Fairy lights have by no means been so enjoyable

After I first acquired phrase of the Govee Curtain Lights, I knew I needed to get my palms on them. They’re primarily a set of hanging string fairy lights with individually addressable RGB LEDs, however mixed with Govee’s app, they turn out to be an enormous pixel artwork tapestry to brighten up your wall.

They’re designed primarily to hold in entrance of a set of floor-length curtains, the type you’d have in entrance of a set of French doorways, however they’re equally at residence on any flat floor. They usually’re IP65 rated, too, so you may even cling them open air.

At a worth of $129, these lights aren’t precisely an impulse purchase, so I needed to search out out in the event that they’re value your hard-earned money. The lights have been gracing my wall for a few weeks now, and here is what I’ve realized.

What’s included?

• Curtain lights, management field and energy adapter
• Curtain hooks, seamless nails and VHB pads
• Screws, screwdriver and manuals

Within the field, you can find the lights themselves, in addition to an influence adapter and a management field with an influence button and microphone inbuilt. The string lights are fairly sizable and fairly straightforward to tangle, however they’re delivered in such a approach that retains issues neat and straightforward to handle till they’re fastened in place.

Govee contains the whole lot you want for 3 completely different set up strategies, nicely nearly, one technique requires a hammer and you do not get a kind of, for apparent causes.

You possibly can both connect “G4 hooks” and cling the lights in your current curtains, stick them up with the included VHB strips, or cling them from hooks that nail into the wall. I selected the latter, primarily as a result of I haven’t got any appropriate curtains.

Setup and configuration

• Three set up strategies to select from
• 1.5 x 2-metre house required

As I discussed, I used what Govee calls “seamless nails” to put in the Curtain Lights. Primarily, they seem to be a set of 4 white plastic hooks, and every has 4 quick nails pre-installed. To hold the lights you merely line up the hooks, bang them in with a hammer, and also you’re off to the races.

I can not touch upon the opposite strategies, as I did not attempt them myself, however it appears equally straightforward from what I can inform. I additionally know from testing earlier Govee merchandise that the included VHB pads are usually very robust and dependable, so I can solely think about that is the case right here, too.

Organising the lights utilizing the app is as straightforward as could be. In the event you’ve used another Govee product, you may know precisely what to anticipate. You merely hit the plus button on the prime proper of the app, and the product is often discovered robotically, if not, it is merely a case of typing within the product identify and selecting it from the checklist.

You possibly can cling the lights with the ability wire trailing on both the correct or the left-hand aspect. At first, I believed I had made a mistake, as animations that show textual content have been displaying backwards, however there is a toggle within the app labelled “Swap Set up Path” and tapping that put issues proper.

App and sensible options

• Govee Residence app for Android and iOS
• Works with Google Residence and Alexa

There aren’t too many surprises with the Govee app, it is the identical app utilized by all of Govee’s other products and the expertise is basically the identical.

It is easy sufficient to make use of, however it’s not essentially the most intuitive, typically options are hidden in barely odd locations and it takes a little bit of tapping round to search out the issues that you simply’re in search of.

The sensible residence integration is identical as with Govee’s different merchandise, too. I am a Google Home person, and Govee was already linked to my Google Residence account, so including the Curtain Lights solely took a couple of faucets. It has been some time since I did the preliminary setup, however it was utterly hassle-free, so there’s nothing to fret about should you’re making an attempt Govee for the primary time.

As soon as related, you may add the Curtain Lights to your automations, and management them through your Google Residence app or utilizing your voice with Google Assistant. From the Google Residence app, you may select a fundamental set of pre-determined colors in addition to management the brightness and toggle them on or off. You possibly can’t choose any of the flamboyant animated scenes, you may want to make use of the Govee app for that, however should you use Google Residence to automate an on/off cycle, it should proceed to make use of the final animation that you simply had it set to.

I do not personally use Alexa for my sensible residence stuff, so I did not attempt it out with this product, however from what I perceive, the method and performance are broadly related.

Efficiency and results

• Music modes, preset scenes, DIY mode
• Add GIF animations and browse user-created scenes

The lights can get exceptionally vivid, to the purpose the place you possibly can have them on in the course of the day should you actually needed to. There’s glorious uniformity to the color rendition throughout the array and the LEDs can kick out some significantly vibrant hues.

To the bare eye, there isn’t any flickering in any way, and the identical is true on digital camera. That is nice if you need these lights to brighten up your live streaming or YouTube set-up. I even shot some 120fps gradual movement on the Lumix S5II with these lights within the background, and there was nonetheless no noticeable flicker – spectacular stuff.

There are an enormous vary of results and scenes to select from within the app, starting from summary patterns to pixel artwork and the whole lot in between. In fact, a few of these are simpler than others, and your viewing distance additionally issues fairly a bit. There are solely 520 “pixels” to work with, so easy photographs are rather more recognisable than advanced ones. That stated, it’s potential to attach a number of units of curtain lights, so you possibly can get extra advanced if in case you have the house and the persistence.

The app means that you can add animated GIFs to be displayed on the Curtain Lights, which so far as we’re conscious, is a characteristic that is distinctive to Govee. This makes it far simpler to get your customized art work displayed, in comparison with utilizing the app’s built-in instruments, as you may simply use software program that you simply’re aware of and switch it over. It is an excellent characteristic.

My private favorite is the music reactive mode, particularly with the Meteor Bathe and Dream Shade presets. It makes use of the microphone that is constructed into the management field and reacts swiftly to the beat, creating hypnotizing vibrant patterns in sync with the music. The one pitfall is that it reacts to voices in the identical approach, so I can think about the impact getting considerably muddied throughout a loud occasion. You possibly can tailor the sensitivity with a slider within the app, however the means to react solely to your cellphone’s sound output could be even higher – possibly we’ll see that sooner or later.

Verdict

In the event you like the thought of animated RGB LED curtain lights, then there aren’t too many merchandise to select from. I have never come throughout any which can be as straightforward to make use of and well-constructed as Govee’s, no less than, and that makes them very straightforward to suggest.

The power to add GIFs, in addition to create animations with the app’s complete suite of instruments, implies that the choices are countless. Plus, easy accessibility to community-created animations means that you may get pleasure from numerous scenes while not having to do the legwork.

We expect the value is honest for what you get, however a decrease asking worth would make such a purchase order simpler to justify. That stated, Govee is understood for its nice reductions, so preserve an eye fixed out round Prime Day and Black Friday if the price is holding you again. Even on the time of writing, there was a $30 off the asking worth on Amazon, so do preserve an eye fixed out.

I’ve liked enjoying with the Govee Curtain Lights, and I reckon anybody that enjoys vibrant lighting will really feel the identical approach. In the event you’ve acquired floor-length curtains or a clean wall that would use jazzing up, this is a wonderful choice… and a number of enjoyable too.