Govee Permanent Outdoor Lights Review

When I say that these Govee permanent outdoor lights offer every lighting effect you could want, I really mean it. The controls in the app include premade “scenes” for every holiday big or small, from Hanukkah to Father’s Day, for a total of 42 holiday scenes within the Festival category alone.

And there are four other categories of scenes: Natural, Life, Emotion, and the Dallas Mavericks (yes, really). Those categories combine for another 62 effects, bringing the total number of scenes to 104!

Premade scenes aren’t the only way you can use these lights. You can create effects using a finger to sketch colors over specific sections of lights. You can ask Govee’s AI chatbot to create custom effects for you based on a written description or a picture you upload. There are also DIY effects where you create effects using certain styles (such as gradient or twinkle) that you pair with a palette of colors that you choose. You have so many options that it can easily feel overwhelming and confusing—but that’s still not it.

The Govee app has social features that allow you to share your own custom lighting effects, as well as browse and adopt custom effects created by other Govee users. These social feeds of lighting effects can be found in a few different places. From the page of controls for the permanent lights, they’re listed under the Share Space section as a grid of playable video thumbnails. On the main menu along the bottom of the app, there’s a compass button for the Discover page, which is a Twitter-style feed of posts with effects.

As if that wasn’t enough, opening a video from either of those spots will bring you to a TikTok-style feed of videos that you can swipe through. And they all have a blue Apply button you can click to try them out.

Last but not least, you can also choose effects that sync your lights to music, using either your phone or a Govee music sync box that you buy separately. The sync box has a microphone that listens to music you play on another device you already own, and makes the lights react to the beat. There is an indoor version and an outdoor version, and each costs $40.