With others in the dark, Nanoleaf lights the way with Matter-certified bulbs

The path to finding more Matter-certified devices is a little easier to navigate today: Nanoleaf announced three lights that work with the new smart home standard. Two of the bulbs are A19 and BR30 shaped and sized, while the third product is a smart lightstrip. Nanoleaf says it will add a Matter supported GU10 and recessed downlight later this year. All of the products are part of Nanoleaf’s Essentials Matter product line and support Thread networks.

The $19.99 A19 and lightstrips — available in a two-meter starter pack at $49.99 and one-meter extensions for $12.99 — can be pre-ordered now, with delivery expected in mid-April. Orders for the Matter-compatible BR30 bulbs start next month at $49.99.

All of the lights support 2700-6500K white temperatures as well as 16 million different colors and dynamic lighting scenes through the Nanoleaf app. If you have Matter controllers in your home from Amazon, Apple Google or Samsung, you can also use those to control the lights. That’s one of the big Matter benefits.

The timing of these new bulbs is interesting. Not because we shouldn’t be expecting new Matter products on the market now. We should. After all, the Matter specification officially launched back in October. Early support in December came to a few sensors and smart plugs through firmware updates. Now is the time for off-the-shelf Matter-certified products to debut.

No, what makes this interesting is not what Nanoleaf is doing, but what other Connectivity Standards Alliances members aren’t doing. At least not yet, or in one case, not at all.

Take Belkin Wemo, for example, which last week confirmed that it was not moving forward with Matter compatibility for its products at this time. That’s a full 180-degree walk-back from the company’s plans just last year. At the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show, Wemo said it would bring Thread and Matter support new Wemo Smart Plug, Wemo Smart Light Switch, and Wemo Smart Dimmer products. All of a sudden, that’s not happening.

We reached out to Wyze and Yale for updates on their Matter efforts. Wyze provided this email statement:

We recognize that Matter has great potential and we’re closely monitoring its progress. If we do choose to support Matter in the future we likely won’t announce any roadmap plans ahead of time. Any future Matter supported products will likely show up as a product announcement/press release at the time of launch.

I can live with that since unlike Wemo, Wyze never announced specific plans for Matter support. However, the “if we do support Matter in the future” part doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

Yale started selling a Matter-compatible smart door lock, the Assure Lock 2, back in September, just before the official Matter release. As a result, the company then said it would sell a Matter upgrade module for this lock, and it’s predecessor.

Here we are, eight months later and there’s no Matter module to be had. When asked if Yale still expects to offer the module, we received this email response: “Yes we absolutely will and will have more specific messaging in the coming weeks.”

Regardless of other the actions of other smart home companies, good on Nanoleaf for helping push forward adoption of the Matter standard. Hopefully, others will see the light and soon follow.