Govee LED Strip Light M1 Impressions
External lighting solutions company Govee is back with a new product to help you customise your household and, of course, your gaming lair. The new Govee LED Strip Light M1 is a low-profile LED strip that you can stick on your furniture and tune to your liking. Let’s light it up!
Retailing for $99 on the official Govee website, the Govee LED Strip Light M1 comes with the following items out of the box:
- 5m/16.4ft M1 LED strip
- Hooks & screws
- Control box & power plug
- User manual
Specs courtesy of Govee
To set up the M1 strip, you’ll need to stick it along the surface you wish to illuminate with the double-sided tape on the underside of the 5m/16.4ft strip. It’s as easy as it sounds and can be completed within a few minutes. Govee also included hooks (with double sided tapes) and compatible screws to help provide additional support for the strip should you need them. I found this to be a welcome extra as it can help hold the strip in place in case it gets unstuck.
However, the double-sided tape on the underside of the strip is basically a one-time use affair, so you’ll have to think carefully where you want to place the strip as it would be practically fixed in place and you cannot relocate it. Having an option to easily replace the sticky tape or providing spare ones in the package would be welcome. Alternatively, another mechanism to hold the strip could have been devised, such as through multiple hooks or clips. Hopefully Govee considers such options for its next LED strip.
Once you’ve decided on the ideal location for the M1 strip, it’s ready to illuminate your setup. There are some presets for lighting patterns and colours from the control box but you’ll get the most of this accessory via the Govee Home app. The latter allows you to DIY lighting segments across the strip as well as provide access to more preset scenes. I found it to be particularly handy to adjust the brightness of specific segments or the whole length of the strip; a feature which really should have been integrated on the control box itself in the first place.
The best effect is the underglow it delivers as the light reflects on surrounding surfaces, and this is more pronounced with the strip placed on a furniture close to the wall/ceiling/floor or directly on any of the latter. I have myself placed the M1 strip around my bed frame (yes! finally a gamer bed!) and the underglow effect on the floor and surrounding furniture is quite appealing.
With its generous, 60 LEDs per metre, the M1 Strip delivers uniform lighting across the strip. In addition to the regular set lighting, the M1 can tune up to music/ambient audio for some groovy experience. It also supports Alexa and Google Assistant voice control via Wi-Fi if you’re into such features.
As with other Govee products, the LED Strip Light M1 isn’t particularly cheap and there is still room for improvements. However, the quality of the product, the lighting effect and customisation options reflect on the cost. The latter aspect is particularly characteristic of the company and Govee has refined its lighting customisation to be seamless and plentiful. This is purely a cosmetic accessory so you might as well get the most fine-tuning out of it based on your liking. Should you want to tune your gaming lair or household with some customisable, low-profile LED strip, it’s worth looking into the Govee LED Strip Light M1.
