Govee Lyra Floor Lamp Review
A fun and powerful colour-changing light
Verdict
Looking for a practical lamp that can also add a bit of fun and dynamism to your home? Then the Govee Lyra Floor Lamp is for you. With its segmented LED light strip, this lamp can display multiple colours at the same time, either statically or via dynamic, colour-shifting scenes. It’s a bit fiddly to set up, but the quality of the light and excellent app make up for this.
Pros
- Excellent colour
- Great app
- Lots of scenes
- Useful remote
Cons
- Fiddly to install
Availability
- UKunavailable
- USARRP: $144.49
- Europeunavailable
- Canadaunavailable
- Australiaunavailable
Key Features
- TypeThis is an LED light strip that can colour and temperature change. Thanks to its segments it can also show different colours at the same time.
- ConnectionOnce connect to your Wi-Fi, you can control the lamp with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and the Govee app.
Introduction
Coloured light strips are a great way to add a bit of interest to a room, but you have to have somewhere suitable to stick them. The Govee Lyra Floor Lamp gets around this problem by affixing the light strip into a lamp base, so you can place it where you want, or even move it around.
Slightly fiddly construction doesn’t get in the way of a brilliant colour-changing lamp, which offers some neat gradient effects and a clever app.
Design and features
- Slightly fiddly to assemble
- Great range of scenes and effects
- Useful remote control
The Govee Lyra Floor Lamp comes in a box that looks way too small to fit in a tall lamp (1448 x 135 x 135mm). This is because you have to assemble the light first. It’s a slightly fiddly process. First, you need to screw together the upstand, which comprises a series of metal pieces.
Next, the upstand has to be attached to the base; the light strip clips into this, attaching the power connector into one end. The light strip has a soft cover to it, similar to how the Philips Hue Outdoor Lightstrip is made, so it’s fairly easy to attach. However, it can be tricky to get the light strip to line up exactly and it can slip over time; mine ended up with a small gap at the top.
Once assembled, you can place the Govee Lyra Floor Lamp where you want it. Product shots show the lamp both as a wall lighter (the LED strip faces the wall) and as a regular lamp (the LED strip shining into the room). Either way is fine, but if you place the lamp towards a wall, the power cable sticks out into the room, looking a little ugly.
Basic control is via the RF remote control, which attaches magnetically to the clip-on holder. This type of control is great, since it means you can quickly cycle through some basic colour options, adjust brightness and toggle the music mode, which adjusts colour in time to your music.
To get the most out of the lamp, you need to hook it up to Wi-Fi and use the Govee app. From here, you get more fine control of the lamp, with options to choose the exact colour or colour temperature you desire. You can also pick from a large range of scenes, including dynamic ones that shift and move through colours.
As with the Philips Hue Gradient, the Govee Lyra Floor Lamp is an advanced LED strip that lets you adjust colour in segments. Here, there are eight segments, which you can paint in different colours.
Having these segments also expands the scenes available. There are some fun scenes, such as greedy snake, which mimics the old Nokia Snake game using light. These dynamic effects, combined with the segments are hugely impressive.
You can also create your own scenes, both static and dynamic, with the latter letting you choose the effect. These include Stacking (colours slide down and layer on top of each other), Breathing (the lamp pulses gently) and Rainbow (your chosen colours cycle around the segments).
Once hooked up to Wi-Fi, you get both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant control, too. With these, you can toggle the lamp on and off, set a colour and adjust brightness – but I couldn’t choose a scene to use.
What you don’t get here that you do with the Philips Hue range are switches and sensors. The remote control helps make up for this, but the wider set of controls available elsewhere may be preferable. If you do want to automate your Govee lamp, there is an IFTTT channel.
Performance
- Excellent brightness
- Clever colour blending
- Remote control dimming isn’t that precise
Govee uses RGBIC tech for the Lyra, which offers 16 million colours, a 2200K to 6500K colour temperature, and 1500 lumens of brightness. This translates to the lamp that isn’t only great for ambience but one that’s bright enough on a practical level, too – for reading, say, or just for having more diffuse lighting than the main light provides.
Colours are excellent on this model. Cheaper LED strips often suffer in this area, but the range here is excellent, with strong and bright hues across the range.
It’s the way in which colours blend that’s particularly impressive. Use the different segments and colours smartly blend together, rather than displaying a harsh line between them. It’s an impressive bit of tech, able to project a rainbow of colours onto a wall. That goes double for the dynamic scenes, with colours subtly moving around the segments.
One minor complaint is that dimming is a little strange with the remote. With the tap of the ‘-‘ button, the lamp adjusts down in even steps until the final one, when it suddenly becomes very dim.
You might like…
Best Offers
Should you buy it?
If you want a practical floor lamp that can also inject a bit of fun into your home, this is an excellent choice.
The Govee is more of a standalone lamp rather than something that fits into a smart lighting system. If you want joined-up lighting through your home then a rival system may be better.
Final thoughts
It’s a touch fiddly to build properly but it’s worth the effort. With its excellent dynamic effects, segmented colours and high brightness, this is a floor lamp that’s as much fun as it is practical.
FAQs
It works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
Yes, you can show up to eight colours at the same time.
Specs
Jargon buster
Alexa
Amazon's smart voice assistantGoogle Assistant
A voice assistant which is Google’s take on Amazon’s Alexa.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
