Hands-on review: Nanoleaf Hexagons, the lights of the future!

Ever since I reviewed the Nanoleaf Panels Rhythm edition in May, I have been obsessed with these lights. I was excited to get my hands on the 9 Panels Hexagon starter kit. I moved the Nanoleaf Panels to the bedroom so that the new Hexagons can take centre stage on the living room wall.

Box content and set up process

The box comes packed with everything you need. It has the 9 Hexagon panels, a controller that attaches to one of the panels, a 240V power supply, linkers to connect the panels and a quick start guide.

Just like the original panels, the Hexagons are extremely easy to set up. All you have to do is pair them with the Wi-Fi router, and then they show up on the Nanoleaf mobile app.

The application then can help with the design of the pattern. It suggests different designs while also giving you the opportunity to create your own. I eventually ended up setting the nine panels up in a triangular way that resembled a tree. I thought that would be awesome around Christmas time!

After deciding on your pattern, all that is left is to tape the panels to the wall, plug them in and let the fun begin.

While this is not necessary, I connected the lights to both Siri and Google home so that I can control them from any smart device in my house.

What's new

The Nanoleaf Panels Rhythm edition were already perfect. You can choose colours and themes, and you can make them react to music. The Hexagons essentially do everything the Panels did and a lot more!

The new design means that you will get the most out of the lights. While the Panels are great, the lights do not use up the entire Panel, which leaves you with some dark spots.

The new design allows you to take advantage of the entire panel. The hexagonal shape also means that the design and pattern possibilities are endless! The community is doing some amazing looking designs. And Nanoleaf's exclusive LayoutDetect technology enables colour animations to flow perfectly between panels based on your layout.

The app gives you access to seemingly endless designs that are uploaded by Nanoleaf themselves and other users. Choosing a Rhythm scene allows the panels to react to music and sounds which is great for parties (when we can have those again).

One of the new cool features is the fact that they are touch-sensitive! This allows for gesture controls that can be set from the Nanoleaf App. I set them up so that swiping right and left switches between different colour scenes. Swiping and down controls the brightness and touching the bottom left panel once turns the entire set up on and off.

In theory, this feature also allows for some fun interactive puzzle games. Sadly, I am not creative enough to create one and the ones on the application are a little lacking. I am hoping that the community or Nanoleaf themselves will add some fun ones soon as that could be fun. I can imagine they can create a fun "whack a mole" type game.

The last and the arguably coolest new addition was the screen mirroring option. This option allows you to mirror a screen onto the light panels. This means that if you are watching a movie and the scene is dark, the lights will go dark. If the next scene is an explosion and a huge fire, the lights will explode orange in live time with the movie. This provides for an exciting immersive experience. Considering we are not allowed to go to cinemas, making movies at home exciting is almost essential and this feature does just that.

Verdict

Now that I have the Nanoleaf lights set up in my living room and my office, I can't imagine ever living without them. How did I ever live with boring regular lights that are controlled by a switch that always seems to be located so far away from me?

I can't recommend these lights enough. They are fun, they are exciting, they are a great conversation starter, and they look amazing.