You Can Control These Smart Holiday Lights With Your Voice
I say if you’re not going to make holiday lights, you shouldn’t bother—head to Griswold or home—and Govi’s smart Christmas lights can give you a reason to go to the trouble. Despite the usual shortcomings I’ve encountered with other Govee products (more on that in a moment), these lights are easy to install, connect to the Internet, and use to create an interactive display.
Despite the abundance of smart technologies in the market, there are not many well-known players producing holiday lights. Govee, a company with an extensive range of smart technologies, makes a whole line of them and this year introduced new options, available individually and in different packages. The line even includes permanent outdoor lights , so you can skip the annual ritual of risking life and limb by installing them.
The Govee app is a powerful remote control for your lighting.
There are a number of benefits to using smart lighting instead of traditional street lighting, and Govee products cover all of these benefits. First, you want to be able to easily turn them on and off without going outside. Of course, you can do this with remote controls and smart plugs, but it’s easier to do this with an app or Smart Hub integration for HomeKit, Google Home, or Alexa. In the Govee app, you can schedule the times of day you want the lights to turn on and off, but from your hub you can also create entire scenes with multiple lights, music, and triggers.
Secondly, while LED fixtures have come a long way in creating a more complete color gamut, including gorgeous ombre and rainbows, only a smart system can allow you to design these patterns and adjust them on the fly. Essentially, a smart string can turn even a simple display into a stunning show worth standing and watching.
Transform your home into a light display that responds to people’s movements outside.
Although they offer a variety of pre-programmed light shows, the best feature of Govee is the ability to sync to a soundtrack. Each garland comes with a microphone that picks up nearby sounds, or you can connect it to your phone. You can also purchase a small device called the Music Sync Box from Govee for about $30; It’s essentially a wireless microphone, so you can place it near the sidewalk, hang a sign that says “light responds to voices,” and then watch in delight as people walk by and talk, sing, and laugh as the light responds.
In my own tests using these options, I could say that the music was responsive, if not quite as good as what I’ve seen on some other directly programmed music outdoor displays. The lights never dimmed when music was playing, instead defaulting to a solid color, and the lights did not appear to change color, only more gradual color shifts.
Management can be chaotic
Govee not only produces smart technology in every conceivable consumer technology sector, but also clearly believes in giving the consumer as much control over their technology as possible. The result is often an overwhelming app experience: there are a million screens and controls, and it’s unclear where to start. You can choose a color scheme, a motion pattern, and decide whether it’ll be quiet or active, and each section offers countless different presets and settings, accessed through a variety of different built-in screens. With so many presets, you’ll never have to create your own circuit using the molecular level controls they offer. Additionally, these controls are only available in the app and are not accessible through any smart hub.
While the ability to turn the lights on and off is done via Wi-Fi, you’ll need to be close enough to use Bluetooth to control all the other controls (color, motion and sound), meaning you can’t change it while you’re there away from home. Additionally, the lights must be turned on to make changes. However, the lights connected easily on the first try and every time over the past few weeks of use.
Durable headlights, deceptive dimensions
This chain of outdoor lights uses a USB plug adapter that is not weatherproof, which is puzzling since Govee offers plugs for outdoor lights. It would be a shame to lose a string because water got into the adapter. (They start at $60 for a 33-foot rope, after all.) I also don’t see an easy way to connect multiple ropes together, which is essential for holiday lighting. You can upgrade to a 66-foot cord, but be careful: this length is deceiving because the 8 feet of cord between the last light and the plug counts toward the overall measurement.