CES 2025: Govee’s New Pixel Light Will Remind You of Lite Brite
Govee is unveiling a series of new lighting products today at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) , and while previous designs like lamps and holiday lights focused on functionality, today’s releases are all about fun. Govee is also going heavy on the retro theme with a set of digital tablets that display pixelated images or clip art, creating a true Lite Brite vibe.
Pixel Light feels so much like a gaming console that I spent some time trying to figure out if I could unlock the feature. Instead, it’s a large pixel display, and you can use the Govee app to change what it displays.
While it’s not the touchscreen I’d want for my 2025 Lite Brite fever dream, it does offer the same experience through an app that lets you hand-draw what you want to see on the screen using the DIY feature. ” . You can choose colors, shapes, and drawing tools, and when you’re done, you click Apply and the image is sent to your display.
There are also many presets: from nature to sports and food. This is perhaps the best use of the tablet as these images are already well rendered and you can use a lot of animated GIFs. You can display real-time streams of information, from the weather to sports scores to Bitcoin prices. There are patterns that will transition to whatever music you play, and some patterns that play 8-bit music.
Now, if you’re looking at a wildly pixelated image next to 8-bit music and early Nintendo games don’t come to mind, you’re playing in a different tech bubble, because that’s all I could think of. While the console had static images of arcade games that could be displayed, it did not have animated images, which I thought was a real miss. If only Frogger, Super Mario Bros. were on this tablet all the time. or Donkey Kong, I’d let him play until he burned out.
You can upload your own image and send it to the display in a highly pixelated format. In my opinion, it was not something fantastic, but it was an interesting experiment.
There is an artificial intelligence engine that you can ask to generate images for the tablet, and the experience may vary. For example, I asked Rainbow Brite or Super Mario Bros. several times. (I was determined) and in both cases the AI engine had no idea what I was talking about. But if you ask for a rainbow, you will get one.
One last thing: you can actually create your own animated GIF. However, it’s unlikely you’ll do this from your phone, and that’s where my problems with the Pixel Light lie. All of the art and drawing tools have a touch screen, but they’re absurdly small. Too small to use your fingertip intelligently when drawing. It’s very clunky, perhaps intentional (to make you lean towards the “fun” aspect), but I can’t imagine spending time making an animated GIF out of frustration with the size of the touchscreen.
Pixel Light comes in two sizes: 5.75 x 7 inches and 5.75 x 10 inches. It comes with wall or shelf mounts. It is expected to go on sale in early summer with a target price of $100-$200.