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Govee WiFi TV color changing LED backlight w/Alexa review (update: 25% off)

The Govee WiFi TV Color Changing LED backlight, which I will call the backlight from hereon out, is an aftermarket product to make TVs with no smart backlighting have smart area-aware backlighting.

Govee WiFi TV color changing LED backlight

If you’re not particularly familiar with the concept, adding the exterior glow tends to immerse people’s attention in the frame, and adds some more visible cues when you’re playing video games. It also is something that my tech-blind wife noticed immediately and asked why our TV now had under lighting and a spoiler.

The way this product works is you unroll a series of LED lights, look at the documentation, realize it’s bad, and then plow through. The documentation while somewhat correct says to string the LED from the bottom right of the TV, up, across the top, and down.

2019 01 28 15.48.01 - for some reason we don't have an alt tag here

Now as for the start position if it’s not clear, if you’re on the normal side of the TV, it’s the bottom left, if you’re facing the back of the TV it’s the bottom right.

Govee WiFi TV color changing LED backlight

Clean the area you’re going to put this with the included alcohol pad. Takes about 40 seconds and will help the relatively weak LED strip tape to hold.

Unstick the tape protector, roll it out. I’d advise waiting on the secondary fasteners until you’re sure everything works, place the camera, make sure it’s dead center of the tv because trust me moving it creates more problems than you’re going to want to deal with (in my case having to come up with a different adhesive).

Govee WiFi TV color changing LED backlight

After everything’s in place, you download the Govee app, connect the device to your WiFi, and run through the calibration with the camera. Now I’ll note that my camera just did not see the extent of the screen the first position and I had to bend the arm a bit before I could see the entire TV. This is not mentioned in the documentation.

After this you’ve got some options as to whether to have the entire back light be the same color, sections to be different colors (what I generally use,) or you can pick musical accompaniment or just a solid color.

Govee WiFi TV color changing LED backlight

There are also options for turning the thing on and off by time, and you can tie it in with Alexa and use that to change the modes. It does not currently work with the Google Ecosystem.

Govee WiFi TV color changing LED backlight subjectively…

It’s kind of nice. It’s not something I look at and go “wow, couldn’t live without this!”

It seriously needs a color calibration in the app however as the colors on screen and the color of the wall are not properly aligned. You put a white piece of paper on my wall, it looks close to right however.

Basically just needs the ability to define your wall color and reflectiveness and modify the color output. Considering it’s basically a WiFi-connected Raspberry Pi in your network this shouldn’t be a problem.

Overall, neat, if you want something like this without having to get a new TV it does the job about 70% as well as a TV with LED backlighting built in does, but coming in at $70USD it’s not something to be sneezed at.

You can grab one at Amazon for $69.99.

Just got a code “25% Off code MSAKW9FQ (Save $17.5, end Mar 12) ” unsure if it works or not, let me know if it doesn’t

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Paul E King

Paul King started with GoodAndEVO in 2011, which merged with Pocketables, and as of 2018 he's evidently the owner. He lives in Nashville, works at a film production company, is married with two kids. Facebook | Twitter | Donate | More posts by Paul | Subscribe to Paul's posts

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