By this point, most of us are super familiar with Nanoleaf and its quality. They’re absolutely fantastic products. Expensive, sure. But the lighting designs and effects you can produce on your wall are absolutely wicked. But this time around, Nanoleaf has created a kit from their Shapes range that mimics that of a popular blue Sega character. Can you guess who it is? Sonic the Hedgehog of course!
Nanoleaf has teamed up with the creators of the new Sonic The Hedgehog 2 movie to create a Nanoleaf Shapes package which can make up Sonic’s head. It’s a bizarre matchup for sure, but certainly a welcome one because Sonic the Hedgehog was definitely one of my childhood favourites!
The kit is made up of 32 different light panels, more specifically their triangle panels, of which there is a mixture of four big and 28 small triangle panels. They connect to each other as you would imagine, using the small plastic connectors, and include sticky adhesive pads to stick to your wall. There’s also the usual controller to set up your Nanoleaf light panels, and of course, if you wanted Sonic to be a different colour, like when he goes into his Super Sonic form and turns yellow, you can.
Setting up the panels was a bit of a puzzle at first but I used the box to find my way through the exact setup needed. I followed the image on the box by the way and laid it out on the floor before I started messing around with the plastic panel connectors. There weren’t any instructions in the box, so I had to guess which panels needed the connectors, which at this point I thought was fine, but more on that in a moment when I talk about lighting scenes. Everything powered up, and did the flashes normally with Nanoleafr products to say it’s ready so I proceeded into the app.
Inside of the Nanoleaf app, it’s all relatively straightforward to set up your Sonic Nanoleaf panels. I personally use the NFC tap on the controller to connect the panels to my WiFi, but you can also do it by scanning the QR code on the controller or even manually.
The setup here was straightforward as usual which is nice for smart lighting products. It saw my WiFi straight away, accepted my password, and connected to the network. Simple. But, issues arose when I was trying to get my new Nanoleaf panels to show a Sonic face. During setup, I stated which way the lighting design was meant to go, and there are lighting presets inside of the app which was added to my list of custom designs for Sonic, Knuckles, Tails and Super Sonic, but these didn’t match up to my design in any way shape or form. It looked a mess, and I had to dive into the custom paint kit to manually light my Sonic face. Not that it was a massive issue, it just added steps to the setup that I would have ideally liked to have avoided. As I said before, this may have something to do with the panel connectors being in the wrong place, but who knows. There’s no instructions in the box.
But once that was done, I had a Sonic Nanoleaf Shapes face and it was all good to go. And you know what? It looks wicked. Much bigger than I was expecting looking at press images and the image on the box. It’s super bright too, and was more than enough to light some ambience in my living room, and it wasn’t even on the wall, it was on my review desk. The app again is feature-rich with different scenes, so if you’re bored with Sonic’s face you can match it to your other Nanoleaf panels in a big scene.
I’m not sure it’s quite my cup of tea, being 32 I think I would prefer personally a more random and intricate pattern for my panels, but if you’re looking at something for a kid’s bedroom or some kind of playroom or games room, then this Sonic Nanoleaf Shapes kit might be right up your street. If you want to see a more in-depth review of the Nanoleaf app and what you can do with it, check out our main Nanoleaf Shapes review here. If you’re wanting a kit for yourself, then head over to the Nanoleaf website.