Govee Curtain Lights: An Entire Wall of Flashy LEDs

May 20, 2023

An innovative addition to the Govee line up, but you'd need quite an imagination to know what half the animations are.

Not content with pixel strip lighting or decorative abstract LED lines on your wall? Try a whole wall-sized LED pixel display instead, with the new Govee Curtain smart lighting, available now for $130.

Is this the next level in smart lighting, or a curious addition to the Govee lineup? Let's find out.

The Govee Curtain Lights can be impressive in the right situation, but with such a large pixel pitch it takes a lot of imagination to recognize the animations.

In addition to the "curtain" itself, which is a series of hanging transparent PVC plastic wires with LED beads roughly every two inches, you also get the power supply with a wired power button, as well as a variety of hanging accessories.

These include a set of small hooks for hanging onto an actual curtain track, 3M wall hangers to just stick the curtain up anywhere, and a set of hanging points you can nail into your wall. That covers every scenario possible, so it's a versatile approach that means you should be able to put these anywhere your fancy takes you.

I chose to install the hooks, which means I can hang a curtain track and move them around easily for use at events. When it came to actually hanging the Curtain Lights, it was about as irritating as you'd expect sticky PVC plastic string lights to be, and you should expect to spend half the time untangling them.

The Govee curtains feature no fewer than 520 individually controllable pixels. While this sounds impressive, it translates to a mere 20 wide by 26 pixels height, so it's not exactly what one would call high-resolution. Or even low resolution for that matter.

However, in the right context, it can look great.

Although they're called curtain lights, you'd likely want a pair of them if you were aiming to cover a whole window. Out of the box, they measure about 4.92 feet wide by 6.56 feet drop (or 1.5m wide by a 2m drop). It's also worth noting that the curtains are IP65 rated for indoor or outdoor use, but the control box and power socket should remain inside.

If you do get a pair of Curtain Lights, Govee has a "device splicing" settings to combine some animations and give you a larger DIY canvas. I've been unable to test this as we were only sent one set for review, but from what I can gather from the ofifcial launch videos, music reactive modes remain independantly animated, and it's not clear if the scene animations are in fact drawing on a larger canvas, or just retiming the a single pattern to loop at the appropriate time (thereby giving the illusion of a connected display).

Since each pixel on the Curtain Lights are a small point of light spaced widely apart without any other diffusion, they will look much better when placed against a white wall from which they can reflect. To demonstrate this, I set them side by side with the same effect displayed against a white wall and just a window frame at night. The difference in effect quality is clear.

You might also consider putting some kind of thin white sheet in front of them to act as a diffuser. I tried this with a shower curtain, but it was a little too close.

Like most Govee products, the Curtain Lights are Alexa and Google home compatible—but you'll only get access to the full range of features by using the Govee Home app (preferably over Bluetooth).

Setting up and adding the lights to your system is incredibly simple, as it's automatically recognised over Bluetooth. You just need to tell the app which side you've put the plug, so animations can display correctly.

The app provides a range of built-in dynamic scenes, many of which have interesting animations. These cover annual events like Christmas or Halloween, as well as random patterns like Snake, Pacman, or... Panda.

However, I have to admit, this aspect felt a bit tacky to me. With only 20 or so pixels to work on each axis, and each pixel so far apart, the animations are understandably contrived. You'll need to take several steps back—and then squint really hard—to make out what they're even supposed to be.

If the built-in animations aren't to your liking, or you want some scrolling text or your country's flag, then you can head over to the DIY tab and come up with something completely custom by painting the pixels and then adding a basic movement.

They also recently added a feature that allows you to upload a gif image to the app, in theory providing a great opportunity to create your own custom animated displays with your choice of software tool. But when I tried this with a simple fire animation (from Vecteezy user Angyee VDO), it didn't work that well. Even though I'd formatted the GIF in the correct resolution, the Govee Home app still attempted to resize it, blur everything, and do some kind of color averaging.

The results bore little resemblance to the shape or colors of the original animation. As such, you shouldn't expect professional LED animated wall results from this.

Beyond the GIF upload, the tools for designing your own scene are quite complex and not beginner-friendly, so there's room for improvement there.

Where the curtains really shine, in my opinion, is with the customizable music reactive modes. Check out the video review embedded at the start of this review if you haven't already.

There isn't a huge range of scenes, and once you've narrowed it down to your favorites, there are perhaps only two or three you'll like—and you'll need to use the on-device microphone option, because the range when using your phone's mic is even more limited. But those animations can be further customized in terms of color palette, and some even offer other adjustable parameters like direction. This is by far my favorite aspect of the product.

If you're searching Amazon for "led curtain lights", you'll find three types of alternatives.

The first are basic random fairy lights that offer no control options. These can be found for $20 or under. They aren't "smart", and you'll be disappointed.

The second offer some level of control and music reactivity, usually with entire rows of LEDs changing at once rather than individual pixels. These cost upwards of $30-50.

The third kind, priced anywhere from $60 to $120, are direct competitors to Govee. They commonly offer 400 individual pixels of control (slightly less than Govee), and superficially similar app features in terms of animations and music-reactive modes. The Ho-Ho-Glow RGB curtains ($70) even allow you to connect up to three sets together for a wide custom canvas, with text that scrolls across the full length. They might be better buy for your use case. I wouldn't expect the same level of support and app updates that Govee offers though.

The Govee Curtain Lights are technically impressive and very fun. I love sitting there and staring as it pulsates in time to the music. But are they $130 fun, and would I recommend integrating them into your Govee lighting-filled gaming room? Probably not.

My main issue with the Govee Curtain Lights is that they don't feel like they fit within the Govee ecosystem. Technically, yes, they work over the same app, share the same interface, and have many of the same named presets. But because it's such a unique product, it just doesn't seem to fit.

While the Curtain Lights can technically be linked into your Govee DreamView video sync (each Curtain offers six vertical segments for syncing), you wouldn't dream of putting something this distracting behind your monitor or on the wall of your home cinema. Other Govee devices are typically strings, lines, or defined shapes that can neatly complement your hardware—but this is an entire curtain that demands the constant attention of viewers within range.

Ultimately, it's a big, garish centerpiece, more akin to a large piece of art than something to enhance your desktop or add room ambiance. It's an innovative, yet peculiar product in the Govee line up, and I'm not entirely sure who it's for.

James has a BSc in Artificial Intelligence and is CompTIA A+ and Network+ certified. When he's not busy as Hardware Reviews Editor, he enjoys LEGO, VR, and board games. Before joining MakeUseOf, he was a lighting technician, English teacher, and data center engineer.