Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Wireless Switch Hands-On Review

Patch Bowen By Patch Bowen - January 24th, 2025
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The Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Wireless Switch is a battery-powered, wall-mountable switch designed to control Nanoleaf smart lights without the need for wiring.

It features physical buttons for power, brightness, and scene adjustments, along with built-in motion and daylight sensors for automation. It connects to Nanoleaf lights using the brand’s proprietary Litewave technology and also supports Matter for integration with other smart home ecosystems. 

However, while the hardware is well-designed and flexible, the setup process and overall functionality present some challenges.

Competition

When it comes to smart lighting in New Zealand, Philips Hue and Nanoleaf are the two main players. They’re remarkably similar, and the best choice for you often comes down to which ecosystem you’re already invested in. 

Functionality-wise, there's little to set apart Nanoleaf's Sense+ Smart Wireless Switch from Philips' Tap Dial Switch or Wireless Dimmer Switch, it's more about sticking with what you already have.

So, what is it?

The Sense+ Smart Wireless Switch is a physical switch that allows you to control your Nanoleaf lights. You can change the colour, brightness and scene, you can turn them on and off, and there’s even an included motion detector that will turn the lights on when registering movement. 

It’s important to know that it isn’t compatible with all Nanoleaf lights, and at the time of writing it doesn’t work with “Original Nanoleaf Light Panels, Nanoleaf Canvas, and Smarter Partner products.”

Picture of Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Switch in the backing plate.
Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Switch in the backing plate.
Picture of Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Switch without the backing plate.
Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Switch without the backing plate.

Setup

Physically, the Sense+ is easy to set up. It comes with a plate, with strong adhesive tape on the back, and there are also holes for screwing it in if required. Within the plate there are two magnets that make attaching the switch easy, it simply locks into place. 

It connects to compatible Nanoleaf lights using Litewave, Nanoleaf’s proprietary low-latency wireless protocol, meaning that it doesn’t require a wired connection. This is great, it looks good anywhere because it doesn’t have a cable hanging out the back. It's battery-powered and takes CR2477 coin cell batteries, which you will need to change at some point, however they’re long-lasting and should last around a year. Not a problem.

Unfortunately, setting it up within the Nanoleaf app isn't quite as simple. From my experience, it was convoluted and very frustrating. The switch doesn’t come with instructions explaining what’s required and the app barely runs you through the process either. After figuring out what I needed to do, I spent a good few hours trying to get it to work and I ran into many issues, such as the switch not being recognised by my phone, it failing to pair with my lights, the firmware not updating and having to reset the device over and over just to set it up, quickly became annoying

You need to add the switch to a control group within the Nanoleaf app, which will also include the lights you want to control. The first five times I did this, the switch didn’t do anything, I had to reset all my lights and the switch multiple times until miraculously it just worked… Not ideal.

Picture of the back of the Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Switch backing plate.
The back of the Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Switch backing plate.
Picture of the back of the Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Switch.
The back of the Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Switch.

Functionality

If you do manage to get it working, the Sense+ Switch is relatively straightforward. It has two side buttons that can be configured within the Nanoleaf app. Both buttons are compatible with three actions, Single Press, Double Press and Long Press and you can set these actions to Cycle White Temperature, Cycle Colour, Set Brightness, Set Colour or Set Scene. Essentially, you can set up six personalised commands, which is plenty. 

On the top and bottom, there are buttons to turn the lights on and off and in the middle, there's a brightness rocker. All pretty straightforward.

Screenshot of the Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Switch app features.
Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Switch app features.
Screenshot of more Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Switch app features.
More Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Switch app features.

Advanced Features

As mentioned, the switch supports motion detection, and it also supports daylight detection. The motion detector will turn the lights on when it detects motion. I found this to be a bit hit-and-miss. You need to place the switch in a good spot in order for it to work well, however a lot of the time it didn’t notice me walking past it to turn the lights on. The motion detection can be customised within the app, you can set the timeout duration which is how long the lights remain on after motion is detected, and also the fade out, which is how long it takes for the lights to dim and turn off after the timeout duration is up. 

Daylight detection sensors will ensure the light stays switched off when bright daylight is detected. This works well. You can turn this off within the app.

At the time of writing, Nanoleaf has stated that the switch supports Matter, however it’s in Early Access. Matter allows devices from different brands, like Nanoleaf, Philips Hue, Google Nest and others to work together smoothly in the same ecosystem. You can connect the Sense+ to other Matter-supported devices and platforms, like Apple HomeKit, Google Home, or Amazon Alexa. This means you can control your Nanoleaf lights alongside other smart devices using a single app or voice assistant.

I tried to set this up on Google Home and it didn’t even recognise the device, which was again disappointing. 

Verdict

The Nanoleaf Sense+ Smart Wireless Switch is frustrating to set up and not worth the hassle. While mounting the switch is easy, getting it to work with the Nanoleaf app is a nightmare.

Poor instructions, connection failures, and repeated resets make the process needlessly difficult. Once it’s finally working, the switch is fine, but motion detection is unreliable, and Matter support is a letdown, failing repeatedly in testing.

In the end, using my phone to control the lights was far easier to set up and offered more features.

Unless you're fully committed to the Nanoleaf ecosystem, this switch is more trouble than it's worth.


Written By

Patch Bowen

I’m an independent tech journalist who enjoys exploring the gadgets people want and the ones they didn’t know they needed.

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