If you’re a fan of Nanoleaf and their programmable lighting, capable of achieving over 16 million color combinations, you’ll be a fan of today’s product launch.
If you’re a fan of Nanoleaf’s ever-expanding outdoor lighting options, that are weatherproofed and capable of multiple animated scenes and colors, you’ll also be a fan of today’s launch announcement.
If you’d just like to be able to walk into your local Walmart and buy Nanoleaf products without having to order them online…guess what?
Nanoleaf had a busy day, launching two very different lighting solutions and announcing a distribution deal with one of the largest retailers in the country.
Rope Light
The Nanoleaf Rope Light leverages the same kind of ultra-flexible, multicolor LED rope found in their recently-launched Multicolor Floor Lamp but ditches the rigid housing to give you more design options. The Rope Light is RGB-addressable and comes in 5m lengths, with a soft silicone diffuser over top that gives it an even glow. Each starter pack comes with 30 wall mounts, giving you everything you need to create a unique lighting installation on your wall.
The Rope Light is fairly easy to work with in person, but you’ll want to make sure you take your time and plan your shape. The adhesive on the back of each clip is really only good to mark a spot — the included screws are necessary to ensure everything stays in place. You won’t be able to get sharp angles out of the soft rope light but I was able to make a backlit frame for a picture in my office with very little setup.
The Rope Lights of course integrate with the Nanoleaf app, which means they can be programmed with dynamic effects, gradients, and more (I’m partial to a an 80’s-neon Miami scene, myself). It also works with the Nanoleaf Desktop App, to sync to your games and media, and 4d Sync+, to provide even more lighting options for your TV.
The Rope Light set up easily over WiFi, but you can also use Bluetooth. It’s Matter-compatible, which means you can integrate it into all your Apple Home schedules. There’s also an in-line controller if you don’t feel like connecting to anything and just want to make the pretty lights glow. For the (literal) flexibility you get with the Rope Light, it’s surprisingly inexpensive at $69.99.
Solar Garden Lights
Nanoleaf is also launching their first-ever solar-powered lights. The Solar Garden Lights look a bit like a deconstructed flower sculpture and install in minutes. They sport a IP65 weatherproof rating and have eight LED bulbs per fixture, each on a flexible black stalk. They come with two sizes of garden stake and mounting hardware for the solar panel controller, giving you even more solutions. They don’t connect to the Nanoleaf app, so you’re limited to just eight RGB colors and 11 preset animated multicolor scenes (accessed via remote control). You can also just tune them to the brightness and white level that works for your outdoor decoration and leave it at that. It’s a bit disappointing, I’d love to be able to sync these up to the Permanent Outdoor Lights, but it’s just enough versatility that it’ll work with just about any season’s illumination.
The solar panel controller has built-in daylight sensors that automatically turn the lights on at dusk and off at dawn or auto-off timers for 4, 6, or 8 hours if you’d rather have them on for a fixed amount of time. If solar power isn’t sufficient, you can also charge them via USB-C. The remote control can control up to 20 lights…though I did have some difficulty getting my lights to sync up to the same scene. I had to sync the scenes manually through the solar panel controller first.
These are also surprisingly inexpensive at $49.99 for a 2-pk. You can also get packs of 6 for $134.99 or 12 for $250. Especially with the ability to control up to 20 at once, I can see these being a bit of an impulse buy.
Welcome to Walmart
And how am I going to impulse buy the Solar Garden Lights? Well, now that Nanoleaf has expanded to launch their product into Walmart stores, it’ll be even easier. In addition to the Rope Light and Solar Garden Lights, Nanoleaf will have their recently launched Pegboard Desk Dock, new pack sizes for their ubiquitous Shapes, more pack sizes for Blocks (one of my favorite Nanoleaf launches), and more.
Nanoleaf has been consistently reliable with their tech and keep on coming up with fun ways to cram even more LEDs into more things. Given the versatility of their products, I see this being a big step for the company.
