Nanoleaf Canvas decorates your smart home in living color
Smart Home
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Toronto based smart lighting startup Nanoleaf is back.
With new LED light panels for your wall.
Dubbed Nanoleaf Canvas, the new square shaped color changers.
Feature touch sensitivity, a built in microphone to sync them up with whatever music your listening to.
And voice controls with Siri, Alexa and the Google Assistant You can add up to 500 panels to a single set up 25 per power supply and a 9 panel starter kit cost $250.
Now that is obviously not cheap, but it's also not much more than you'd spend on say a four bulb starter kit from Philips Hue.
For the money, you're getting a very distinctive set of smart lights for out-and-proud smart home setups.
They're not for everyone, but they are undeniably Unique.
The approach is similar to the first set of triangular shaped LED light panels, you'll stick them to your walls with double-sided tape and link each one together using little connector chips.
One of the panels in the starter kit features built-in buttons for quick control of the lights, but you can also sync them up with your home's WiFi network to automate them or control them on your phone, or with voice commands.
Now, let's start with what I like about.
Lights.
I honestly wasn't sure how I was going to feel about the new design that splits each panel into four quadrants to help evenly disperse the light, but seeing it close up I really like it actually, it's kind of a nice marbled effect.
And the square shaped panels also look a lot less alien than the triangular ones did.
I also like that rhythm mode, one of [UNKNOWN] best features is now built-in by default.
No extra mic accessory needed.
On the downside, the new touch controls which let you push a panel to create a ripple effect seem a bit like an underwhelming gimmick here at launch.
And I hate the sticky tabs that Nanoleaf gives you the help to put these things up on your wall.
The way the panels are designed makes it so there's really no good way to get them off of your wall without damaging paint.
Velcro tabs like the ones that come with LIFX tiles would have been a whole lot better.
If I were buying Nanoleaf Canvas for my home I'd be sure to pick some of those up along with them.
Something else you should know, the connections on the back of each panel aren't in the center of each side like they are with the triangles.
That lets you stagger the connections for a better design flexibility, which is nice, but note that they aren't the same on each side.
That means that you'll need to put some extra thought into how you're going to arrange them before you start sticking them to your walls.
Fortunately, Nanoleaf's app has a really cool layout assistant that helps you figure things out on your phone.
There's even an augmented reality features that lets you preview how your configuration will look on your walls before you put anything up.
All in all, if you're a fan of Nanoleaf, or of color changing lights like these Then there's a lot to like here.
Nanoleaf Canvas can jazz up a party, wake you up with an artificial sunset in the morning, sync up with your Razor Chroma compatible PC games, or just add a fun funky aesthetic to your home.
Whether or not that's worth 250 is up to you.
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