Adding Matter-enabled smart lighting to your home won’t cost a bundle with a slate of new products from Nanoleaf. We’ll let you know about all the new additions to the company’s Essentials lineup.
Time for Matter With Nanoleaf Essentials
Nanoleaf’s Essentials line previously worked with just Apple HomeKit, but the new options offer Matter support.
One of the biggest smart home trends of 2023, Matter allows you to control compatible devices with any Matter-enabled voice assistant or app. Currently, that includes Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings.
Matter is poised to help make using smart home technology much easier and take out the current friction of matching a specific smart home protocol and devices.
Two of the lighting options from Nanoleaf are available to pre-order starting today.
A single A19 bulb is $19.99 with a three-pack costing $49.99. Shipments will begin in mid-April 2023.
The Matter-enabled 80-inch lightstrip is $49.99 and will also arrive starting in mid-April 2023.
Also announced include a three-pack of BR30 bulbs for $49.99, a three-pack of GU10 bulbs for $49.99, and a four-pack of downlights for $119.99 or $34.99 individually.
Each of the lighting options provide Matter-over-Thread support when using a compatible Thread router and Matter controller like Apple's HomePod. Thread is a low-power and self-healing wireless technology. The bulbs and lightstrip also act as Thread routers to extend the range of your network.
Without those, you can still use the lighting with Nanoleaf’s app and Bluetooth.
There’s one small caveat with the new lights, noted first by The Verge. The Matter-only lights won’t work with Apple’s Adaptive Lighting feature that will automatically change the temperature color of your lights as the day progresses.
So if you’re an Apple HomeKit user, and enjoy using that feature, you might want to think twice.
Nanoleaf is also planning to provide over-the-air updates sometime this year to bring Matter compatibility for its existing Shapes, Lines, and Elements.
One of the best new smart home products revealed at CES 2023, the Nanoleaf Sense+ Controls and “Nala” Automation Learning Assistant, will also be Matter compatible.
A Reasonably Priced Way to Build a Matter Smart Home
One of the big draws of the new Nanoleaf Essential products is the reasonable pricing.
If you’re attempting to jump onto the Matter bandwagon, you can do it for less with the new lighting options.