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Govee is one of the best brands out there when it comes to smart lights for your home. With one of its newest products, the Neon Rope Lights, Govee makes it possible to bring fun, retro designs to your home and create a statement piece.

Govee's Neon Rope Lights currently come in two different lengths: 16.4 feet and 10 feet. The 16.4-foot Rope Lights cost $119.99, and the 10-foot Rope Lights cost $79.99. I reviewed the 16.4-foot light strip, and since you can't connect two light strips, I was thankful for the extra length.

In general, smart lights can add an extra tech element to your home, making parties more lively and controlling them via a voice assistant, like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. While Govee's Rope Lights do all of that, they are also an attractive statement piece and create something to talk about for anyone who enters your home. If you're after unique smart lights for your home, look no further than Govee's Neon Rope Lights.

Installation: A Straightforward Process

Installing Govee's Neon Rope Lights was incredibly easy. The instructions are in this tiny booklet, titled User Manual and pictured below, and only on one to two pages. Although, just by looking at everything included, the installation process is pretty intuitive.

govee rgbic led neon rope lights box with all the contents laid out in front of it
Sarah Chaney / Review Geek

There are plastic clips that fit onto the underside of the Neon Rope Lights and attach to the wall with a strong adhesive. Because of how heavy the Rope Lights are, I had some issues with the adhesive slipping on the wall and not staying in place until I added additional clips.

One section under my cabinets needed a total of three adhesive clips. I tried to place the clips one at a time, but that wasn't working. It's much easier to put the clips where they need to go on the Rope Lights, rip off the paper to expose the adhesives, and then simultaneously attach all three clips to the wall.

After adding as many clips as I felt I needed to secure the lights under my kitchen cabinets, I still had four left. Despite my initial experience of a clip or two slipping under the weight of the Rope Lights, the whole strip held up overnight and is still holding strong today, exactly where I placed it.

Related: Govee Flow Plus Smart Light Bars Review: Colorful Affordable Fun

I'm renting my apartment, so I only wanted to use the adhesive to hang my Neon Rope Lights. However, Govee also includes screws and anchors that you can use with the clips for a stronger foundation. If you're renting like I am, you likely won't use the screws and anchors, but it's a helpful way to ensure your lights stay in place if you have a continuous issue with them slipping.

After researching Govee's website and other online retail sites, I couldn't find anywhere you could purchase additional plastic pieces with adhesive specific to these Neon Rope Lights. You could purchase double-sided adhesives and stick them on top of the existing adhesive, but there's no equivalent to replacing the little plastic piece the light strip fits into.

Because it's difficult to replace the clips and/or the adhesive, this makes it hard to change up the design of your Rope Lights. Since this is such an expensive product, it'd be nice to see Govee come out with replacement plastic pieces to change up the design as much as you wanted without having to drill and fill multiple holes in your walls.

As it stands, you have to be sure of your design before you start putting stuff together. I'd recommend laying out your plan on the floor before you start putting it up on the wall, especially knowing you can't connect other Neon Rope Light strips to make it longer.

I didn't do this, but I wish I had. Instead of putting the lights under my kitchen cabinets, I wish I had come up with some cool design; maybe even one presented in the Govee Home app (Android/iOS). Unfortunately, once I put those lights up, they're staying where they are because I don't have any extra adhesives to play around with the design somewhere else in my apartment.

You'll also need to place your design close enough to an outlet to plug in the adapter and hang or place the included controller. With the controller, you can quickly turn your lights on and off and toggle between different colors or lighting effects. The controller comes with an adhesive on the back to stick it to the wall or under a cabinet.

The App: Easy to Customize Your Lights

It's easy to connect your new Rope Lights with the Govee Home app and easy to customize them after they're connected. When you first open the app, you'll select your smart lights, and then open the Effects Lab to see where you can choose between static colors, pre-set color moods, colors dancing with music, and more.

Within the Effects Lab, there are four primary tabs at the top you can switch between: Color Gallery, Effects Lab (a little confusing, but this is separate from the main Effects Lab category), Gaming Lab, and Harmony Lab. Navigating between these four tabs is intuitive and you can easily spend hours just experimenting with the app and your lights.

The Color Gallery tab allows you to select a solid color for your lights. There are many categories in this tab with unique colors, including Basic Colors that follow the gradient of a rainbow, as well as colors based on Ingredients, Emotions, Stars, Fruits, National Flags, Animals, Gems, Paintings, and more.

You can select unique scenes in the Effects Lab tab to base your Rope Lights color scheme on. There are many options to choose from here, which is excellent if you don't particularly have a creative mind, and want to use a color palette Govee has already created. There are Natural scenes, like Sunrise, Sunset, Forest, Meteor, and Snowflake, and other scenes related to Emotion, Dance, Music, Games, Relaxation, Life, and more.

The Gaming Lab tab is identical to the Effects Lab tab, but with only four unique categories: Sandbox 3D, Airsoft Battle, Driving, and Speed Ball 3D. Each main category contains scenes with a preset color palette, like Tundra, Desert Island, or Taiga.

In the Harmony Lab tab, scenes with unique color palettes mesh with musical sounds. The categories within this tab include Rain, Natural, Life, Animals, and Melody. When you select a scene from each category, a preset color palette is attached to a specific soundtrack, helping create an overall mood.

Performance: Exactly What You'd Expect

Right off the bat, the vivid colors and brightness of Govee's Neon Rope Lights are fantastic. For me, the brightness was a little bit too harsh, but you can customize the brightness in the mobile app. Bringing it down to about 20% brightness was perfect for the vibe I was trying to achieve.

govee neon rope lights colored blue and displayed underneath kitchen cabinets
Sarah Chaney / Review Geek

As mentioned above, the mobile app allows you to do so much with your Neon Rope Lights. Whether you want a solid light, segmented light strips of different colors, lights dancing with music, or a certain mood based on preset colors, these lights can do it.

Related: Govee Envisual DreamView T1 Review: An Excellent Responsive TV Backlight for Just $70

The overall quality of the Rope Lights is excellent as well. Many LED strips have the lights exposed so you can see each individual LED, but Govee's Neon Rope Lights have a silicone covering that limits the abrasiveness of the LEDs. Since my kitchen is pretty compact, the brightness was still a bit high for me even with the silicone covering, but in a larger area, I don't think you'd need to turn down the brightness much, if at all.

It's easy to see how smart lights shine (pun intended) when the room is dark, but I was impressed that I could still see the color vividly when my kitchen light was on. Granted, there's a bit of a shadow under my cabinets, but even the lights outside of the shadows are vivid and easy to see.

As mentioned earlier, you can use Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa with Govee's Neon Rope Lights. I use Google Assistant, and I had no issues giving voice commands to the lights to change color, sync with music, or basically any other feature you can control with the Govee Home app.

Conclusion: Super Cool Neon Rope Lights

Overall, I'd highly recommend trying out Govee's Neon Rope Lights! They have a semi-retro look to them, and the silicone covering on the LEDs makes the lights more sturdy and less abrasive to your eyes. These lights were pretty easy to install as well, despite my initial struggles with the plastic clips slipping; you just have to make sure you're balancing the weight of the lights with the placement of the plastic clips.

If I could go back to before I installed the light strip in my kitchen, the only thing I would do differently is lay out a design first on my floor before securing it to the wall. It could also be a good idea to potentially think on a design for a few days to be extra sure about where you want it to go in your place.

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Govee Neon Rope Lights

Pros
  • TONS of color combinations and settings in the app
  • Works with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa
  • Segmented light sections make for unique designs
Cons
  • There's no way to connect multiple light strings
  • Re-mounting or changing the shape is involved