Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagon
Colorful, configurable panels that’ll light up your home
$199.99 From Nanoleaf, us-shop.nanoleaf.me
Features Seven Hexagon LED light panels, 16 million colors with 1200–6500K white light temperature, touch and sound enabled, Apple HomeKit and Siri compatible
Interior designers will have you know there are three kinds of lighting: task lighting (handy for chopping vegetables with sharp implements); ambient lighting (for when your date/mate/partner comes around to sample said chopped vegetables); and accent lighting (handy for showing off your etchings during the aperitifs). Nanoleaf’s Shapes Hexagon smart lights do all three.
Available in a Smarter Kit of seven LED light panels, this Shapes Hexagon pack also comes with a controller, a 240V power supply, eight “linkers” for connecting the panels and controller, and some double–sided tape strips that enables you to fix the panels to the wall (and rearrange them at any time).
To set them up you attach the linkers, which supply power and lighting instructions to each panel, pop on the controller and the power supply then download the free Nanoleaf Smarter Series app for iOS and iPadOS. Its Layout Assistant can help you decide how to arrange your shapes before you fix them to the wall. Then the real fun begins.
The Nanoleaf app comes with dozens of downloadable lighting scenes that enable you to choose just the right ambience – from Beach Waves (lots of pale blues and yellows) to Disco Dance Floor (red, pink, purple, blue) to Christmas Lights (red and green) and, erm, Orgasme… There are plenty of more task– oriented presets too — we’re particularly big fans of Reading Light, which gives you plenty of brightness to read by but without burning the back of your retinas.
There’s more. Not only can the Shapes Hexagon display an almost infinite number of lighting scenes (although you can’t program your own, frustratingly), it’s also touch– and sound–sensitive too. Choose a music– oriented theme, such as the aforementioned Disco Dance Floor or Color Riot, tap the Music button on the controller (or app) and you’ll go all living room la vida loca, with an explosion of pulsing, rippling and shimmying across the panels in wave after addictive wave. And then there are the games. Because the panels are touch–sensitive, you can trigger them using your hands — and that means you can relive those heady days when Simon (ask your grandad, kids) was the height of high tech sophistication. It will entertain you for hours.
Better still, the Shapes Hexagon also work with HomeKit and Siri (plus Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Google Assistant, IFTTT, Samsung SmartThings, and others), so if you want to wake up to a Vibrant Sunrise or nod off to Bedtime, you can program the lights to do just that using the power of your voice, the Home app, or by using the Schedules option in the Nanoleaf app. Pleasingly, there’s a Nanoleaf Desktop app for Mac too.
While it sounds like there are no downsides and only considerable upsides, there are one or two caveats we need to share. Firstly, the
Shapes Hexagon are expensive — while we loved having the panels to play with we also winced every time we remembered that the Netflix And Chill or Cheer Up Emo Kid presets also came with a large price tag attached. And you may need to buy an expansion pack ($69.99 for three additional Hexagon panels) if you don’t want adding smart lighting to your home to look like a token effort. Secondly, attaching light panels to each other — and to the wall — can be a bit of a faff and, while Nanoleaf says it uses low–tack adhesive tape to help you fix the panels to a wall, your landlady/landlord/partner may not thank you if you also remove the paint whenever you move panels around.
If you’re into colorful, programmable smart lighting, Nanoleaf’s Shapes Hexagon are some of the best around — and you can add other shapes (triangles and new mini– triangles) for even more options.
THE BOTTOM LINE. Nanoleaf’s Shapes are a colorful and configurable way to add smart lights to your home. ROB MEAD–GREEN