I still love Nanoleaf’s Umbra Cono and Cup smart lamps despite all the bugs

Several months ago, Toronto-based smart lighting company Nanoleaf and Toronto-based interior design company Umbra partnered on two smart lamps, the Cono and the Cup. When they launched, I jumped at the chance to try them out since I loved how they looked.

And while I still love how the lights look and frankly use them regularly, I can’t recommend them, even now when they’re on sale for $30-$40 off. ‘Smart’ is a generous term for these internet-connected lights and I’ve had nothing but issues with the lights when trying to use them as smart lights. As dumb lights, these lamps actually work surprisingly well. But they’re not dumb lights, so I can’t judge them that way.

Love Cono, hate Cono

Lets start with the Cono, which comes in two colours, boring ‘Grey’ (which is what I have) and reddish brown ‘Sierra’ that looks quite nice. The Cono is incredibly unique as far as lights go and is quite versatile. First, it’s a battery-powered lamp, which is both a strength and a weakness. It lasts for about five hours on a charge, which is fine, but it charges via USB-C and doesn’t come with a cable or plug. Thankfully I have a myriad of USB-C cables around thanks to years of reviewing smartphones that come with them, but it’s worth noting for anyone who doesn’t have drawers full of USB-C cables.

Moreover, I think it was a huge oversight not to ship the Cono with some sort of base station that could charge the light, a la the Sonos Roam, allowing me to plop the Cono down at its ‘home’ location and have a full battery whenever I needed to take it somewhere else.

Beyond that, the unique cone-shape and cross base allow for Cono to be used in various positions. This is part of what drew me to the Cono and what makes it such a versatile light. You can even place it with the light pointing down if you need minimal illumination, though practically I often just turned the brightness down. Speaking of which, there’s a touch “button” on the side of the Cono that allows you to turn it on or off, double-tap to change colour or press-and-hold to adjust the brightness level. This button came in quite handy since the Nanoleaf app didn’t work at all, but more on that in a bit.

My only other gripe specific to the Cono was that the plastic body felt very cheap. It’s not a huge deal, but for a light that retails for $95, I’d appreciate if it felt like it cost $95.

Wobble cup

The Cup, on the other hand, is less exciting. It’s basically just a desk lamp with a cup to hold pencils and pens built into the base. Unfortunately, the design makes the light quite top-heavy and the narrow, slightly rounded base is quite unstable, leading the Cup to rock dangerously at the slightest provocation. I ended up moving the Cup from my desk in my home office and using it as a lamp on my nightstand because I got tired of it wobbling whenever I bumped my desk with my chair.

Once again, the power situation with the Cup is annoying, though in a different way than the Cono. The cup has a built-in cable, but it’s a USB-A cable, and it doesn’t come with a power brick. I don’t have many USB-A bricks kicking around these days, but I did scrounge one up for the Cup. The Cup also has a USB-A port on the back, so if you are short on USB-A bricks, you can thankfully still charge something via the light.

The Cup is made of metal, which makes it feel much more premium, but it only comes in black. And instead of a touch button, it has a satisfyingly clicky knob you twist to turn it on and off. But there’s no other on-device controls, so when the Nanoleaf app failed me, the Cup lost more functionality than the Cono did. When I did have success with the Nanoleaf app, however, I found the Cup’s power knob didn’t play nice with the app and would lead to de-synced on/off states and needing to twist the knob back and forth to realign it with the Cup’s current power cycle.

Nanoleave me alone

And that brings me back to the grand unifier (and major sore spot) for both the Cono and the Cup: Nanoleaf. I’ve had issues with the Nanoleaf app in the past, but something has gone seriously wrong with it in the last few months. In its current state, I’m unable to pair the Cono or Cup to the app. I had previously paired them both, but at some point they vanished from my app and I haven’t been able to re-add them. The problem persisted across devices too, both with several different phones and with various Nanoleaf products — none of the Nanoleaf hardware I have will pair with the app.

Even when the app did work, the experience was subpar. For the first stretch, I couldn’t change the colours of any of either the Cono or Cup with the app, though a subsequent update fixed that problem. The lights were often listed as disconnected, and even when connected, they were seldom responsive.

 

Both lights also still have this bizarre issue where they randomly turn off for a couple seconds and then come back on. I have no idea why and it happens so sporadically that I haven’t found any sort of pattern to it.

The Cono and Cup support Matter and Thread, so you should be able to avoid using the Nanoleaf app and connect the lights to your Matter setup if you have a Matter smart home hub and a Thread border router. I don’t have a Matter setup (the only Thread border routers I own are Nanoleaf products that I can’t use because the app doesn’t work), but that didn’t stop the Cup and Cono from bombarding my phone with fullscreen pop-ups asking me to connect them to my Threads network.

All in all, I’m quite disappointed with the Cup and the Cono. I love both lamps and I’m particularly fond of the Cono’s unique design, but the ‘smart’ side of things is so broken that I can’t recommend them. Maybe things would be better with a Matter/Thread setup. Maybe Nanoleaf will fix its app. Maybe we’re all better off with dumb lights. At this point, I think I am.

The Nanoleaf Umbra Cono is available for $66.50 (regular $95) and the Cup is available for $91 (regular $130).