nanoleaf NL527005HB7P Element Wood LookSmart Kit (7 Panels)

Trouble with pairing. Pairing failed.

Very aesthetically pleasing

Yes it has a large price tag but it's more of an art piece and smart product produced at low volumes. Pros: Nice design with interlocking hexagons. I'd suggest to measure and lay out your design on the floor. Take a picture and hold up to the wall. Level your first hexagon perfectly then you don't need to worry about the rest. Simple install. Once you get past your design anxiety and making sure your first hexagon is measured and near perfect, the rest just comes into place. They stay on the wall great. Smart home options. You can use their app and manage your lights there. It also comes with a "remote" that links to any of the hexagons you want. But you can also integrate with your favorite smart home solution. I personally use Home Assistant via HomeKit integration. You can also trigger different actions when you touch different hexagons, though this is more if you're comfortable with smart home customization. Expandable. If I decided to add more hexagons or decorate the edges with colored triangles or lines, I could. Bright and variety of whites. You can use auto brightness adjust manually. Also set various whites from cool to warm to sunrise/sunset oranges. It comes with a large library of presets that you can save to your favorites for it to cycle upon shuffle, from cloud motion to star twinkle to starbursts to neon. Plus of course the music mode (if the music is in the same room, it doesn't line up as much further away). Cons: Their app looks great but isn't always reliable and firmware updates aren't confidence-inspiring, though optional. Although compatible with Elements shapes, it's more of an afterthought as it uses the same screens and sometimes gives you suggestions for RGB colors rather than just shades of white. For the price I wish you got an extra 2 or 3 hexagons. Or a more lightweight app. When I open it it seems like they want to upsell me. The "wood" itself is a bit too consistent and manufactured. Although this makes it easy to make sure the "grain" lines up to each other, it doesn't feel as natural. Mixed feedback on removal. I tried to uninstall one and although I could see it be a bit awkward in a few years when I forget what the back looks like, it's fine and replaceable with a spare 3m Command wall strip. I get the feeling that people who complain about removal don't realize there's a set way of removing the glue and instead accidentally rip them off. They're like command strips and need to be stretched parallel to the wall and NOT pulled towards you away from the wall. If you have the time, knowledge, and tools, you could build this yourself at a third of the price. But that's true with most anything: meals, computers, furniture, etc.

Very nice

The final result was great, but man were these things a nightmare to put up. Some years back, I bought the Nanoleaf triangle light panels and had a love/hate relationship with them. I loved them when they worked, however the sticky adhesive that came with them ripped the paint off my walls, so I quickly learned to use regular command strips instead of whatever came in the package. They also did a huge relaunch of the app a few months after I purchased the panels, and they never connected the same way again. I ended up just getting to a point where I kept it on my fave color/light pattern and my fave brightness setting and never bothered using the app any more. I held off for a while but finally figured if I had to do the same thing with these elements hexagon panels, it would still be worth it for the vibe I wanted to create in my apartment. Turns out setting these up were just as much of a struggle as the other panels... but in my opinion, they are worth it for the end result. This time I didn't even try with the adhesive included in the package -- my first piece of advice is to get a bunch of those big velcro command strips as they're much easier to remove if needed. There's a circular panel in the middle of the hexagons that rotates, and I highly recommend attaching the command strips there. The rotating circle panel makes it easier to adjust once it's on the wall, which is nice. However the rotating panel can be annoying if you're trying to make sure everything is perfectly level, as it keeps rotating while you try to connect other panels. So be ready to fight a bit with that, lol. My second piece of advice is to lay out your design pattern on the floor first, and also figure out where to put the connector pieces so that you have enough. They give you the bare minimum in the starter pack, so be ready for that. At first I really wanted a connector for every spot so the panels would stick together better, however that was impossible for the design I wanted to create and the amount of panels I had. My biggest piece of advice is to make sure you have all the connector pieces already attached when you put a new panel on the wall. The connectors are practically impossible to add to a panel once it's stuck to the wall -- they snap into place pretty firmly but if you try to attach more while it's on the wall, they have a tendency to fall off very easily. Also extremely frustrating, so make sure to snap the connectors into place BEFORE putting them on the wall. You can also disconnect the panel from the little rotating circle in the center, which was helpful when I realized the connectors would keep falling off unless I snapped them into place before putting them on the wall. I had to pull all the panels off, attach connectors, then push them back onto the little rotating circle panel that was still stuck to the wall. If you get more than one starter box like I did (I got 2 so that I would have 14 panels total), make sure the number of the power adapter matches the number on the slip of paper with the QR code to connect the panels to the app, and that it also matches the number on the little control panel piece. I didn't realize the app would only connect if I used the same power adapter AND the control panel AND the QR code I scanned. You would think the power adapter wouldn't matter but apparently it does. Final piece of advice is to be ready for frustration with the app. Thankfully they upgraded the panels a bit so you can use the Apple Home app to turn them off and on and adjust the brightness. But in order to adjust the colors and patterns and create custom "scenes," you'll have to use to Nanoleaf app. I've had it connected for about 4 days now and so far it hasn't disconnected yet, but after my previous experience with my triangle panels I know that probably won't last for long. My advice is that once you have things connected, find or create a few scenes you like and "favorite" them. That way even if it disconnects from the app, you can still use the little arrow button on the panels themselves to cycle through your different scene options and just leave it set to the one you like the best. It can be confusing when you're creating or editing the scenes too, every time you make any tiny adjustment it wants you to rename the whole scene and save it as a separate one. So be ready to do a lot of editing and playing around with that. For how expensive these are, it's pretty frustrating how difficult it can be to install them and get them connected. But overall I really love the way they look, and they match the aesthetic of my apartment really well. I think they're worth it, but just know you will probably struggle for hours when first putting them up.