Review - Nanoleaf's New Smart Lights Double As Wood Accents! And Support HomeKit!

The Nanoleaf Wood Panels: A Revolutionary Home Decor Solution

The new Wood Looks Hexagon panels from the Elements line by Nanoleaf are a game-changer in the world of home decor. These innovative panels offer a unique and immersive lighting experience that can transform any room into a futuristic wonderland. With their sleek and modern design, these panels are sure to be a conversation starter in any home.

One of the standout features of the Wood Looks Hexagon panels is their ability to work seamlessly with Apple HomeKit. This means that users can easily control their lighting system using the Nanoleaf app or by voice command through Siri. The app itself is user-friendly and intuitive, allowing users to adjust the brightness and color of each panel with ease.

The panels also support Thread connectivity, which allows for a more robust and mesh-based network. This means that users can create a network of devices that work together to provide a seamless lighting experience. In fact, Nanoleaf's controllers will even act as border routers for Thread devices, allowing them to extend their network coverage and provide a more comprehensive lighting system.

In terms of settings, the Wood Looks Hexagon panels offer a range of features and options to customize your lighting experience. Users can access a basic mode to adjust the color of each panel, or they can create a scene by painting or using dynamic scenes. The app also includes a variety of pre-programmed playlists and colors to choose from, including Bloom, Clouds, Fireflies, and more.

One minor critique of the panels is that they can produce some darkness in the corners when they're on their brightest settings. However, this is only noticeable at high brightness levels, and it's not a major issue overall. The panels also use corner lights to create this effect, which do an excellent job of illuminating even the darkest areas.

In terms of color options, Nanoleaf has chosen to offer a more limited range of colors compared to some other smart lighting systems. However, this is still sufficient for most users, and the company's willingness to expand its color offerings in the future is a promising sign.

Overall, the Wood Looks Hexagon panels from Nanoleaf are an excellent choice for anyone looking to upgrade their home decor with a cutting-edge smart lighting system. With their sleek design, seamless HomeKit integration, and robust Thread connectivity, these panels offer a unique and immersive lighting experience that's sure to impress. Whether you're a tech enthusiast or just looking to elevate your home decor, the Wood Looks Hexagon panels are definitely worth considering.

Support for HomeKit is one of the most exciting features of the Nanoleaf Wood Looks Hexagon panels. This means that users can easily control their lighting system using the Nanoleaf app or by voice command through Siri. The app itself is user-friendly and intuitive, allowing users to adjust the brightness and color of each panel with ease.

One of the standout features of the Nanoleaf app is its ability to support automations based on a variety of triggers. This includes things like arrival and departure times, motion sensors, and even button presses. Users can create complex lighting scenes that respond to different conditions, making it easy to customize their lighting experience to suit their needs.

Another advantage of HomeKit integration is the ability to use Nanoleaf panels with other smart devices in the home. This includes things like Apple TV, iPad, and iPhone, which can all be used to control the panels through the app or by voice command.

In terms of color options, users have access to a range of pre-programmed colors and scenes that they can choose from. These include Bloom, Clouds, Fireflies, and more, each of which offers a unique lighting effect that's sure to impress. Users can also create their own custom scenes using the app's painting feature, or by using dynamic scenes.

The Nanoleaf Wood Looks Hexagon panels are available for purchase on the company's website, as well as through other online retailers. As with any smart lighting system, it's worth doing some research and reading reviews before making a purchase to ensure that you find the best fit for your needs and budget.

A Minor Critique

While the Nanoleaf Wood Looks Hexagon panels are an excellent choice for anyone looking to upgrade their home decor with a cutting-edge smart lighting system, there is one minor issue worth noting. In certain rooms, particularly those with dark corners, users may notice that the panels produce some darkness in these areas when they're on their brightest settings.

This effect is only noticeable at high brightness levels, and it's not a major issue overall. However, it's worth mentioning for potential buyers who want to know exactly what to expect from the panels.

In terms of color options, Nanoleaf has chosen to offer a more limited range compared to some other smart lighting systems. While this may be sufficient for most users, some may find that they're looking for more color choices in their future purchases.

Support for Thread Connectivity

One of the most exciting features of the Nanoleaf Wood Looks Hexagon panels is their support for Thread connectivity. This allows users to create a network of devices that work together to provide a seamless lighting experience. In fact, Nanoleaf's controllers will even act as border routers for Thread devices, allowing them to extend their network coverage and provide a more comprehensive lighting system.

This feature is especially useful for those who want to integrate their smart lighting system with other devices in the home. For example, users can create complex lighting scenes that respond to different conditions, such as arrival and departure times, motion sensors, or even button presses.

Overall, the support for Thread connectivity makes the Nanoleaf Wood Looks Hexagon panels an excellent choice for anyone looking to upgrade their smart lighting system with a cutting-edge solution.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome everyone to apple insider it is andrew here you can find me on twitter at andrew underscore osu and i'm beyond excited today so excited one of my favorite smart home tech companies is nanoleaf they've created a bunch of stuff that i'm sure you've seen every gamer that's got the nanoleaf panels the triangular panels on the wall behind them they came out with their tiles or canvas as they called it their square ones they came out with their hexagons which were really awesome and then there was like shapes which allowed you to blend like small triangles or big triangles all those different stuff together uh then there was the essentials line which i was in love with because it was the first one to support thread i've got a bulb right over there you can't see it but it's over there uh the bulb that supported thread and the light strip there's one above me i add it for color sometime into these videos and that again supports the red and now we have this something other crazy unique i mean they were some of the first panels to come to market they were like some of the first support thread on the market might may have been the first consumer practice support thread on the market uh and now we've got this wooden panels wood look panels yeah so here's nanoleaf again kind of bringing the humanity the earth back into the smart home stuff it's always so sterile so white so clean uh we're doing something different now we're going to be looking at some wooden panels so let's go ahead and get these things open because i am dying to play with these and set them up i have not had any time yet when i like originally start recording this video like the beginning of this video here that uh recording as we speak i haven't got to play these yeah i did open the expansion so i could look at the panels before opening the box of this guy and they're so freaking cool uh so i'm excited i'm really excited i haven't had a you know a smart home product like this exactly before by the way how cool is that packaging look at that a little little box to pull those out uh so we got the panels themselves over here it all comes with a stack of panels one two three like seven seven panels in your smarter kit your starter kit uh and then you have the controller which also has a wood look look at this this is the controller that runs on the side also has that wood veneer look to it so nice kind of blending everything in together so we've got our controller uh connectors to connect all these guys together do uh then we got the plug we have some adhesives because who doesn't love some adhesives a sticker and uh the power cable itself hiding in here which by the way now has a nice braided cord if you uh haven't seen this before braided cable on this so this is everything we need let's go ahead i'm going to show you these just a little more detail but then let's go ahead and put this on the wall and show you how cool this thing works so this is what the tiles look like it's essentially kind of like vinyl flooring so they're plastic not actual wood so it's just it's colored and textured like a piece of wood but it is not an actual slab of wood so that's what you have on the front and on the back we have this here so a couple things to point out first you have the edges which is where your clips are going to come into play these pop in and that's how these things connect together to translate electricity and actually connect and talk to one another so the clips go into all these sides so you can connect them to any of those as well as the power controller will go into one of these two whichever one you choose in the center we've got our adhesive here which you peel off you turn this over and then you rub in a circular motion in the center for about 30 seconds to make sure that that adhesive is actually locked into place and on your wall and then this whole thing can rotate so if this is on your wall your your you know canvas piece here your hexagon can rotate around so you can get the perfect angle on it and line it exactly how you want and it came off so if this is on your wall you can pull away and remove your tile just has a kind of little nub in the center and a little grid on the bottom of this guy and this just pops right back into place if you push your tile back onto the wall there so that's how these guys go ahead and work let's go ahead and mount ours depending on how many panels you get there are a bunch of different options that you can do all these different shapes uh i of course just made up something on my own so this is what i currently have up on the wall with the new wood look essentials line from nanoleaf so the controller is down here obviously we can turn it off if you just go back to normal turn it back on i can change the brightness maybe just very dim if i want to go all the way up to super warm we can lower down a little bit and this can cycle through the different effects and different looks that you may want to do of course we also have the syncing with music option and the shuffle options these are touch sensitive panels as well and they have gestures built in they're swiping right swiping left swiping up and swiping down and there's even a double tap i can double tap go ahead and turn this thing off and double tap again it'll turn back on and all those can be configured to what you want them to do between changing scenes changing colors changing rhythms turning on and off all that is toggable and controllable inside of the nanoleaf app speaking of which aside from those touch gestures there's also touch actions that you can configure to operate home kit scenes which i think is incredible you can literally use it as home kit buttons to control anything else you have going on in the same exact room through homekit so here we are in the nanoleaf app on the panels we can get into settings there we can turn it on or off and adjust the brightness as you'd expect and it'll show you what is currently playing what scene or playlist that you're currently on you can go to basic and just choose the color that you'd like or create a scene you can paint or use dynamic scenes then you can choose from any of the ones that you kind of have on the list here so we have like bloom cloud clouds is a cool one very light white colors and you kind of have the effect of a cloud overpassing some of your panels so they kind of like dim for just a moment before they come back very similar to a cloud going overhead um we've got like fireflies very warm kind of flickery uh reading lights pretty standard flash is kind of like water like just kind of splashes more staccato quick warm waves there's just a bunch of different you know playlists or panels or colors and stuff scenes that they have here in the leaf app to help you get the most of your wood panels so i did mention these work with home kits they do show here in the home app inside of my studio i can go into them i can turn it off and on i can adjust the brightness now you can go here and adjust the colors but you're pretty limited because of course there aren't that many colors so you can choose the as white as it'll go and you have some more warmer colors that you can go between but there's not a ton of colors because they are pretty limited in their color offerings but again you can still control through here and any other scenes so any automations that you create uh whether it's when you arrive or leave or if it is based on motion sensors or if it's based on a button being pressed anything like that can be tied through home kit to those panels so be sure to explore through home kit if this is something that you are actively using a minor critique you may notice they do have darkness in the corners a little bit and it's only when they're on the brightest settings that you're really going to pay attention to that but i still kind of want just to point it out like it's not you know a perfect lighting effect throughout the whole thing they use like corner lights which do a really good job you have those tiny dark spots uh that just sit there so it's not a big deal by any means but i did want to at least mention it in this review so what do you guys think of the new wood looks hexagon panels from the elements line from nanoleaf personally i'm very excited because there's nothing like this on the market it works natively with apple homekit and i don't think we mentioned this already but it supports thread in a different way that you may not normally think so these guys actually connect to wi-fi so they're on your wi-fi network wi-fi for the most part is going better than thread throughout your home but of course you still want the thread benefits you want to extend your thread network you want to create a more robust mesh network this guy can actually act as a border router for those thread devices so when you do have something you need to extend this will operate as a border router and not just this if anything in the elements line that connects to wi-fi that comes out in the future and i believe even their regular controllers are going to support the red as a at least certain ones so don't quote me on all of this but even certain ones of the existing controllers they're going to act as thread border router so while they won't communicate over thread themselves they can be the border router for your other thread devices which is what i want i want that that sounds awesome so i'm so excited about it i think this is a slam dunk i would say i would prefer a darker wood tone personally personally i have a lot of walnut colors a lot of dark walnut black walnut colors here in the house and like this lighter birchy color it doesn't always match my aesthetic and there are some rooms in our house that work my wife has a bohemian room that looks amazing in so we're probably end up keeping it in there if i don't keep it on this wall because it does work well where i have it but i like darker colors so i would be hopeful that the nanoleaf would offer some different colors to go with this in the future but this is are just a great supporter there's nothing like this out there and i'm so happy to be using it with homekit um just absolutely great so let me know over on twitter at andrew underscore oh and see what you guys think if you guys want to grab one i got links for all of this stuff down below in the comments and uh otherwise i'll see you guys in the next video youwelcome everyone to apple insider it is andrew here you can find me on twitter at andrew underscore osu and i'm beyond excited today so excited one of my favorite smart home tech companies is nanoleaf they've created a bunch of stuff that i'm sure you've seen every gamer that's got the nanoleaf panels the triangular panels on the wall behind them they came out with their tiles or canvas as they called it their square ones they came out with their hexagons which were really awesome and then there was like shapes which allowed you to blend like small triangles or big triangles all those different stuff together uh then there was the essentials line which i was in love with because it was the first one to support thread i've got a bulb right over there you can't see it but it's over there uh the bulb that supported thread and the light strip there's one above me i add it for color sometime into these videos and that again supports the red and now we have this something other crazy unique i mean they were some of the first panels to come to market they were like some of the first support thread on the market might may have been the first consumer practice support thread on the market uh and now we've got this wooden panels wood look panels yeah so here's nanoleaf again kind of bringing the humanity the earth back into the smart home stuff it's always so sterile so white so clean uh we're doing something different now we're going to be looking at some wooden panels so let's go ahead and get these things open because i am dying to play with these and set them up i have not had any time yet when i like originally start recording this video like the beginning of this video here that uh recording as we speak i haven't got to play these yeah i did open the expansion so i could look at the panels before opening the box of this guy and they're so freaking cool uh so i'm excited i'm really excited i haven't had a you know a smart home product like this exactly before by the way how cool is that packaging look at that a little little box to pull those out uh so we got the panels themselves over here it all comes with a stack of panels one two three like seven seven panels in your smarter kit your starter kit uh and then you have the controller which also has a wood look look at this this is the controller that runs on the side also has that wood veneer look to it so nice kind of blending everything in together so we've got our controller uh connectors to connect all these guys together do uh then we got the plug we have some adhesives because who doesn't love some adhesives a sticker and uh the power cable itself hiding in here which by the way now has a nice braided cord if you uh haven't seen this before braided cable on this so this is everything we need let's go ahead i'm going to show you these just a little more detail but then let's go ahead and put this on the wall and show you how cool this thing works so this is what the tiles look like it's essentially kind of like vinyl flooring so they're plastic not actual wood so it's just it's colored and textured like a piece of wood but it is not an actual slab of wood so that's what you have on the front and on the back we have this here so a couple things to point out first you have the edges which is where your clips are going to come into play these pop in and that's how these things connect together to translate electricity and actually connect and talk to one another so the clips go into all these sides so you can connect them to any of those as well as the power controller will go into one of these two whichever one you choose in the center we've got our adhesive here which you peel off you turn this over and then you rub in a circular motion in the center for about 30 seconds to make sure that that adhesive is actually locked into place and on your wall and then this whole thing can rotate so if this is on your wall your your you know canvas piece here your hexagon can rotate around so you can get the perfect angle on it and line it exactly how you want and it came off so if this is on your wall you can pull away and remove your tile just has a kind of little nub in the center and a little grid on the bottom of this guy and this just pops right back into place if you push your tile back onto the wall there so that's how these guys go ahead and work let's go ahead and mount ours depending on how many panels you get there are a bunch of different options that you can do all these different shapes uh i of course just made up something on my own so this is what i currently have up on the wall with the new wood look essentials line from nanoleaf so the controller is down here obviously we can turn it off if you just go back to normal turn it back on i can change the brightness maybe just very dim if i want to go all the way up to super warm we can lower down a little bit and this can cycle through the different effects and different looks that you may want to do of course we also have the syncing with music option and the shuffle options these are touch sensitive panels as well and they have gestures built in they're swiping right swiping left swiping up and swiping down and there's even a double tap i can double tap go ahead and turn this thing off and double tap again it'll turn back on and all those can be configured to what you want them to do between changing scenes changing colors changing rhythms turning on and off all that is toggable and controllable inside of the nanoleaf app speaking of which aside from those touch gestures there's also touch actions that you can configure to operate home kit scenes which i think is incredible you can literally use it as home kit buttons to control anything else you have going on in the same exact room through homekit so here we are in the nanoleaf app on the panels we can get into settings there we can turn it on or off and adjust the brightness as you'd expect and it'll show you what is currently playing what scene or playlist that you're currently on you can go to basic and just choose the color that you'd like or create a scene you can paint or use dynamic scenes then you can choose from any of the ones that you kind of have on the list here so we have like bloom cloud clouds is a cool one very light white colors and you kind of have the effect of a cloud overpassing some of your panels so they kind of like dim for just a moment before they come back very similar to a cloud going overhead um we've got like fireflies very warm kind of flickery uh reading lights pretty standard flash is kind of like water like just kind of splashes more staccato quick warm waves there's just a bunch of different you know playlists or panels or colors and stuff scenes that they have here in the leaf app to help you get the most of your wood panels so i did mention these work with home kits they do show here in the home app inside of my studio i can go into them i can turn it off and on i can adjust the brightness now you can go here and adjust the colors but you're pretty limited because of course there aren't that many colors so you can choose the as white as it'll go and you have some more warmer colors that you can go between but there's not a ton of colors because they are pretty limited in their color offerings but again you can still control through here and any other scenes so any automations that you create uh whether it's when you arrive or leave or if it is based on motion sensors or if it's based on a button being pressed anything like that can be tied through home kit to those panels so be sure to explore through home kit if this is something that you are actively using a minor critique you may notice they do have darkness in the corners a little bit and it's only when they're on the brightest settings that you're really going to pay attention to that but i still kind of want just to point it out like it's not you know a perfect lighting effect throughout the whole thing they use like corner lights which do a really good job you have those tiny dark spots uh that just sit there so it's not a big deal by any means but i did want to at least mention it in this review so what do you guys think of the new wood looks hexagon panels from the elements line from nanoleaf personally i'm very excited because there's nothing like this on the market it works natively with apple homekit and i don't think we mentioned this already but it supports thread in a different way that you may not normally think so these guys actually connect to wi-fi so they're on your wi-fi network wi-fi for the most part is going better than thread throughout your home but of course you still want the thread benefits you want to extend your thread network you want to create a more robust mesh network this guy can actually act as a border router for those thread devices so when you do have something you need to extend this will operate as a border router and not just this if anything in the elements line that connects to wi-fi that comes out in the future and i believe even their regular controllers are going to support the red as a at least certain ones so don't quote me on all of this but even certain ones of the existing controllers they're going to act as thread border router so while they won't communicate over thread themselves they can be the border router for your other thread devices which is what i want i want that that sounds awesome so i'm so excited about it i think this is a slam dunk i would say i would prefer a darker wood tone personally personally i have a lot of walnut colors a lot of dark walnut black walnut colors here in the house and like this lighter birchy color it doesn't always match my aesthetic and there are some rooms in our house that work my wife has a bohemian room that looks amazing in so we're probably end up keeping it in there if i don't keep it on this wall because it does work well where i have it but i like darker colors so i would be hopeful that the nanoleaf would offer some different colors to go with this in the future but this is are just a great supporter there's nothing like this out there and i'm so happy to be using it with homekit um just absolutely great so let me know over on twitter at andrew underscore oh and see what you guys think if you guys want to grab one i got links for all of this stuff down below in the comments and uh otherwise i'll see you guys in the next video you\n"