It’s been a year since I first purchased and reviewed my Govee Flow Plus Light Bars. This article has been updated to include all of the long-term experiences I’ve had with this LED light living behind my monitors.
The Govee Light Bars are considered the affordable alternative to the Philips Hue Play Bars. They are very similar in form factor making the products direct competitors.
These light bars made our guide to a killer LED backlit desk setup.
Many people question if Govee is an established brand or not. I’ve owned my Govee light bars for a while, dealt with their customer service, and put together a dedicated article on whether Govee is a good company to buy from.
Today we’re going to give you a long-term review of the Govee Light Bars. If you already have a set of Govee light bars, check out our placement guide.
What’s In The Box
The Govee lights come in decent packaging, nothing very special. The box is nice with clean graphics all around.
The box shows off the following information on the front cover:
- RGBIC Model (IC refers to Govee’s independent control LEDs). Simply means one strip can have multiple colors instead of a single color.
- Govee Home App
- Smart Voice Control – Google/Alexa
- Color Temperature Range: 2200K to 6500K
- 16 Million Colors
- 400 Lumen Brightness
- 25,000 Operating Hours
Here’s what you get inside of the box:
Two Lights Bars
As the image above shows, this product comes with two wired RGBIC light bars. Each cable has around 4ft of length before merging together into a single USB-C connection.
With 4 feet of length each, the light bars can’t be more than 8 feet apart from each other. This was a bummer because I had plans to place another set of light bars further away from each other.
The light bars are triangular in shape which is very convenient. If you just place them on a table, the light is directed 30 degrees or so upward from horizontal. Very handy for casual lightbar placement!
Four Brackets
Govee gives you two types of brackets for each Flow Plus light bar, giving you four brackets in total.
Two brackets are made for vertical light bar placement. The other two are for flat placement with an adhesive back. You can basically have these mounted anywhere right out of the box with the adhesive brackets!
Control Box
The control box is the brains of the entire setup. This has the physical on-off button, sound mode/dimmer button, and a color selection button.
If you don’t want to use the app, these three buttons are how you control the light bars. (You will have a lot more capabilities when using the app.)
The control box is home to the sound detector, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi modules as well. It also comes with an adhesive back, so you can stick this to any surface you like!
To get started you connect your light bars to the control box, and connect the power cable to your control box as well.
12V Power supply
The included power supply outputs 12V at 1.5A max. That means it only takes 18 watts to power these Govee Flow Plus light bars.
It’s a pretty standard power supply with a 4mm barrel jack that connects to the control box.
Other than the manual, that is pretty much all that comes in the box with the Govee Flow Plus lights.
Build & Design Quality
Now let’s talk about build quality. This is where most will find differences from the more expensive Philips Hue Play Bars. Because I haven’t used the play bars, this will be an unbiased approach to quality.
Light Bar Build & Design Quality
When I first took these light bars out of the box, they felt noticeably lightweight. That is mostly a positive because these are designed to be adhered to things like monitors and such.
The downside with such a lightweight light bar is that the non-adhesive stands are likely to slide around and get knocked over easily.
The white diffused panel where the light shines through has a seamless transition with the black plastic body. It is very well integrated with the body of the light bars.
When turning on the light bar and going through the different colors, the diffusion is fantastic. At no point can I see any sign of an individual LED.
A great diffusion job by Govee. It’s a very important feature to have a light bar that diffuses the light well.
My only gripe with the light bar is the cable exit location. It protrudes on the side of the light bar which makes it a little difficult to hide if you want to just place it on a table without one of the brackets.
I already touched on how handy the triangle design of the lightbars is. You can just place it on a desk and it will be at a controlled upwards angle. Genius.
Control Box Design & Build Quality
Because I mainly use the app to control the modes and colors, I pretty much only use the control box to turn the lights on and off. I do have a few annoyances with the control box, however.
Too Light
First, this control box is very lightweight. Almost too light.
It is impossible for it to sit in one place without using the adhesive back tape. You can already see it floating in the image below.
I limit my use of double-sided tape on top of my desk, just because it can leave residue or peel off your surface during removal.
If you plan on your control box sitting somewhere on top of your desk where you can see it, plan to use the included double-sided tape.
Poor Quality Adhesive
I ended up placing my control box behind my monitor using the included double-sided tape. It kept falling off of my monitor after a day or so.
My second set of Govee light bars is placed in my bedroom, and I tried to tape the control box to the side of my dresser. Of course, the adhesive failed.
In both instances, I had to use my own strong double-sided tape that I use for cable management.
Strong double-sided mounting tape, holds up to 3 Ibs per 2 inches. This industrial-strength foam tape is easy to install, just peel off the tape and stick it to the surface of the object. It bonds quickly and securely when it’s fully compressed. No drilling, no screwing, no heating.
Cable Management Flaw
The second major annoyance is that they designed the control box with the power jack and USB jack on opposite sides. This makes the control box really difficult to cable manage cleanly.
If they were to point in one direction, it would be pretty sleek to have this control at the edge of your desk with the wires disappearing off the edge. Unfortunately, Govee missed that mark.
Bracket Build & Design Quality
Both brackets do a pretty good job of doing what they were designed to do.
The vertical bracket is clever as it is designed so the wire exits in the direction of the light.
That means if your light faces a wall, the cable faces the wall too. A nice touch that makes cable management very simple.
The vertical bracket is pretty stable without the light bar. However, once you place the light bar in the friction fit slot, it deforms the bracket a bit. That makes it not nearly as flat on the bottom, and thus unstable.
The more you press it into the bracket, the more it deforms. Govee needs to adjust the mold for those brackets a bit to make sure it seats more predictably.
The adhesive back brackets have a better adhesive compared to the control box. However, it’s still not perfect.
Only half of the adhesive pad is attached to my monitor at the moment. It hasn’t fallen off, but it’s barely on there.
There is a slot in the back of the light bars so they hook up pretty well. I have no major complaints there.
If you do want to mount these with the adhesive mount, keep in mind that you cannot mount it vertically with the wire exit facing upwards. In that specific orientation, the slot in the light bar won’t sit properly and it can fall out.
Govee Light Bar Features
Bluetooth & Wi-Fi Connectivity
The Bluetooth connection is established with the light bars every time you open the app. It disconnects when you exit the app, or if your phone goes to sleep.
It takes about 3-5 seconds to establish the connection every time you open the app and select your light bar. We discussed pairing your app with the light bars in our Govee Light Bar Setup Guide.
You can turn the light bars on with the control box power button, or the app.
Modes
The control box has a dedicated sound and dimmer combo button. If you don’t want to use the app, you simply press and hold this button to control the light’s brightness.
When you simply press the button, the light bars go into music mode. What this does it makes the lights reactive to vibrations and sound.
Govee gives you a couple of music modes. Some just have a solid color, others have dancing colors to add more liveliness. The color button cycles through nine common colors.
You can expand on the music mode functionality and have access to more modes on the mobile app.
App
Though we can use these Flow Plus light bars without the app, you get the most out of the light bars when you use them.
Here are a few high-level things that I noticed the app will let you do:
- Turn the lightbars on and off
- Turn off one light bar at a time
- Set timers so lights turn on or off at certain times
- Change the color of individual light bars
- Set multiple colors across a single light bar (6 segments per light bar)
- Change relative brightness
- Choose between multiple sound modes
- Choose between multiple scene modes
- Create your own modes
- Dark mode for the app!
I have to say, Govee added as many features as I could think are possible with this app. I’m not desiring anything that the app doesn’t offer.
Which brings me to my next point.
Bloated App Design & Poor UX
After going through all the capabilities of this app, I can honestly say that it has too many features and the UX is pretty mediocre. Having too many features and options is known to produce a bad customer experience.
Before I go into the main features of the app, let’s talk about what makes this app pretty bloated.
Bloated Features
When you open the app, it first shows your devices. At the bottom, you can see there are four more categories. Here is where some of the bloat is.
The first category is the Govee Light Studio, the second is some sort of Govee social media page, the third is a place to shop for more Govee products, and the last is your profile.
This is already way too heavy of an application for just controlling some lights. I don’t need social media for light bar owners.
I don’t like when companies force you to download a humungous app with all these other functions that warrant separate apps when I just want to control my lights.
Selecting Your Device
When you select your device in the first category, all your light settings come up. At the top, you see a few power buttons. You can turn off both lights or either one independently.
Below that, you have Music Dreamview, Effects Lab, Timer, Brightness, and Mode.
Dreamview is if you have multiple Govee devices and want them to sync up together. Brightness is just a slider to adjust the brightness, and “Mode” gives you access to different ways to use the lights.
Effects Lab
Effects lab is an overdone way for you to pick colors for your lightbars.
They list colors in unconventional ways, such as ingredients, stars, emotions, flags, and so on. There are so many subcategories here that it makes it overwhelming to just choose a color.
Have you ever wanted the colors to portray a Peacock Pansy? What about an Anas Platyrhynchos? See what I am saying about a bloated app?
In my opinion, the “effects lab” should be either sized down or deleted entirely.
Light Modes
Music
The music mode is a pretty cool one. The lights can be set to react to sound. Of course, they give you eight different ways to react to sound. They work pretty well, but they are not all necessary.
The best subfeature here is that you can actually dial in the sound sensitivity! That is a great feature that will ensure most people can get it working properly.
If you grant your phone’s permission, it can even react to sounds playing from your phone instead of the general environment. This is better for a more complete sound reaction.
Color
The main mode, and probably the only one most users need, is the color mode.
You can choose what colors go to each bar. You have access to a full-sized color wheel (finally the 16 million colors we were promised). Each light bar is broken into 6 segments, and you can individually assign them colors if you wish!
You can even save certain colors into a “my colors” category so you don’t have to go searching for them again after the first time.
There is a color spectrum and a white spectrum you can choose from. The color spectrum gives you access to all the colors, or you can choose from a spectrum of warm to cold whites.
I noticed right away that the white light color spectrum outputs much more light than the color spectrum. I assume there is a dedicated white LED strip inside the lightbars that is different from the RGB strip.
So if you need more brightness from these light bars, choose the white colors instead of the color spectrum.
Scenes
A ton of the features they have are simply nonsensical. Their scene modes fall into this category.
“Meteor” scene mode is just flashing white and blue lights? The “fire” mode is just orangish flashing lights? It makes no sense, and only a few of them are worth having.
They even have a “funny” category, and that category includes “fright”. This mode is just flashing purple lights. Does anyone really want these settings?
Some of these are just features they added for the sake of adding features. Not for increased usability. Most of the “Scenes” go into the useless category.
Long Term Issues
After using these light bars for a couple of months, I actually ran into light flickering issues. I had to get in contact with Govee customer support as they were under warranty.
This was a good opportunity to test out their customer service quality. I discuss this more in my review of the Govee Brand.
The first gave me some troubleshooting tips that did not end up working, followed by a free replacement of the light bars. I didn’t have to pay shipping or anything.
Conclusion
Overall, I am very happy with these light bars. The build quality is decent aside from a few minor gripes.
The app is a bit overloaded with way too many options. The very extra options are easy to ignore so you don’t necessarily have to worry about it.
It comes with everything you need to mount them well and start-up. It’s a great way to add light to your setup and reduce the intensity of computer screens or TV’s.
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