Copyright Gizmodo
Smart lighting has transformed how people think about home ambiance but getting started with systems like Philips Hue means spending $50 just for a single color bulb before you even factor in the required hub. Govee just dropped their RGBIC Floor Lamp to $64 on Amazon, slashed from the usual $99 price, and here’s the wild part: you’re paying less than what a basic Philips Hue bulb costs while getting a complete standalone lighting system that needs no hub, no complicated setup, and no additional purchases. This floor lamp delivers 1000 lumens of brightness, 16 million color options, music sync capability, and Alexa voice control right out of the box. See at Amazon RGBIC Technology Really Changes the Game What sets this apart is Govee’s use of its own RGBIC technology: This stands for Red Green Blue Independent Control. Normal RGB lighting provided by LED strips or bulbs can only show one color at a time on the whole light. If it’s set on blue, it will all light up in blue. The benefit of RGBIC lighting is that it allows each section of the LED strip to be controlled independently. This enables multiple parts of the lighting to show different colors. The floor lamp can display multiple segments of a color gradation, from red on the bottom, orange in the middle, yellow in the middle, through all of it lighting up in blue on the top. The lamp has a total height of 53 inches or 4.5 feet. The design incorporates four parts of an aluminum light pole which can be interconnected, an aluminum base, and a silicone light strip that goes round the light pole. The use of the silicone is advantageous in that it diffuses the led light which can otherwise create harsh spots. The entire length of the lamp has a smooth color. The process of setting up this lamp is estimated to take five minutes. Brightness level reaches an intense 1000 Lumens which is on par with a 75W incandescent bulb. The system comes with not only color illumination options, as found in most models on the marketplace but also has dedicated white illumination. This allows users to make use of this lighting system not only as a complement lighting design, which most lighting choices can provide, but as a lighting solution capable of lighting an entire room. Smart control works through the Govee Home app which is available for iOS and Android. Once connected, you can control the lamp from anywhere, set schedules for automatic on and off times, create custom color scenes, and access Govee’s library of 58 pre-programmed dynamic modes. These modes include things like Cheerful with bright, energetic colors, Romantic with soft pinks and purples, and various holiday themes for Christmas, Halloween, and other occasions. The inclusion of voice control functionality with Alexa and Google Assistant allows users to use the lamp remotely. The use of voice commands such as “Alexa, turn on the floor lamp” or “Hey Google, turn the floor lamp to blue” enables the user to do so instantly without needing to use the application. The lighting of the floor lamp can also be controlled by the use of voice commands. Music sync is where the lamp becomes seriously entertaining to have at parties or during gaming sessions: The lamp employs the use of the microphone in your phone to pick sound waves in the room which it uses to create color changes dependent on the sound. Watching a movie could entail explosions lighting up reddish-orange while the quiet parts of the movie go dark with cooler tones. Music will give an amazing display of lighting that is dependent on the rhythm of the song. The palette of 16 million colors comes from the RGB color scheme in which each of the three basic light colors can be adjusted to an intensity of 256 units. That’s a total of 256 x 256 x 256, or 16,777,216. The catch is that you will never use most of those colors, which basically means that the more complete palette available will help you fine-tune the color that you personally favor. For only $64, you’re getting an entire smart lighting system that would otherwise retail below the premium brand of $150 or more.
