Govee Cob Strip Light Pro review

RGB lighting has exploded, with dozens of brands vying for the honour of bestowing your home with vibrant photons. Competition has proven great for making rainbow lights a more accessible dream for everyone, but it has also created a confusing landscape where every diode seems to have its own proprietary way of doing things, leading to frustrating inconsistencies, incompatibilities, and just some cheaply made lights. That's the way I felt about Govee, when I first had a look at one of Govee's offerings two years ago, the Dreamview G1 Pro, but now reviewing the brand's new Cob Strip Light Pro, it's clear these LEDs have had their glow up.

Govee's Cob Strip Light Pro comes in two lengths, 9.8 ft or 16.4 ft, and can be easily cut to shorter lengths. Though once it's cut, it's cut for good. You cannot extend it, which while sad, is fairly common for this breed of light. 

The RGBIC+W style lighting is a step up from many standard RGB-only offerings. It allows for smooth fades between colours, and even some really pleasant white hues from a dedicated white diode. That's only a single white diode, however, and a lack of dedicated warm white in the mix means it is a bit more limited than options with more. Supposedly 1,260 LEDs are jammed all together and the colours are generally smooth, vibrant, and quite pleasant for the effort as advertised. This is packed into a flexible diffused unit with adhesive acrylic back for sticking it right up there.

Like most of Govee's new lights, this Cob Strip is Matter enabled, and it was fairly little effort to get it added to Google Home. I can do basic things like adjust the colour and brightness of the whole strip, and turn it on and off. This has been really handy, but if I want to do anything particularly fun with the lights, Govee's app is required.

Length: 9.8 ft—also comes in 16.4 ft. Can be cut, can't be extended
Connectivity: 2.4GHz Wi Fi + Bluetooth
Colours: RGBIC+W
Control: Mobile app recommended. Desktop app and Matter support