, the bulbs save energy compared to incandescent equivalents.

The Nanoleaf Smart Lighting Connectivity and Troubleshooting Video for their A19 Essentials Bulb

What could be improved

Cons

• Connectivity can still be quirky
• Different control experiences in different ecosystems.

Not all Nanoleaf products support all ecosystems. While the light bulbs are pretty universal, including Google, Apple, Amazon, and Samsung, the lightstrip is not. It only supports Google and the Nanoleaf…and also Apple Home even though it isn’t listed on the box because the lightstrip is Matter, which includes Thread connectivity, which Apple Home will recognize.

Whew.

I found two quirky connectivity issues during set-up. First, I could not figure out how to connect Alexa to the bulbs, although the box and the specs clearly states I could do so. The connection to the Nanoleaf app and to Apple Home went so smoothly that I assumed bringing in Alexa would prove just as easy. I was wrong, though it would probably have been just as easy had I not attached to Apple Home first.

Here is Nanoleaf’s overview of Matter-based ecosystem management rules and the company’s links to documentation about managing multiple ecosystem connections:

“It looks like you’ve paired this device before; follow the steps linked below to pair with a new ecosystem.” In this case, we detect that you already have your lights paired to an ecosystem. Matter’s Multi-Admin feature requires that pairing be reactivated by an existing paired Matter controller, and because the Nanoleaf app doesn’t use Matter to communicate with Essentials, you’ll need to do this from whichever ecosystem you already have paired. We centralized instructions for each one here for your convenience.

To be clear, this is not a Nanoleaf issue, and it has a work around—and most people won’t be attaching to multiple systems—but still, not direct and straightforward. My advice is to choose a dominant system for home automation as a way to simplify setup. However, if you are like me, you may have a few Echo devices and Apple TV along with an iPhone and an Apple Watch. It’s very enticing to connect them all up. And it’s doable, it just takes some patience, and perhaps even a few tries, before it all works. But trust me, it can all work. Again, if you don’t want the hassle of managing multiple ways to turn lights on and off or set scenes, then pick an ecosystem and stick to it.

A secondary quirk arises from those who chose different ecosystem interfaces. The Nanoleaf app is very different from the Apple Home experience, which is different from talking to Alexa. The lights will eventually perform a desired lighting function, but the words or clicks, taps and drags to get there differ by interface.

I will let the images speak for themselves. The basics are there, but you can see the Nanoleaf tabs offer a deeper cut than the others.

While the smart bulbs connected to the Nanoleaf app, Apple Home, and Amazon’s Alexa, the strip lights only connect to the Nanoleaf app, Apple Home and to Google’s ecosystem, which I don’t run. That means rather than talking to the Alexa on my desk, I need to talk to Siri. More importantly, I can’t connect the lightstrip to a scene in Alexa, such as Office Lights On, that would turn on all of my office lights.

Nanoleaf Smart Lighting: The bottom line

The Nanoleaf smart lighting products appear well-made, with a lifetime of up to 25K hours. They worked out the box and continue to light up my life daily. I have experienced no meaningful issues. For those seeking smart lights that offer a range of colors and temperatures, Nanoleaf products light up a variety of spaces without overly lighting up wallets.

Nanoleaf provided the A19, BR30 and Lightstrip starter kits for review. Images courtesy of Nanoleaf unless otherwise noted.

Serious Insights is an Amazon Affiliate. Clicking on an Amazon link may result in a payment to Serious Insights.

For more serious insights on hardware and accessories, click here.

Did you enjoy our Nanoleaf Smart Lighting review? If so, please leave a comment, like the post, or ask a question.