Nanoleaf Pegboard Desk Dock reviewed: unnecessary fun

Your desk doesn’t just need to be a screen and a machine. The Nanoleaf Pegboard Desk Dock endeavours to make it fun, provided you have $100 spare.

There are gadgets designed to be functional, and there are gadgets designed to be totally aesthetic. And you may even find a few designed to do double duty and get both jobs sorted, providing visual changes while doing something actual functional.

Smart lights often sit in the aesthetic category, especially when they have lots of colours. You can light up a space or colour it with a bold visual style, but they’re more often than not simply lights doing the job of a light. It might provide brightness with a bit of fun, but it’s not going to do something extra.

And then there’s the Nanoleaf Pegboard Desk Dock, a sort of multifunction gadget designed to bring a splash of colour to your desk while doing a couple of other jobs.

What is the Nanoleaf Pegboard?

Is it a light, or is it a desk-based bit of furniture to hold up your headphones and game controllers? It’s a bit of a trick question, because the Nanoleaf Pegboard Desk Dock is both, and yet also manages to throw in a USB dock, as well.

It’s almost the computer version of an omni-tool, only that it doesn’t open things or work as a screw driver. There’s no Allen key here.

What you will find, however, are a few USB ports to extend your computer’s assortment of plugs, a colour LED panel, and two pairs of hooks, plus a little grid to set those hooks on.

Much like an Ikea pegboard — or a pegboard from pretty much any furniture or accessory provider — you’ll place those hook-like holders in the pegboard, and create a space to hold things up. Headphones. Game controllers. That’s more or less it, because that’s really all the gadget will hold up.

What does it do?

Designed to hold up between one and two of your gadgets, Nanoleaf’s Pegboard is both a stand with arms you can position in any of the notches found up and down the strip, but also a light panel designed to work with the assortment of Nanoleaf smart lights you can find for your home.

The Pegboard is a bit different, however, because while many of Nanoleaf’s smart lights don’t need a computer, this one does. There are no less than three USB-C ports for you to use, plus a USB-A port, so it’s a handy way to replicate some ports, and it happens to have a light panel in there, as well.

Why does your USB dock need a light panel? Why to extend your screen, or even add some colour to your desk.

It’s a little like what Philips did with its Hue Play light bars, extending a TV screen’s colour to the edges of your display, but with a pegboard accessory thrown in for good measure.

Does it do the job?

Bizarrely, what it’s supposed to do is simply hold gadgets and headphones up, and look pretty doing so.

It’s a rather unusual gadget in that it doesn’t have a lot of purpose, and feels a lot like the butter robot in Rick and Morty. Its purpose is so menial, we can probably be thankful it doesn’t have free will to realise what a waste of a life’s purpose it is.

But if it did, you’d simply have to say: you hold up headphones and game controllers, and look a little prettier than a standard stand.

In terms of being a slightly prettier stand, missing accomplished; it definitely delivers. You also get a USB hub alongside, so it manages to be marginally more than a pretty stand, just not much of one.

Though the ports also happen to be in a place where you’re trying to improve the aesthetics around your desk, so whether you use them or not depends on how much you like cords coming from a random monolith of colour in your space.

What does it need?

But we’d love if it could be a little more, like function without a computer… which it clearly needs, if only because of the software.

For instance, if it included a microphone and could respond to sounds like an equaliser, you could set the pretty Pegboard next to a speaker or on a bookshelf somewhere, and have it be a fun responsive extra. Or you could place it next to a TV and maybe link it up to a PlayStation or Xbox, extending that screen to the board.

Neither of these are how the Nanoleaf Pegboard works. Instead, it connects to the Nanoleaf Desktop app on Windows and Mac, and extends the colour of the screen or runs scenes, many of which are an extra you need to pay for.

In a world where smart devices are very much the norm, having a smart light that only functions as an extension of your desktop computer is a little surprising. There’s no way to sync this with the rest of the house, or any of your other lights or gadgets.

The Nanoleaf Pegboard Desktop Dock is made solely for your computer, which is a shame because it could easily be more.

Is it worth your money?

It’s especially confusing because of the price, which seems higher than we’d otherwise expect.

One of those gadgets you don’t really need, you will need to be comfortable parting ways with a good $105 for the privilege of extending your screen’s colours to your headphone stand.

That’s a little over $100 for what basically amounts to a compact rack with a few USB ports and some lights that are better set for computers, but nothing else.

It may not just be the cost of $100, either. Aspects of Nanoleaf’s software can imitate the vibe of scenes, a feature that costs extra for the privilege. It’s a bit of a subscription cost, and while we’re not sure it’s necessarily worth it, some who love this splash of breathing colour may find it worthwhile.

Yay or nay?

A form of unnecessary fun, the Nanoleaf Pegboard is one of those extras that can make a desk stand out a little more, glowing with the colour of games and such.

It feels like it needs to do something else — respond automatically without a computer or maybe just include a hook on the edges of the frame, so you can aim the colour on the sides of your display, and let it reverberate in each direction, glowing up your space.

As it is, Nanoleaf’s Pegboard is more of a single-use concept, something some gamers might dig entirely.

If they have the spare cash, grabbing a pegboard is a fancy way of holding some gadgets up while lighting up your desk.

It’s a fancy accessory and unnecessary fun, illuminating your world. Just make sure to grab two, otherwise you’ll end up with a weirdly unbalanced approach to lighting a desktop.