Nanoleaf Lines Review: Fun, creative lighting

Colourful, fun, piece of cake to build and arguably more than flexible than the company’s other light panels, the Nanoleaf Lines are a swell addition to any habitation. Unlike previous light panels, these ones even look pretty cool when they’re turned off. If y’all want fun lighting to add a bit of interest to your home, these are my new favourites.

Introduction

All of Nanoleaf’s previous light panels have worked in roughly the same way, projecting lite outwards from the solid pattern you put together. They’ve all been great fun when turned on; simply, with the exception of the wood-effect of the Nanoleaf Elements, the panels have looked a little ugly when turned off.

The Nanoleaf Lines is different. Fabricated upwards of calorie-free confined that are connected together, the gaps between the lights permit you lot see past the design, so that they look great when turned off. With the light shining towards the wall, you likewise get a completely different effect. For injecting a bit of fun into a room, these lights are great.

Pattern and Installation

• Flexible design
• Piece of cake to expand
• Stick-on or spiral-in installation options

As with previous Nanoleaf lite panels, the Nanoleaf Lines are made up of independent light bars that you connect together in your desired design.

With this model, confined are connected together with the hexagonal connectors, each of which can take upwards to vi lights. The only requirement is that lite bars are terminated at each end past one of these connectors, which can either be stuck to the wall or screwed into place. The latter is peculiarly useful if y’all want to put the Lines on a ceiling rather than wall.

Panels such as the Nanoleaf Shapes accept been a scrap fiddly to clip together, likewise, merely I found the Lines easier to deal with. I first created the shape on the floor, and then transferred it to the wall. Once designed, each hexagonal connector has a blanking plate that sits over the top of it.

In addition to these connectors, in that location are two special ones: one delivers power, and the other gives you on-device controls. I recommend sticking the power at the bottom of your pattern so that there’s less of the cable on show.

Turned off, all you tin can meet is the white outline of your pattern. Since in that location are gaps between it, you tin can see through the blueprint to your wall, which makes the Lines feel less intrusive when they’re turned off.

If y’all don’t like white, Nanoloeaf sells Skins packs in black or pink that sit over the tiptop of your calorie-free bars.

There’s a choice of 2 starter packs (ix or 15 lights), plus y’all can buy expansion packs of three lights. Up to 18 lights can be powered by each PSU, but y’all can add multiple PSUs for larger installations. Coming soon are flexible connectors, which volition let you wrap your Lines layout effectually corners.

Features

• Broad range of integrations
• Lots of scenes to choose from
• Simple to control

In one case continued and powered on, the lights can be added to the app and continued to your home network via 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. Apple tree users likewise get the benefit of the lights actualization in the Habitation app.

As with other contempo Nanoleaf products, the Lines likewise act as a Thread Border Router, letting you add Thread-enabled products to your dwelling house without the need for additional hubs.

In both cases, most of the control is via the app. This will motorcar-detect the layout you’ve created, although you should set the orientation of your design before you become started.

For the about part, you’ll work with scenes, which tin set your lights to one colour or multiple colours at the same time, and can exist static or in movement.

Motility scenes are the near fun. The standard ones simply let the lights shift colours, adding a living light to your dwelling. There are besides music scenes, where the Nanoleaf Lines will react and alter color based on the sound they hear – it’southward great for parties.

Although there are lots of light scenes on offer, you tin create your own hands enough, picking the colour palette that you want for motion scenes or choosing the color of each individual lite for static ones.

If you don’t want to reach for the app, the controls on the front let you toggle power, arrange brightness, pace forwards or backwards through scenes, shuffle the scene and toggle the music mode.

Apple users can switch to the Home app for command, although this is much more basic: you can toggle ability and adjust brightness, but tin simply ready the lights to a single colour from the main control. Scenes are available in Favourites or when you long-press the lights. SmartThings integration is similar. What both systems take in common is exposing Nanoleaf Lines to a different organisation, so you tin build routines around them – say, having your lights plough off automatically when y’all go out.

Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant support are available, giving you lot full vocalization control over your lights. You can even change the scene, although y’all have to call up both the name of the scene that yous want and what your lights are called to do this; ultimately, scene selection is largely easier using the app.

Nanoleaf as well has a desktop app for Windows and Mac. This delivers like control over lights but adds a Screen Mirror mode, where the lights change color to match what’s on-screen. This is similar to using the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box, only Nanoleaf’south implementation is software only. It’s a fun way to add a fleck more immersion to games and the like.

Performance

• Splendid colour reproduction
• Ambient rather than functional lighting

Nanoleaf’s panels have always delivered splendid colour reproduction and the Lines are no unlike; there are no weak colours in the pack. Since the lights shine towards the wall, rather than away from it, they create a nice glow that radiates into the room.

Each panel is rated at 20 lumens, which is to say that they’re brilliant enough to be noticeable, even in daylight, but not and then bright to really light upward a room. If you want functional lighting that can alter colour, you’ll desire to buy Philips Hue bulbs.

Where the Nanoleaf Lines really come up to life is with motion scenes – seamlessly moving and blending colours, the Lines seem to come to life in this style.

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