Look Past Costs for Charming Elegance with Advanced Outdoor String Lighting Solutions

Key Takeaways

• Nanoleaf Essentials Matter Outdoor String Lights are great for mood lighting with their dynamic colors and Wi-Fi compatibility.
• Although the price may be high compared to non-smart lights, these lights are unique and worth the investment for smart home enthusiasts.
• The Nanoleaf app may be lackluster, but the lights integrate well with other smart platforms like Apple Home and can be controlled easily.

Outdoor string lights always seem like a good idea for a backyard patio until you forget to use them regularly. The Nanoleaf Essentials Matter Outdoor String Lights won’t solve any headaches of actually installing them, but their universal Wi-Fi connection did solve my “use them” problem, and they’ve been great.

Nanoleaf Essentials Matter Outdoor String Lights

7/ 10

Illuminate your outdoor spaces with these Smart Matter-enabled Multicolor Outdoor String Lights. Set the mood with these uniquely shaped addressable LED bulbs with a single color, or multiple colors at once for dynamic flowing gradients.

Pros

• Compatible with most smart platforms
• Plenty of color combinations and effects
• Nice physical appearance

Cons

• Lackluster Nanoleaf app
• High price compared to non-smart string lights

$129.99 at Nanoleaf $199.99 at Best Buy

How We Test and Review Products

Price and Availability

The Essentials Matter Outdoor String Lights starter kit retails for $129.99 for 15 meters and goes up to $289.98 for 45 meters. Once you have a starter kit you can add on to it with an extension kit which starts at $99.99 for 15 meters.

Specifications

Music Reactive

Yes

Wattage

24W

Working Temperature

-15 to +40C

Length

15, 30, 45m

Brightness

~55 lumens/bulb

Outdoor

IP65

Control Methods

Matter, Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, Razer Chroma

Light Colors

16+ million

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The Value of Outdoor String Lights

Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek

The thing that elevates an outdoor space is the mood lighting. I recently wandered down an aisle of a retail store with dozens of string light choices. There were small bulbs and big bulb options with different shapes with varying lengths. The prices were reasonable, mostly under $50, but none of them were smart. You still needed to turn them on and off manually.

After hanging the new Nanoleaf Essentials Outdoor String Lights that are Matter compatible, I fully understand why it can be important to have your lights turn on automatically, react to the time of day, and be color-changeable, all from your phone. It works great.

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Once I got the lights out of the box and examined them up close, I really liked their unique exterior design. There’s an elegance to the blubs that goes beyond the standard rounded shape. I’m using the 30-meter version which translates to about 98 feet. There are 40 individual addressable lights within that distance. It features an IP67 rating, 16+ million colors, and lighting temperatures that range between 2,700K and 6,500K—bright whites and soft yellow glow. (These features are standard across all the various length options.)

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Wi-Fi Connections For All

Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek

The beauty of these Nanoleaf Essentials Outdoor String Lights is their Matter compatibility. The string lights can connect over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or Matter (using Wi-Fi). Let’s break that down.

Connecting to these using Bluetooth will only allow you to access them locally, when you’re at home, right next to the lights. That’s fine when you’re sitting outside, but it’s the equivalent of using a TV remote in the same room as a TV to change the channel.

Instead of doing that, I connected my string lights using Matter over Wi-Fi to integrate them into my Apple Homekit home. By connecting them over Wi-Fi to my router, the lights can have a persistent connection and react to commands, or other factors, even when I’m not home.

The first thing I did was to set the lights to come on 10 minutes before sunset. That means that even as the seasons fluctuate, I don’t have to continually monitor what time it’s getting dark in order to turn these lights on. They will automatically turn on at dusk.

Every night, over a few months, the lights pop on when they should and then a couple of hours later they turn off. I’ve had a handful of times when they remained on, for whatever reason. Their distance isn’t too far from a Wi-Fi access point, but it might have lost connection. But for the most part, everything has been as expected.

I can tell Siri to turn the lights on and off at will. I can add them to other automation tasks, like not coming on if my phone isn’t at home. After experimentation, I’ve kept their functionality pretty standard with soft white light. But whenever a party does break out I know I can add the lights into the mix.

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The Nanoleaf mobile app works fine, but I found it to be lackluster. Beyond standard color choices, the app wants to push you towards spending time creating your own lighting creations or using music-activated options. There are a fair amount of pre-configured lighting options, but I never found myself wanting to dig in and spend time creating more. I found myself controlling the lights through Apple’s Home app more than the Nanoleaf app. (With the Matter lights you can only use the Home app for schedules, for whatever technical reason.)

Should You Buy the Nanoleaf Essentials Matter Outdoor String Lights?

Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek

No matter how cool the Nanoleaf Essentials Matter Outdoor String Lights are, their $130 starting price for 49 feet is comparatively high. You can buy the same length of non-smart string lights for $100 cheaper. If the cost isn’t a deterrent, however, these Wi-Fi-connected string lights work well and are just neat all around. Plus, being Matter compatible means there’s the widest compatibility and future support.

Nanoleaf Essentials Matter Outdoor String Lights

7/ 10

Illuminate your outdoor spaces with these Smart Matter-enabled Multicolor Outdoor String Lights. Set the mood with these uniquely shaped addressable LED bulbs with a single color, or multiple colors at once for dynamic flowing gradients.

$129.99 at Nanoleaf $199.99 at Best Buy