Need some living room mood lighting? Fans of Nanoleaf’s colorful wall panels can now pick up its new HomeKit Essentials Bulb and Lightstrip.
Available exclusively through Apple, the Nanoleaf Bulb is a $20 smart color-changing LED bulb that’s customizable by voice or via the Nanoleaf app. Go classic with white lighting or mix things up with vibrant colors. There’s no need for a hub; you can set schedules on the app, and there’s an adaptive lighting feature that automatically adjusts color temperature throughout the day.
The Bulb offers an average brightness of 806 lumens and max brightness of 1,100 lumens. Nanoleaf says its “unique Rhombicosidodecahedron shape” means it can double as an art piece and doesn’t require a shade, depending on your tastes.
For more immersive lighting, the 80-inch Essentials Lightstrip is $50 and has the same features. There are four white LEDs, two warm and two cool; 40-inch expansions are available for larger spaces.
Nanoleaf’s Essentials lineup works with standard Bluetooth connections. But given this is an Apple Store-exclusive, the company is chatting up the compatibility with the HomePod mini, a $99 smart speaker Apple will ship this month. With the HomePod mini, these lights can tap into Thread, a feature that allows for direct communication between smart devices, according to 9to5Mac, and gives users a wide range of control, plus the option to set custom schedules. Future Thread updates will add color scenes, screen mirroring, and rhythm music sync.
“We’ve focused on Thread to make smart lighting more reliable and accessible to everyone,” Gimmy Chu, CEO and co-founder of Nanoleaf, said in a statement.
PCMag’s best smart light bulbs picks include the Wyze bulb, the Yeelight Smart LED Bulb (Color), and the TP-Link Kasa Smart Multicolor Light Strip (KL430), which each offer affordability and connectivity.
