Review: Nanoleaf 4D Kit

I watched Return of the King with 4D lighting, and I never want to go back.

The colors of Mount Doom's lava poured onto the wall behind my TV, and the flickering lanterns as Aragorn took up Andúril, the flame of the west, warmed my living room. The green of the Shire felt nearly in reach. It was all thanks to a little camera hanging over my television, and the light strip wrapped around the back of it.

These two items—the Nanoleaf 4D Screen Mirror and Lightstrip—are Nanoleaf's 4D Kit, when paired together with an included controller box. The kit uses a camera to capture the colors onscreen, and then reflects them onto the light strip to create an immersive backlight show. Even though it's an external camera and there's no software or cords connecting it to the TV, it reacted quickly and surprisingly seamlessly with what was onscreen.

The Nanoleaf 4D kit.

Photograph: Nanoleaf

The Nanoleaf 4D kit.

Photograph: Nanoleaf

The 4D Kit is surprisingly simple to set up. There's the camera, which you can either place below the TV pointing upward, or hook onto the top of the TV pointing down. I chose pointing down since my TV is on a bookshelf, making the above angle less noticeable to me when I watch TV or play video games.

Then there's the lightstrip itself. The lightstrip comes in two sizes: one for up to 65-inch TVs, and one for up to 85-inch TVs. My TV is smaller than 65 inches, so even though I got the smaller size, I had a little too much light strip. But the light strip is trimmable, so I was able to cut some of the excess so that it wasn't in the way (just make sure to cut from the true end of the lightstrip, not the side that connects to the power source). The lightstrip comes with a tape backing and four rounded corner pieces you can stick to the back of the TV to help place it. I recommend using them, since it's much easier to bend the lightstrip using those corner pieces than without.

The Nanoleaf 4D kit.

Photograph: Nanoleaf

After that, you plug both the lightstrip and the camera into the little controller box, plug in the box, and do a few quick setup steps within the app. First, you get a preview of what the camera sees, which is your TV screen from the angle where you placed it. The app displays a moveable polygon that you can stretch or shrink to best capture the TV screen and its corners. It then uses mappable LED lights to ask you to confirm where each of the TV's four corners are on the lightstrip.

That setup screen also shows you everything the camera sees, so it lends you some peace of mind if you're worried about another camera in your home capturing anything you don't want it to. It also comes with a magnet cover to cover the camera when you're not using it.

The entire kit is ready to go immediately after completing setup within the app. There's no software or connections to the TV (ideal for someone like me, who has already filled every input her TV has), unlike other lightstrips. That also means you don't have to worry about compatibility with streaming or gaming services—as long as it'll play on your TV, you can use it with this kit.

The Nanoleaf 4D kit.

Photograph: Nanoleaf

When it's screen mirroring, the app allows you to choose from four different settings: 1D, 2D, 3D, and 4D. As you can probably guess, each one amps up the color variety more and more from what it's capturing on screen and reflecting onto the colors of the lightstrip. I found both 3D and 4D to use a vibrant variety of colors from my TV screen, while 1D and 2D felt more one-note and chose a main color to reflect. If you have other Nanoleaf products, you can also use Sync+ to have your Nanoleaf light bulbs or wall lights also reflect the same colors as the lightstrip kit.

I used it while rewatching the extended versions of Lord of the Rings, and while playing video games. While I was gaming, I was impressed how quickly the colors would change and react. I took Link from the Sky Islands to the Depths in Tears of the Kingdom, and the colors would change nearly as fast as the screen did, and reflected the nuances of color and their location on the TV well onto the wall. The lightstrip's colors weren't too distracting, either; it didn't distract me from fights, but certainly added to the weight of beautiful cutscenes or unlocking a new shrine.

I switched over to Stardew Valley to see how the 4D kit would react to the blocky colors of Pelican Town. Surprisingly, it paired just as nicely. The lights rearranged the bright greens and yellow pathway shades around as my character walked, and it made the game feel twice as dynamic as the pixel art does alone.

The Nanoleaf app also comes with a variety of preset “Scenes” or pre-created color combos you can use with the lightstrip, no screen mirroring required. It was great for background ambiance during the day. Some of the Scenes also react to music, which worked well as long as the music source was close to the controller box. You can pull up Spotify on your TV, or place a phone or speaker next to it and get a light show.

It's a great setup for the price—similar setups cost a pretty penny when they're built into a TV, as with Philips' Ambilight—and one you'll be able to enjoy quickly and easily. Nanoleaf works with several smart home platforms, including Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit—if you're an iPhone user like I am, you'll be directed to connect it the 4D kit in your Home app by scanning the code. Other smart home systems take a little more effort, though, such as adding the Nanoleaf skill to your Alexa app before connecting the products.

The kit costs $100 for both the camera and lightstrip for up to 65-inch TVs, and $120 for the longer lightstrip kit. If you already have a Nanoleaf lightstrip you'd like to use with it, you can also purchase just the camera and controller box for $80.