Govee AI Gaming Sync Box review: Smarter lighting for your desk

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The Govee Home app for Android or iOS allows you to set up your new system. It’s hugely versatile, but there are so many options that you’ll need time to get familiar with it. It’s a shame there’s no desktop version, but the mobile app works fine and connects quickly via Bluetooth. You can select from a wide range of colors and lighting effects. There are 24 individual LED zones to customize, 14 on the light strip and five on each light bar.

If you have other Govee lights in the room, you can have the Sync Box control them as well, setting their relative positions in the app for a coordinated light show. Timing is what sets this system apart. It can sync up with music, match on-screen colors, and use AI to react to on-screen game action.

let there be light

The lights are vibrant, the color matching feels fairly accurate, and there’s no lag (a common flaw with older camera-reliant systems). But none of that is new. The headline here is Govee’s AI. While color matching divides the screen into a grid to match colors in relevant zones, the AI ​​is supposed to recognize in-game actions and generate lighting effects that tell you something.

Unfortunately this only works with a handful of titles, including apex legends, valorant, Supervisionand League of Legends. Custom in-game lighting effects include red flashes when you take damage, green for a medkit, or flashes and flashes to celebrate victories. It’s a clever idea that works well and adds genuine utility to the lighting. Govee promises that support will grow. Only time will tell. As cool as they are, these effects are best suited for fast-paced FPS and action games.

Because it analyzes the image via HDMI, the Govee AI Gaming Sync Box can conjure reactive lighting for anything you play on your monitor, including movies and TV shows. While it’s accurate and eliminates the slight lag of systems like the Govee T1, which I’ve been testing with my TV, it can be annoying at times. For most slower-paced TV shows, movies, and games, light timing just isn’t desirable, but it’s nice to have background block colors to set the mood and help your screen stand out.