Just in time for the holidays, Govee has finally come up with some classic string lights. The Govee Christmas String Lights are exactly what you’d expect from good quality holiday lights: bright enough to be visible in the daytime, casting a good amount of ambient light at night, waterproof and durable, and with a good length of cabling. Unfortunately, while the plethora of colors and patterns they can display is impressive, the smartphone app you’ll need is as complex as ever. Ultimately, they’re hard to recommend for anyone new to the Govee system.
Govee Christmas String Lights
In 33 or 66ft lengths, the Govee Christmas String Lights offer full control and integration with the existing Govee ecosystem, including the ability to sync through the Music Sync Box. They’re bright enough for daytime use, and provide plenty of ambient lighting at night. You can create an entirely custom scene—but only if you can tolerate the bloated Govee app for long enough.The lights are brilliant, but they’re not easy to use if the built-in scenes don’t satisfy. While the complicated app can seem justified on other smart lighting, on a Christmas tree, it’s exposed as overly complex.
Govee Christmas String Lights Design
The Christmas String Lights don’t offer any design surprises. They have a relatively thin cable (but standard for Christmas lights) made of somewhat sticky PVC, punctuated every 10cm by an LED lump. It’s the same string material used on theGovee curtains.
You’ll find the String Lights available in 33ft (10m) and 66ft (20m) versions, and I’ve been testing out a couple of the 20m versions.
Right now, there’s only one colorway available, and it’s a semi-translucent white. That’s fine if you’re mounting these in the ceiling line, but they do stand out a bit on a Christmas tree. At the very least, they need a green cabling option.
From the plug socket to the control box, you have 1m (3.3ft) of cable, then to where the LEDs start, you have another 1.5m (4.9ft). The control box is nothing more than a power button, microphone, and housing for the Bluetooth / Wi-Fi circuitry, though.
You can’t cycle patterns or colors without the app, so feel free to nestle the box somewhere inaccessible because you almost certainly won’t be touching it again.
App Control
If you’ve got any other Govee lights, you’ll be familiar with the app. It’s the same interface for the Christmas String Lights and is just as bloated as ever. It is, however, super easy to add new devices, as it’s all automatically detected over Bluetooth once you click the plus button in the top right.
Most of the time, you’ll be in the scenes menu, choosing from the hundred or so ready-made scenes that are in the app. If you’re like me, you’ll probably only find a few that are acceptable on a Christmas tree or don’t come across as, well, cheesy. I take particular issue with the scene called “Twinkle,” which consists of a single rotating color flashing on and off. That’s not twinkling by any definition!
The DIY section is where you’ll probably find yourself next. This allows you to select from some basic pattern types (or combine two), choose some colors, and set the speed of the animation. There is quite a learning curve, though, and the interface is confusing, but keep at it, and you should be able to come up with something pleasing. There’s even a game tab with playful distractions such as “clap to make the lights come on.” Who needs a PlayStation 5 when you have Christmas lights, eh?
If you want a mini disco for your Christmas party, you’ll also be pleased to find a handful of music-reactive modes that use the mic in the control box, so you can set and forget without needing to leave your phone nearby. It’s also compatible with the separateGovee Music Sync Box, which allows you to create a cohesive display among multiple devices (and you can mix and match other Govee lights, too, not just the strings).
From there, if you’re still not satisfied, head back to the home screen and click the Explore (world) icon at the bottom. This will take you to user submissions, where you may browse, preview, and save various DIY animations submitted by other users. I find a lot of them are very similar, however.
At this point, you might be thinking that the time commitment of learning a new app and making your own DIY scenes is quite overwhelming for some holiday string lights, and that’s absolutely a valid criticism. The Govee Home app is far from perfect or user-friendly, and while I can tolerate that—as a geek who loves all kinds of smart lighting—most people won’t.
If you’re not already intimately familiar with the Govee app, and this is your first Govee purchase, I suspect you’ll be very frustrated.
Alternatives
Of course, Govee isn’t the first smart lighting company to venture into traditional Christmas and tree lighting.
On the premium end of the market, the most direct competitor isTwinkly String Lights Generation II, coming in a variety of lengths and LED densities from 8m / 100 LEDs all the way up to 48m / 600 LEDs. A comparable length as we tested here (20m) features 50 more LEDs than the Govee Christmas String Lights (25% more), but at a considerably higher cost of $140 versus the Govee’s $90.
The feature set offered by Twinkly is almost identical, however, and they even offer a music sync box to sync up multiple products.
Still, the Govee Christmas String Lights clearly offer better value, and if your home is already kitted out with other Govee lightning, it’s a no-brainer as to which to buy.
You’ll find countlessgeneric “smart string lights” on Amazon, which, at a quick glance, seem to offer much better value still, with as many as 200ft / 600 LED strings for around $70. However, the app functionality is usually quite barebones, offering basic DIY pattern-making (you might see that as a positive compared to Govee bloat).
Don’t expect a plethora of ready-made scenes, a community of other creators, or a way to sync up multiple sets. They’re also not nearly as bright, with the entire 600 LED string using a mere 12W, compared to 15W of the 200 LED Govee string.
Should You Buy the Govee Christmas String Lights?
My house is covered in smart lighting, smart bulbs, and smart sensors of all kinds, yet curiously, when Christmas rolls around, I’m stuck with putting up the same old single-color 6-pattern twinkling fairy lights on our tree. Will I finally be replacing those with some smart Govee String Lights?
If I’m honest, probably not. I suppose I’m a bit traditional, but after trying these out, I’ve realized I don’t want any garish or flashy music-reactive patterns on our living room Christmas tree. I want some delicately fading white lights; a little inkling of a twinkle. Not a rainbow cornucopia worthy of the 90s rave scene.
If you’re looking for some string lights that’ll integrate well with the rest of your Govee system—perhaps you have a Christmas tree in your gaming room or cinema—then these are a great choice. They’ll sync up to your DreamView box, then swap back your regular Christmas lighting scene when you’re done. They offer a bright point of light that’s plainly visible in the daytime and will provide ample ambient lighting at night.
They’re not just for Christmas either—I strung up a length for a Halloween disco to light up the back of the venue, and the set-and-forget music reactive modes were fantastic. See that bright blue line in the middle of the photo below? That’s the Govee string lights, pulsating in time to the beat.
If you want more granular control over your Christmas lighting and the ability to set a few different custom scenes that are impossible with boring standard string lights, then these are also a good fit. you may spend hours programming your perfect custom Christmas tree “experience.”
But if these would be your first and possibly only Govee lights, I wouldn’t recommend them. The app is bloated and overkill for a string of fairy lights.
