Cololight Hexagon Rhythm Review

RGB meets elegance!

Many RGB light accessories on the market recently have been bold and polarizing in their all-plastic design, focusing on fun effects over the actual design of them in your space, thankfully though Cololight appear to have hit the mark on both design and functionality with the stone-based Hexagon Rhythm kit.

In the box

The Hexagon Rhythm kit comes with a large cylindrical slab of stone for its base, this helps to both weigh down the lights but also helps to blend them into your modern space much easier. each kit also comes with 9 hexagonal panels and 18 connectors (9 powered and 9 non-powered) also in the kit you will find a power cable and ways to fix these lights to walls through m3 tape or hanging them, more on that later though.

Design

Aesthetics are clearly something cololight focused on with this product and its shows. The hexagonal panels can be attached together on any of the 6 sides to create a range of fun, abstract or aesthetic designs. In my case I chose to use this as lighting for under my work monitors so created a 5 x 4 long panel. In addition to creating a good atmosphere while working, the stone base with the coloured hexagons brings a touch of elegance and class to the room too. As expected the panels themselves are plastic but are perfectly durable so I wouldn’t worry too much about dropping on knocking them during setup and designing your patterns. On each side of the panel, there are connectors for the fixers however only 1 carries power between panels so you will need to keep this in mind while designing your panel array. They can be connected in cascade, so as to have a continuous flow of colours or two by two, so there will be panels that will change colour at the same time. In both cases, the flow starts from the controller, which manages everything, much like how a fire starts from the base and spreads upwards through the panels

How to mount

As mentioned above the stone base is the easiest way to mount this light in your space using up the desk space as opposed to wall mounting, though this is of course an option too if desired thanks to the triangular picture hooks on the back of each panel, the sky really is the limit here similarly to the nanoleaf alternatives however its advised for both safety and overall design to have this situated on the desk with the help of that stone base.

Performance

Out of the box, you can control the light by simply plugging in the base and starting to connect each panel together, remembering to ensure each panel is connected to its power source using one of the powered connectors, if desired you can also use non-powered connected to improve overall stability too. there are a few pre-determined lighting effects built in here however of course being a smart home product it does have a companion app that opens up a whole world of Lighting possibilities.
Setting up the light was a breeze, holding the button on the power cable for a few seconds entered bluetooth pairing mode and from there just launch the app, and provide a wifi password and it was done. the process was painless and quick.

The app experience is well laid out and mega easy to navigate thankfully as there are a lot of different features here. If you already own Cololight products the presets section will feel familiar to you it will even offer you fun designs you can set your lights in to create festive or unique effects and its easy enough to cycle through them and choose your favourite. Custom templates are where the fun really begins. Given that the Cololight Hexagons have 19 individually addressable LED’s it has new ways to tweak the viewing experience. The diffusion, colour accuracy and overall brightness created by the large defuser panels really leads to a beautiful and bright light that appears to breathe and blend between colours and styles, much like a fire each panel can be blended between in colour creating relaxing, fun and stunning effects, I really have seen nothing like it outside of other Cololight products and this is certainly something they do so well, for the £120 price tag this is quite high but you do get so many customization options and you can really go to town on these custom modes to make something unique for you and your setup. You can also save multiple and simply swap between them all by swiping through the app. Sadly, The reactive music mode that flashes the light to whatever sound it detects is fun for all of a few minutes before you discover just how annoying it is and proceed to turn it off and never use it again. It does however seem to perform better than some other lights with similar features thanks to the microphone being built into the actual device rather than relying on a smartphone.

Designing your own effects in the app can be somewhat cumbersome at times thanks to confusing and lacklustre UI, however, if you are happy to fiddle with it you can create some great effects without too much work I just wish custom designs were little better laid out for beginners to Cololight and the smart home space in general.

Third-Party Connections

Like most smart home lighting products Cololight Hexagons supports Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant so you can issue commands to these home apps to turn on the light and change the scenes displayed by the hexagons to something else. In what appears to be fairly standard once again in the smart lighting space there is no Apple Homekit support here which is infuriating and sorely missed, of course, if you have the knowhow you could absolutely use something like HomeBridge or Home Assistant but this requires a bit of work I think most people will simply not bother with. Alongside the more standard integrations the Hexagons also integrated directly with the Elgato Stream Deck and Razor Chroma making is super easy to change your lighting setup through the press of a button on your deck or even reactively to your stream, making this a perfect companion for streamers big or small to give your broadcasts that extra splash of colour and interactivity. Overall then with its beautiful base, almost limitless customization, large light array and bold colours cololight has created an elegant RGB lighting solution for the modern-day home. Sadly the software still leaves a little to be desired and the lack of Homekit means it’s an instant write-off for some. However, if your looking for an elegant and fun way to light up your space the Cololight Hexagons are a great choice.

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