Brilliant Hardware, terrible app!
New to the range I’ve bought 18 of the newly released GU10 bulbs. They are bright with a good wide lens that really lights up my room better than the standard bulbs I had previously. The problem is your app. It fails to connect, reports devices on/off when they aren’t, different colours, most of the time it doesn’t even respond to touch! I sometimes have to close and restart the app about 5 times to get something done. You’ve got some great devices, for the love of all things holy; please invest some time and effort into the app!
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Great Lights, HORRIBLE APP
This, without a doubt, the most rage inducing app on my devices. Want to shave 4-5 years off your life? Try to update your Nanoleaf lights. The update process is only for the most masochistic among us. Think all you have to do is hit the update button? No…you’ll need to do it over and over because this WILL NEVER work on the first try. I’ve got several Nanoleaf devices from strips to bulbs, and they all have the same issues updating. Updates will outright fail immediately forcing you to hit retry over and over. An update might get all the way to 80-90% after 7-8min and then fail, forcing you to restart from square one. Then, the worst, is that you’ll think the update completed just fine. You’ll think this because it shows completed and shows the current firmware version. If feels like you threw the ring in the lava and it’s job done, now back to the shire…what a trek. Now open the app again and you’ve got a significant chance of the light being back to the version it was previously which means you get to try and update it again, and again, and again… I want to point out this isn’t a one off, isn’t tied to one version of the app, this has been my experience for several years now. Nanoleaf seems to be capable of making quality bulbs, but they seem to be completely incapable of making a functional update process for those bulbs.
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Nanoleaf Lights are Rubbish
Do not waste a single penny on this junk. Can’t tell if it’s HomeKit or the lights but I’ll be saving you a small fortune- all of it is total junk. Coughed up hundreds of dollars replacing all my normal bulbs which I am now reinstalling. All the Nanoleaf bulbs going in the trash. Might work for a week. Lose connection. When they say they’re Unreachable it’s as good as dead. 5 out of 20+ failed almost immediately. No response, impossible to resurrect. Total garbage product. DO NOT BUY
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Ok apart from the firmware updates
In general this app is fine. So is the Nanoleaf hardware. After you’ve accepted the Apple tax. What is super frustrating is the firmware updates simply don’t work. They continuously loop between downloading, processing. Then failing. Happens on almost all of my devices. Painful issue that degrades what is mostly a good experience.
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Technology that doesn’t work right
Nanoleaf firmware update 3.5.37 still has same issues. I have three Nanoleaf Matter lights. Randomly work / don’t work, delayed in taking commands, or don’t take commands. My off brand outside lights that are Bluetooth always work reliably even when I’m in my home (mesh / not Nanoleaf / off brand). My off brand outside Wi-Fi lights will work most of the time with some failure from time to time (Google Assistant). However, the Nanoleaf Matter lights are the most unreliable where one or two fail, delay or don’t take a command even in the same room (status is Thread if I wait and sometimes Wi-Fi) in the same room. It’s super annoying how unresponsive these lights are for the amount of money I spent on them (so giving it one stars for untested technology). I have plenty of border routers Apple TV (previous), Google Home 2nd Gen and Echo Dot (5th). The lights don’t appear to work with Alexa or share out to Alexa (tried various ways of paring with codes).
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RETURN YOUR PURCHASE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE
Would give negative stars if I could. Whoever is developing the software at Nanoleaf needs to be fired. Literally every time this app or panels update all of the syncing breaks and generates infinite errors when trying to reconnect. You’ll end up with bricks on your walls for weeks/months before the next update, which may or may not fix your problems. Support is a joke and offers zero helpful information and repeats things that are a Google search away. SAVE YOUR MONEY - RETURN YOUR PANELS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. Products without centralized hubs suffer miserably in the smart home game.
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needs improvement
I am using this app with three essentials bulbs. I don’t know if it’s the bulbs, or the app, but the app frequently has problems updating the status to show the current color and brightness. One thing I wish this app would do for color temperature is be more like the Lifx app which has different presets that I can select that show exactly what the temp is. It is a pain to use the slider and a pain to get more than one bulb set exactly the same. The same is true for colors. You give us eight quick colors to select from, but it’s not possible to create our own or edit. Also the app allows syncing scenes with the Home app, but clicking on them only lights the bulbs in white. if you look at accessory details in the Home app you will see there is no color set for any scene.
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Works Great.. Until it Doesn’t
I’ve had the lights for about a year now. The lights themselves are great— adjustable brightness, tons of scene options, you name it. This was until the controller stopped working, though. Had my internet go out briefly and haven’t been able to pair the lights back to my phone since — 4 days later. No matter how many resets I cycle the device through, it’s either ‘not found’ through the Nanoleaf app or ‘already connected’ through the Apple Home app. Reached out to support, and the response time was impressive with them offering to send me a replacement controller. Since replying to support, though, I have yet to hear from them. So whether the issue lies in my app, my controller, or by small chance user error, I’m still left with $200 lights that won’t operate, hence my writing here.
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Great Lights, HORRIBLE APP
This, without a doubt, the most rage inducing app on my devices. Want to shave 4-5 years off your life? Try to update your Nanoleaf lights.
The update process is only for the most masochistic among us. Think all you have to do is hit the update button? No…you’ll need to do it over and over because this WILL NEVER work on the first try.
I’ve got several Nanoleaf devices from strips to bulbs, and they all have the same issues updating. Updates will outright fail immediately forcing you to hit retry over and over. An update might get all the way to 80-90% after 7-8min and then fail, forcing you to restart from square one.
Then, the worst, is that you’ll think the update completed just fine. You’ll think this because it shows completed and shows the current firmware version. If feels like you threw the ring in the lava and it’s job done, now back to the shire…what a trek.
Now open the app again and you’ve got a significant chance of the light being back to the version it was previously which means you get to try and update it again, and again, and again…
I want to point out this isn’t a one off, isn’t tied to one version of the app, this has been my experience for several years now. Nanoleaf seems to be capable of making quality bulbs, but they seem to be completely incapable of making a functional update process for those bulbs.
The update process is only for the most masochistic among us. Think all you have to do is hit the update button? No…you’ll need to do it over and over because this WILL NEVER work on the first try.
I’ve got several Nanoleaf devices from strips to bulbs, and they all have the same issues updating. Updates will outright fail immediately forcing you to hit retry over and over. An update might get all the way to 80-90% after 7-8min and then fail, forcing you to restart from square one.
Then, the worst, is that you’ll think the update completed just fine. You’ll think this because it shows completed and shows the current firmware version. If feels like you threw the ring in the lava and it’s job done, now back to the shire…what a trek.
Now open the app again and you’ve got a significant chance of the light being back to the version it was previously which means you get to try and update it again, and again, and again…
I want to point out this isn’t a one off, isn’t tied to one version of the app, this has been my experience for several years now. Nanoleaf seems to be capable of making quality bulbs, but they seem to be completely incapable of making a functional update process for those bulbs.
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Great hardware, awful software. Use a third party
When I bought the Nanoleaf smart bulb, it worked wonderfully with the app, and the app honestly does have intuitive user interface, and well thought out features. So I bought more. I have 5 bulbs now, and its all I use for my bedroom.
I still love the hardware. But after a year or two, the app has a LOT of trouble connecting to the smart bulbs. I used to be able to control them from a few rooms away with my iphones bluetooth. They have an almost infinite scale of color, and they can dim, and flash, and color change into many different patterns. They are also bright enough to light up a room, if you replace all of the room’s normal bulbs. I have also never had one of them blow out, and have had them for a couple years. They now take forever to connect, even when Im standing right next to them. The issue just got worse and worse, and the app is now ridiculously slow and laggy.
Then they started having the pop up ad about connecting them to a thread network using The Nanoleaf Border Router, and to a smart hub to make the app able to connect to the bulbs faster.
It is obvious they throttled the software to sell more mesh network hardware. I can still use the iphone’s preinstalled in “home” app, which somehow connects to the bulbs instantly, using only regular bluetooth.
They intensionally made the app slow to sell more products that speed it up. Bad software; Shameful business practice. But, awesome smart bulbs.
I still love the hardware. But after a year or two, the app has a LOT of trouble connecting to the smart bulbs. I used to be able to control them from a few rooms away with my iphones bluetooth. They have an almost infinite scale of color, and they can dim, and flash, and color change into many different patterns. They are also bright enough to light up a room, if you replace all of the room’s normal bulbs. I have also never had one of them blow out, and have had them for a couple years. They now take forever to connect, even when Im standing right next to them. The issue just got worse and worse, and the app is now ridiculously slow and laggy.
Then they started having the pop up ad about connecting them to a thread network using The Nanoleaf Border Router, and to a smart hub to make the app able to connect to the bulbs faster.
It is obvious they throttled the software to sell more mesh network hardware. I can still use the iphone’s preinstalled in “home” app, which somehow connects to the bulbs instantly, using only regular bluetooth.
They intensionally made the app slow to sell more products that speed it up. Bad software; Shameful business practice. But, awesome smart bulbs.
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