Nanoleaf Essentials Smart LED Color-Changing Light Bulb (60W) – RGB & Warm to Cool Whites, App & Voice Control (Works with Apple Home, Google Home)

HomeKit Must Have
The only HomeKit light bulbs that I trust. Easy to setup, easy to control, great value for the money.

Got them connected to Alexa
This was kind of hard to figure out, so I thought I’d share what finally got these connected to Alexa. First, I downloaded the official Nanoleaf app and added them to that using the QR codes. Then I went into the settings of each bulb inside the Nanoleaf app. There’s a button that says connect to Apple/Matter. Connect each bulb to Apple home. You won’t need the QR code. Now here’s the tricky part: in order to connect to Alexa. You need to go into the Apple home app, click on the bulb, click on settings, and then click on “turn on pairing mode”. copy that 11 digit code. now go into Alexa, where it will have automatically discovered the bulbs. Tell it that they use matter. But instead of scanning the QR code use that code you just copied from the Apple home app. Voilà your bulbs are now connected to Alexa. This is kind of Byzantine and ridiculous, but it did work in the end.

Better than Phillips Hue
I love the fact these lights do not have to have a bridge for them to integrate with your smart home.Thread technology makes them fast and responsive.Nanoleaf tends to be an expensive brand, but they last and their lights are a reliable, affordable alternative to other smart lights out there.Nanoleafs app allows you to customize the colors and sequence to make these truly unique to where or how you program them. And the colors can be bold and deeper than most other smart lights.I use these for Apple HomeKit and were straightforward to set up.

More expensive than they look.
Update: I also bought a set of Nanoleaf Lines. These have made the app faster and more reliable. I still cannot schedule the bulbs, and circadian lighting still cannot be set in a scene. The desktop app is basically worthless – it constantly crashes and needs to be reconfigured after every shutdown.Still considering a return because the price point is so high and the connectivity/configurability of these bulbs are poor.–I bought these because I was excited that they were google compatible, no hub needed, rgbcw light bulbs. I got the 3 pack and put them in my living room – a side table, a desk lamp, and a floor lamp.I’m considering returning them less than a week in. I feel like the only way to get these lights to work as described is to also buy a nanoleaf shapes set, which is a hefty investment.Light quality:Beautiful bright whites, with 5 degrees of warmth.Dimmer is a good range, can get very dim.RGB colors have a full spectrum but are dim even at full brightness. Don’t plan to do anything but watch a TV or monitor if you have all your lights in RGB mode.Connectivity:It took me forever to find the guide to connect my lights to my Google home. Nanoleaf’s links did not work – I found a walk through on a third party website.Google assistant can turn 2 of my 3 lights on or off on average – one always is missing. It varies which one.Google cannot schedule lights (requires a thread router, i.e. a 200 set of nanoleaf shapes)Google cannot set scenes (requires a thread router)The mobile app cannot schedule these lights for the same reason.The mobile app takes a while to locate my lights so that i can turn them on, off, or change the color. Most of the time it cannot find 1 or 2 of the lights and I have to restart the app.App:The mobile app is a challenge to use.Essential lights can only have a limited number of basic scenes (preset color patterns) on them.Circadian lighting cannot be set in a scene (this means you have to choose circadian lighting on each bulb, each time after you change a scene).Circadian lighting sometimes forgot to update (warm up after sunset) unless I opened the app.So -I really feel like these are great bulbs if you are already bought in to nanoleaf panels.As standalone bulbs they are great white spectrum bulbs with beautiful if dim rgb colors, but they are very frustrating to use.