I’ve been a long fan of bias lighting both on my monitor and TV, and an even bigger fan of having it synced although having to use a HDMI sync box which was not only expensive, but fell behind the wave of next-gen consoles requiring HDMI 2.1, made it a bridge too far for most. Enter the Nanoleaf 4D which cleverly does away the need to plug in your HDMI cords to an external box, cleverly using a camera to recognise what’s on-screen.
The kit comes in an up to 65-inch or an up to 85-inch, and just because I was testing the device in a pre-release fashion, unfortunately all that was on offer was the 65-inch version which wouldn’t have worked well with my 77-inch Samsung S95C, so I decided to test it with my monitor.
The installation of the actual light strip is probably the most tedious part of the entire setup and probably made worse by the limited working room with a smaller monitor. There’s four corners pieces in the box which allow you to wrap the lightstrip around the edges, and at least give some guidance, but they are still hard to work with and will lend to parts of the lightstrip pointing away from the monitor/TV instead of the wall (but that didn’t seem to impact performance).
Something that Nanoleaf got right is the ability to easily cut the lightstrip down, without it causing any issues with the lightstrip knowing where to put each colours on the strip relative to what’s on-screen. This is done cleverly in-app by a simple process that tells the light-strip where each corner of your device is, and works super well.
Similarly, the setup of the camera is super easy. You can place it above your monitor or below it, and you simply view it in-app and select the borders of your monitor in-app so that it knows where to look and sync to rather than anything in view of the fishbowl like camera. For those that might have privacy concerns, which is totally valid considering the camera is pointing directly at your monitor, there is a magnetic lens cover, although Nanoleaf assure no data is being stored or sent anywhere.
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There’s also an external box that acts as a controller where you can flip between the four syncing settings, turn rhythm scenes on or just colour scenes. I did find the controller a little glitchy to use, with it often doing nothing, or not syncing up what was in-app.
Thankfully though using the app was really seamless and it also synced to Apple Homekit as well. Something Nanoleaf has done really well is provide different levels of sync ranging from 1D, to 2D, to 3D to 4D. 1D basically provides a bit of whiter bias lighting for those that might be working or just want a bit of bias lighting to improve contrast. 2D and 3D up the anti on introducing colour, but keep it to general areas, where 4D almost perfectly matches each part of the screen with its respective light bar.
I spent most of my time watching content in 4D and it did a great job of keeping up and really extending my monitor out beyond the screen to help immersion. I could really see it being impressive on a larger TV. You can switch then between cinematic mode which is more subtle and also turns the lightstrip totally black in darker or black scenes (which is actually preferred). If you’re wanting an extra level of wow-factor though, vivid mode basically goes over the top with colours, even in darker scenes and is definitely great for when you have guests over.
Outside of that, you can turn on syncing to sounds or just set basic colours or other scenes just like other lightstrips, and as mentioned already, I’m a big fan of bias lighting, so I was flicking to a warm white when I wasn’t watching content or playing games and it was a nice level of brightness.
At $190-$230 (depending on which size), it’s really a no-brainer to go in this direction over other brands such as the Philips Hue which require a $500 HDMI sync box without even factoring the $$300+ for a lightstrip alone. I think the Hue Lightstrip is probably a bit brighter and more vibrant, but not to the point I’d recommend spending 2-3x the cost.
If you’re already in the Nanoleaf ecosystem, you can also use Sync+ to sync up other panels as well which is much appreciated as the more lighting you can have on the wall behind your TV/monitor, the more immersive it’s going to be.
There’s a few little glitches I’d loved to see ironed out like the controller, and the app having a few little glitches or being slow to refresh, but hopefully with time, and as we get closer to launch, these are ironed out, as I really do think that at the price, this is really a no-brainer just to get that extra bit of wow-factor from your setup.
@shannongrixti The Nanoleaf 4D uses a camera to mirror what’s happening on screen to a light strip for added immersion #Nanoleaf #Nanoleaf4D #Gaming #Tech #Monitor #TV #smartlighting #smarthome
