Nanoleaf Solar Garden Lights Review

Introduction

Outdoor lights are a brilliant way of changing the way your garden looks at night, but if you don’t have outdoor power sockets or any way of running neat cabling, the Nanoleaf Solar Garden Lights could well be of interest.

Charging via solar (or USB-C), these lights have a wide-range of effects and are quick and easy to set up. A few niggles got in the way of my enjoyment, but read on to find out if these lights are a good match for your garden.

Design and Installation

• Separate solar panel
• USB-C charging
• Multiple pack sizes are available

You can buy the Nanoleaf Solar Garden Lights in a pack of two or a pack of six, depending on how many you want to install in your garden. Each set comes with the lights and a remote control.

Each light consists of eight wands with an individual colour-changing LED on top. These wands are bendable, so you can tilt the lights the way that you want.

Lights need to be staked into the ground, and there’s a choice to use the extension tube for more height, or just to have the Nanoleaf Solar Garden Lights closer to the ground. It all depends on where you want the lights to go and what’s around them.

Battery and charging are provided by the solar unit, which connects to the lights via a cable. This unit can be staked into the ground or you can use the wall mount. If you’re relying on solar energy, then you do need to place the solar panel so that it can soak up as much sun as possible.

Alternatively, the lights can be charged via USB-C if you need to get them going. It’s an option in an emergency, but as you’ll likely run the battery down each night, charging via USB-C isn’t a practical solution for everyday use.

Features and performance

• Remote control
• Variable colours
• Dynamic effects can be a bit much

Although a Nanoleaf product, the Solar Garden Lights aren’t compatible with the app for remote control. I get that having Wi-Fi or Thread built in would probably put too much strain on the battery, but Bluetooth control would have been a nice option.

With the Linkind Smart Solar Spotlight SL5C, Bluetooth control makes it much easier to configure your lights to work the way that you want.

With the Nanoleaf Solar Garden Lights, the basic way they operate is via a light sensor, turning on when it’s dark and off when it’s light (or when there’s strong ambient lighting, such as me turning on my main outdoor lights). You can also use the button on the solar panel to cycle through the available effects.

To control how they operate in more detail, there’s a bundled remote control that can control up to 20 lights simultaneously.

Via the remote, you can turn the lights on or off, although they’ll only stay on if it’s dark enough. The default behaviour is to stay on until morning (or the battery runs out), but there’s an option for four-, six- or eight-hour timers. With these options, the lights turn on when it’s dark and then turn off when the timer runs out.

That, of course, means that the lights turn on at different times during the year. With the Linkind lights, I could set them to come on when it’s dark and at a specific time, for uniform operation through the year.

Colour control is available. For basic lighting, I could change the colour temperature, moving between warm and cold whites. This is nice to have for ambient lighting, although I noticed that one of my sets had one LED that was a different shade to the others.

For solid colours, there’s an RGB button to cycle through the options. Colour intensity is good through the range, and there’s enough choice to find something that will suit your garden.

There’s also a range of dynamic effects, although a lot of these are a bit too in your face, and would suit a Christmas tree more than the garden. I switched away from these options, preferring the static colours.

All modes also have brightness controls, so you can get the right level to suit your garden.

Once an option has been set, a light should remember its mode and options, but I immediately had an issue. I set both of my lights to a warm white, but a couple of hours later, one set had moved to dynamic lighting and was flashing different colours; not what I wanted. 

I used the remote button to resync the lights and the reset option. While the lights generally keep the same setting, I’ve found that one will occasionally change modes on its own.

Battery life really depends on how much charge you can get into them. Writing now in the middle of Spring, even on a cloudy day, the lights have enough charge that they’re still going as I go to bed. As the nights draw in, depending on sunlight and where you’ve put them, battery life could vary.

Should you buy it?

FAQs