The Ultimate Smart Light Strip Comparison! (6 Popular Devices)

a smart light strip can brighten up a room backlight TVs and computers be used to light your way when getting out of bed or it can even be used to notify you visually of events it's a centerpiece and yet it's often behind our furniture providing that Ambience and those effects that we know and love but there are so many options on the market today and while we could try and cover them all I think it's best to educate you on how to pick a light strip and what features to look for so today I'm going to compare six models that all bring different advantages and disadvantages if you're picking from one of our six strips today then you're going to be able to make a great decision but even if you're not I'm gonna prepare you for the next purchase you make now here are our six smart light strips and some of the reasons they made the review this is the Govi M1 light strip it costs 60 U.S for two meters and can be extended up to 5 meters now the one we're talking about today is the second version of one of the most colorful and effect filled light strips it boasts 60 beautiful rgbw LEDs per meter 64 pre-created effects a music mode can synchronize with your television your PC and other Govi lights and on top of all of this it has a number of DIY effect creation modes that let you create Anything You Can Dream up those different effects are so impressive because this is an addressable light strip which means you can put multiple colors on it at the same time and even pick where those colors sit the Govi M1 comes with bracing clips and even some screws in case you need those plus the adapter is lightweight and there are 3M stickers everywhere you need them plus this is such a thin light strip it's easy to bend and the sticky tape is incredibly strong all of this combines the create and easy installation and one that will last for a very long time now once the M1 is installed the Govi app is easy and pretty fun to use plus the M1 connects to Amazon Google Apple home kit Samsung SmartThings and more platforms for basic control the reason it can connect to all of those platforms is because it features matter over Wi-Fi that's what makes this second version even better than the last one because now govi's everywhere one of its direct competitors is the nanoleaf essentials matter over thread light strip it's also a two meter strip but it can be extended to 10 meters it comes in at 10 less than the go vm1 but it's a single color light strip so while you can download nearly unlimited effects from their online community and you can use a nanoleaf desktop app to sync your strip to your PC you're only going to be able to display one color at a time now colors are made by five different LEDs on this light strip working together which is in stark contrast to the single LED being used to make all of the colors on the govm1 nanoleaf is generating colors with a combination of two LEDs with a lower Kelvin orange color two LEDs with a higher Kelvin white color and a single RGB LED all of these LEDs leave us with the brightest light strip we tested in fact its Lumen scores are in some cases 10 times higher than other LED strips but a funny thing happens when we get to the colors more on that later now it's one of the biggest and thickest light strips we work with which leaves you with a number of restrictions when it comes to installation there's also not much else that you get with this so you might need some accessories when you go to buy this led strap however once it's installed because this is a matter over thread device it has access to all the same platforms as the Govi M1 and I would say that this is the best connectivity technology that could be used on a light strip today this is the paper thin switchbot Wi-Fi LED strip it's so thin that it can be bent to 180 degrees in almost every spot on the Strip plus it's a five meter strip that's only 20 bucks now from a specification standpoint switchbot's light strip is fairly simple but it actually holds up on many of the basic specs you'll be looking for since it works in the switchbot app it has access to a lot of automation options that other strips in this review just don't have switchbot sells a lot of products and their automation engine is fairly strong on top of that switchbot provides a lot of connectivity options through their app and although this strip doesn't have matter with its Wi-Fi connectivity the only major platform that you would be missing with this light strip would be apple home now the app provides a number of effects and the strip can use a music mode that operates off of the microphone sitting on the controller plus this is the only LED strip that you get an IR based remote with when you buy it which gives you an additional few options for control there's also an effect creation tool but don't get too excited because it's a single color light strip it's LED density is very low and it's not very bright having said that once you have it installed I think it looks very interesting in the right location and that installation is one of the easiest that I've ever seen because the material is so easy to work with from the cheapest to the most expensive with the Philips Hue gradient light strap there are many versions of this strip and this specific one cost me 200 bucks it's the only one with a less transparent look but it's definitely the best feeling and the light strip with the most luxurious looks if if you're looking at this light strip carefully you'll see that signifies using a three LED combination to replicate their colors it's an extremely vibrant light strip and it definitely features some of the best looking colors it's also a multi-colored light strip and Philips Hue has a large number of scene effects plus a few live effects like Candlelight and fireplace the Philips Hue app also allows you to control this with many other Philips Hue Lights and they have some accessories like controllers and motion sensors that would allow you to turn this on in a number of ways now this light strip uses zigbee to communicate with the Philips Hue Hub and although that's an extra cost this is a highly reliable system that gives you access to every major smart home platform on the planet in fact there is no other system with more compatibility than Philips Hue when it comes to lighting however on top of the expense this light strip is very hard to work with because of its physical attributes it's thick and very stiff that's what he said right guys and you're not even allowed to bend it in a certain direction that's I know there's something dirty I should be saying right now but I actually feel like I just did it so you will really have to pick where you're going to install this light strip but once you've made that decision you're going to really enjoy the look and feel and much to the Chagrin of Paul Hibbert this light strip is one of the brightest when it comes to Colors it's just not so bright in the whites which is a lot like the Govi M1 and our next light strip tp-link recently launched this light strip called the Tapo c930-5 it's a five meter light strip that costs just 50 bucks but it can't be extended so it's a very long strip straight out of the box and it features one of the larger effect libraries in this review plus it has a DIY effect creation tool and there's even a coloring mode that allows you to pick the color for all 50 zones on this light strip so that means it's an addressable light strip and you can control the LEDs in sets of three the colors and even the whites look nice as they're being built by a single white LED in a single RGB LED but this strip is very dark when compared to others and some of the effect creation tools leave a little to be desired in fact later in today's video I'll explain how just a slight tweak in these effect creation tools could make this one of the most useful strips but it's just not there today now from an installation standpoint this is incredibly easy and although I was initially worried because some of the backing on the tape was coming off after getting it out of the box this has stayed stuck to the underside of my bed for many weeks now it was also really quick to install and although it uses Wi-Fi and does not feature any matter connectivity this has been reliable and it natively connects to all the major smart home platforms because tp-link has always been great at doing that which brings us to our last Light strip which comes from Eve now you're forgiven if you thought this was Nano Leaf strip again because there aren't many differences between the two physically it is is very similar and it's a single color light strip too but this one uses Wi-Fi only to connect to your home and it's also another ten dollars more expensive it's a two meter strip that can be extended to 10 meters but again this is going to be very hard to bend and you can really only bend it in One Direction now today Eve only has an app for iOS devices and although I'm told that that will change later this year that means you can only use this with apple home kit today there's also not any real effects but it is one of a few of the light strips in today's review that can do the Adaptive lighting feature that shifts the white light on this strip over the course of a day to mimic the Sun the color reproduction is excellent and this is the second brightest light strip when it's displaying its whites through the cluster of three LEDs but the story behind brightness and colors is going to be very different than You're Expecting so let's start to break down which of these strips are the best and I'll continue to give you what knowledge I have about light strips in our comparison review [Music] hello automators thanks for tuning in again I'm Brian from automate your life and I'm here to save you time with the smart Tech in your life so let's do that now I have a full spreadsheet that you can download off of our website as I do with most of our larger guides and of course I've made that for free for you so it'll give you some of those details that I didn't include in today's review and give you that tabular format probably the biggest thing you're going to want to know about a light strip is how it's going to look in your home and what options it gives you for different looks and I think visually one of the biggest features is how many colors you can put on a light strip and then how you can use those colors now here's a table and while I've already mentioned that only some of these light strips can take on more than one color what isn't necessarily clear is how many LEDs have to have the same color you can see that both Philips Hue and Govi can produce a new color every six LEDs whereas the Apple can take a new color every three that's a lot of colors on a five meter strip and it's all well and good to put lots of colors on a light strip but you have to be able to do something exciting with that as we continue to build this table out what you'll notice is that today Eve can't even shift between colors whereas everything else can all of the other light strips can fade or blink between colors and the multi-color strips can do this per segment but let's break this down even further and we start to see some light strips emerging as the better options now here are a set of features that you could expect on a standard light strip music TV and PC synchronization features are pretty abundant some of the light strips have adaptive lighting which means they synchronize with the color temperature of the Sun and many provide those basic features like transition control which means the strip will fade between effects or colors but there are three features that really start to push a few of these light strips into an entirely different Echelon of product when you look at the effect offerings nanoleaf Eve and switchbot can only offer you a single color at any time which means that their effects are at best a fade or a blink type of transition to switch between colors then we start to get into those multi-color light strips now Tapo has 17 pre-created effects that they give you access to and then two modes to build your own effects there's a coloring mode where you can choose the color for all those 50 segments but what I was really disappointed in with this was that it didn't save any of my colors that I'd Chosen and I couldn't choose no color on a segment the effect creation tool is also a little weak because you could just start with one of their 17 pre-created effects and then change colors in a few other things now stepping up from there is Philips Hue they have a lot of great effects and this strip looks amazing however they only have two live effects candle which I would call very weak with a light strip and fireplace which I think is pretty nice after that you're gonna have to look at third party applications to do anything else although it is nice that you can synchronize the color scheme of this with other Philips Hue Lights in their app and then we get to Govi which has essentially unlimited numbers of effects because not only do they give you 64 with this specific light strip but they also give you all kinds of DIY modes not only can you pick the color on all 20 segments of a two meter strip but you can get those colors moving and you can even download effects that other users have created and shared of course if you want you can create your own effects with a really comprehensive tool and after all of that is said and done you can build a sequence of effects and anytime you turn on the light strip you can play that sequence there's also one more effect that we have to talk about with Govi and that's the music TV and scene synchronization features with govi's app you can set one device to be the controller and then other products can essentially follow along this allowed me to pair the M1 with the Govi Lira and my T2 backlight to have all three of those products synchronized with the content that's on my television screen plus I can pick different parts of the screen for each device to synchronize with so you can create a really comprehensive backlighting effect and I plan to add more Govi products to an already impressive setup now it's all well and good to have all these effects but you don't always want to have the company's app open so it's important how you can use those effects outside of the manufacturer's app again we kind of have this breakdown where the single color strips don't send their scenes out to any other app or system so you're gonna need their app all the time or you're gonna need to leave that strip always running the same effect it's painful and really unusable long term now Tapo and Govi both send their scenes and many of their modes to Amazon but Hue has that option with Google Amazon and SmartThings although with SmartThings you'll need the right setup done link below for that tutorial now here's something interesting to consider with these light strips they can all be used in automations but those scenes can be really beneficial because you can create these specialized automations in those systems that use the effects I wanted to use the Tapo light strip with SmartThings or with Amazon connect a couple of motion sensors and place those on the sides of my bed that way if I or my partner are getting out of bed on our side the light strip would just light up on that side lighting the way but allowing the other person to sleep and I was really excited because table allows you to create a scene that adds the dimension of time so the strip could turn on for however many seconds then turn off through an Amazon routine with a single action the problem with Tappo is you can't turn off any of those LEDs when you're using that coloring creation feature if they had that it would be really easy to accomplish this with one strip also they don't allow there to be a different brightness per segment and none of these strips do so it's unfortunately not possible to do this but I'm going to talk to tp-link on this one now don't worry I'm going to show you some ideas for automating with these light strips later in the video but in the end there's only really three that I would recommend when we talk about effects and it's pretty clear that Govi is running away with the features available on their products this is no one else keeping up but there are some use cases for Hue that I like with SmartThings right now and Tapo could get there if they just fixed a couple of those issues with all of those features and effects being discussed the next thing that matters is how these light strips look just like a lot of other electronics and industries the specifications that you see on boxes and in marketing materials just doesn't matter that much all of these have a CRI or a color rendering index of greater than 80. not one of these companies has decided that it's important enough to achieve a great rating which would be greater than 90. that means they're all relatively close in terms of the reproduction of colors and it's going to be good but not actually perfect also CRI doesn't speak to color temperatures at all so that's where we can find some differences but in a few moments I'll share my evaluation of these colors and how these strips reproduce them now one of the most important things about these light strips is how bright they can get but not only is the CRI specification relatively useless When comparing light strips so is the lumens measurement that shows up on the box there really doesn't seem to be a standard for how these things are measured although you will see the brightest point for the light strip in some of those specifications usually shown as luminous flux now to measure this I set up a light meter one foot away from all of these light strips and I tested them thoroughly not only did I test the different color temperatures but I also tested the brightness when creating colors something extremely interesting happened when I did that to start it's pretty obvious that Nano leaf and Eve which are using those larger clusters of LEDs that contain specific white LEDs are very bright might be surprising to you that Philips Hue has created the third brightest light strip and actually when you put that light strip at its lowest Kelvin rating or its lowest temperature it's the brightest strip in the set it's because it also has that cluster of LEDs now what's amazing about these light strips is how different the measurements for lumens are when you look at the Tapo light strip it initially seemed like it should be producing a fairly bright light that's because you can look at the density of LEDs on their strip and you can see that they are one of the more dense strips they have 150 sets of their two LED cluster every meter but when I set all of these to the brightest color temperature and then I measured the nanoleaf strip had a lumens measurement of 10 times greater than the one that came off of Tapo strip both nanoleaf and Eve absolutely dominate in the whites because of that cluster of LEDs and the focus on white light now tapple was incredibly dim and even though its box says a thousand lumens we're talking about a five meter light strip there's just not enough power going to each led to drive a lot of light now it's funny to watch but the Philips hue light strip really dies off in the last 15 percent of brightness as it becomes almost a non-existent light source but that just means you got to pump up the brightness levels a little bit on that strip but if you're looking for colors this situation almost entirely flips all of the color LEDs are based on RGB which stands for red green blue now you'll notice that the LEDs all have these smaller light sources embedded within them and because they are an RGB LED there is one for each of those colors what happens here is the light strips that are focused more on color reproduction instantly rise to the top Govi was consistently the brightest light strip with Philips Hue hanging around near the top even Tapo strip suddenly becomes one of the brighter or at least average in this situation but when you start to create some of those other colors that might use a little bit of white light mixed in with those RGB lights something different happens again tapple Falls right off in terms of brightness because it has to use that white LED that's just not bright enough it ends up about the same brightness as nanoleaf eave and switchbot and again very consistently Govi is at the top of their game and is producing bright and vibrant colors because they're using that single LED or what they call their RGB IC all along the light strip each individual LED is producing whatever color you've asked 4 over and over and over again and I like how simple their system looks and works now when you really pay attention to how these strips are creating those colors this is pink for example there are some minor differences and they come from having those LEDs in the cluster the even nanoleaf strips really use these white LEDs and because they have access to two different ones they are bringing those in quite often blue lights almost always include one of the white LEDs being turned on but this actually changes based on the brightness setting for those but I find the eve color reproduction to look weird in yellow and orange and even in some of the green and teals when I'm looking at this trip because of their use of those white LEDs for example the yellow actually seems green but when you reflect it off a wall everything comes out looking right you might be wondering why there's such a difference between Lumen levels on the these light strips and especially wondering why things change so much between white and color Lights I've been speaking with a lot of the manufacturers of these strips and pulling information about how their LEDs produce light now you'll notice that Philips Hue nanoleaf and Eve are all using Warm White LEDs as well as cool white LEDs this is a tactic that increases brightness across white lighting it works especially well when both the warm white LEDs and the cool white LEDs have to be turned on to produce a mid-range color temperature that's where strips like Govi who use only a warm white LED in their bead and Tapo who have a single warm white LED in their cluster fall off in terms of brightness when producing that mid-range white color temperature that's why those same strips can be brighter in colors and in other color temperature range changes especially the lower or warmer color temperatures but then be far behind in those mid ranges where strips like nanoleaf put a ton of power into using four white LEDs but we got to give these strips some rankings here if you want to actually provide lighting with your light strip and use those color temperatures then obviously Nano leaf and Eve are at the top you can extend those strips and run them around a room quite far too but the truth is that I find the top end lumens of the nanoleaf and eave strips just doesn't need it and I would rather have the govian Hue strips for their color reproduction and attention to detail I find them extremely vibrant and yet still bright enough when I want them to be they're the right balance here in my eyes the Smart Home Technology often Bridges the gap between the electronics in our home and the physical world these led strips are a true represent presentation of that because the installation could be quite difficult and we're often left to figure all this out on our own so what you get in the box and how the company helps you get these installed in whatever situation you would like to use them in is really important I'm going to break down the situation really quickly for you but if you're confused just remember you can always ask in the comments there are only a few light strips that give you some clips or accessories that help you turn Corners that's because those light strips are built to allow you to turn whereas three of these light strips really can't nanoleaf Eve and Hue are just intended to follow along the surface and they can bend around 90 degrees as long as you're not on one of these LEDs when you go to turn Tapo switchbot and Govi can all do this fairly simple Loop maneuver and making the turn a little easier for you this could would be such an issue with these other LED strips and in fact I broke some of the LEDs while testing a loop in my very expensive hue light strip which they tell you never to do I now have a cluster of LEDs that almost always shows red instead of any other color which is really quite frustrating when you spent as much as I did but there's a process I would in general tell you to follow when you go to install a light strip in your home and this will hopefully lessen the amount of failures you have and the amount of times you have to redo your light strip run because that can be very painful and it can actually mean you have to buy little accessories or additional 3M tape strips can also mean you have to cut the strip and then actually solder things together there's lots of tutorials for how to do those things but on almost every case if you're careful you can avoid those pitfalls number one the first thing to do is identify whether or not the strip you're considering can turn a corner and if it can't and you need to turn a corner then don't buy that strip number two then you need to measure how long your light strip needs to be if you're over 2 two meters then you're gonna have to buy an extension kit for a lot of the light strips We're talking about today to give you an idea my 51 inch television was nearly two meters when following around the edge my window and this bed frame was almost exactly five meters so if it's under the length of the strip you're considering you'll need to cut number three then check that you can get the light strip to start where you want it which is to say that you need to make sure that the power cable and the adapter cable are long enough to reach from your outlet to where you want the lighting to start also check where your adapter is going to end up because some of those can be large and you might not want to see them at all number four then actually place the light strip up to the first turn if you're gonna have to make the cornering maneuver that Govi shows in their manuals then you're probably going to be okay because is you have a little bit of give and take but if you're trying to go right around a corner with those nanoleaf Eve or hue light strips then you'll have to pay attention to where the LEDs are you might actually have to back up or move forward the light strip a few centimeters just to get things aligned right then you can try and check your second and third turns but you probably need a second set of hands to make that happen before you install your light strip I would get it set up in the company's application and leave it near the location you're going to install it for half a day to a day this just helps you to make sure that it's going to continually accept commands and that there's no bad interference getting in the way of your eventual installation and then you can do the installation process and it's usually very similar no matter what you buy you'll clean the surface that you're going to attach to and you only start to remove these adhesives when you're ready to actually attach it so clean the surface then dry it or let it dry and then start at the end of your light strip work your way along pulling the adhesive cover off just a little bit at a time then make sure you're creating the best contact you can between the strip and the surface you're attaching it to run your fingers along the strip multiple times to make sure that you're leaving no air gap between the strip and the surface any air gap you leave will cause the light strip to break away from the surface over time and you'll be left with something to fix as you come to the end of your run you might find that you have extra if you've measured correctly and checked where the cut points are on the Strip then you can just cut off the excess light strip as planned and attach the very end of the strip if you didn't measure correctly then unfortunately you've attached your entire light strip and will have to redo it which is a major issue for these because the adhesives all start to lose their stickiness as soon as they're exposed air now when I installed all of these light strips except the eve one which I'll do right after I film this I did find some key differences in this table you'll notice the distance between cut points which is very far for a lot of these strips obviously tapple and switchbot are making this part of the situation easy the ability to turn Corners we've already talked about but when you can't turn a corner because an LED is in the way the Philips Hue strip becomes very hard to work with all the other strips are reasonable but I think Hue has some extra bracing inside there because it's tough I gave everyone a pretty good score when it came to the adhesives but there's a little drop off when we talk about switchbot and I could see a lot of people making mistakes with tapple because that adhesive cover was coming off just as I was taking video of the strip to prep for this video also I think a lot of people will make mistakes with Philips Hue because if you pull the adhesive cover off the wrong way you'll actually pull off the entire adhesive which I did initially but I was able to repair but I was frustrated with Philips Hue because of the bending issue and the adhesive issues I know that you can get braces for the back of televisions and monitors to use this with but reading about those they're not high quality either now I'm happy now that it's installed but it was a real pain to get that all right the nanoleaf strip and I'm sure the eavestrip don't have an adhesive issue but they can't do those Corner turns and their cut distance is fairly far apart so they aren't difficult if you've planned things outright so from an installation standpoint I was really happy with how things went with Govi and Tappo the adhesive is strong and they're fairly easy to plan out I did find the cut distance is too long with Govi and I hope they change that in the next version because that could limit some people and how they install those strips the real winner in installation with switchbot I can't believe how easy it was to go around a five meter light strip and attach that to a window it fit perfectly and every 10 centimeters I get a cut point plus I can bend around any Corner instantly and working with that strip is remarkably easy now of course once you have them installed connectivity and automation becomes king from a connectivity standpoint there's only two light strips that don't connect to all of the big four platforms what I mean by that is Google Amazon Apple and Samsung SmartThings those are switchbot who misses out on homekit and Eve who misses out on a lot because they're really only that home kit device right now but the next layer is the connectivity technology being used in a lot of cases you're going to find Wi-Fi is being used with light strips and that means you have to have a stable and strong wi-fi system in your home that can handle more than just a few Wi-Fi devices in order to get a lot of these to behave well in an average smart home now Philips Hue uses zigbee to connect to their Hub so you'll need that Hub and nanoleaf is using thread so you would need a thread border router really both of those are just different names for a hub that has a radio of the same type here are a few thread border routers that you could bring into your home that would work with nanoleaf's product but that final layer to connectivity is something called matter govi's new M1 strip has matter over Wi-Fi and nanoleaf is using matter over thread if I had to pick one I would pick thread because I think a lot of people will struggle to maintain those Wi-Fi networks when they get big but I've never had trouble because I did a little bit of initial work on getting a stable and reliable Wi-Fi network in my home Philips Hue will bring matter to their entire lineup too but right now matter is a double edged sword it's great because it gave those devices access to the big four platforms and it will give them more access later to systems like habitat homie and it should already bring them into home assistant but the connectivity being offered by matter is very basic any matter enabled devices just getting on and off brightness and color control on those big platforms we're also seeing the addition of adaptive Lighting in some cases but it all comes without all of the fancy effects in the case of Govi and Amazon this actually means that you will want to use that light strip with Amazon without matter if you're using that matter connectivity you don't get access to all of the great effects inside of Amazon's app and while using their routine however if you use the standard connection process for Govi you gain all of those great options now on the flip side Govi and nanoleaf having matter have given us ton of automation options with SmartThings and apple home kits so I'm happy to have that but just understand that right now matter could be a detriment for you depending on what you use so it's great that Govi has maintained that old connection method that gives us all those better options now we spoke earlier about the options with those effects and the scenes coming into different apps but what really matters is how you can automate with these each major platform provides us with their own options for automations and you're going to find the traditional hubs like Samsung SmartThings and home assistant have the most options for things like sensors and other devices to drive your automations but here's how I used each light strip tapos under my bed and I'll eventually put those two motion sensors around it to know when someone's getting out of bed since it's connected to Samsung SmartThings and the automations are locally run I can create really fast responses when somebody steps on the ground in the middle of the evening and then have that light strip come on I want it to give me that option to turn on just part of the light strip and if we manage to do that then I'll be really excited otherwise I might just cut that strip in half and install a second Philips Hue is actually right in front of my computer monitors and I was going to stick it behind but I thought it made a really great focal point in my office I'm using that in conjunction with a presence sensor in the room which turns it on when I go to sit down and then we'll turn it off when I leave I've put the nanoleaf strip above my kitchen cabinet it's a much better looking light source than the old Ikea lights I had up there and I can use it in automations with Samsung SmartThings or any of those big platforms to notify me when a certain event occurs for example I've set it up so that I know when my front door lock is unlocked it'll show a yellow status I've done that with the Philips Hue strip in in my office as well so if I'm up there I have that notice I'm sure I'll add some more automations to those light strips in the future to tell me about different statuses now the eve strip I intend to place around some of my gym equipment and include that in a scene in the Apple homekit app not gonna bother showing you that because my gym has no walls in it so it doesn't exactly look nice but it'll add a little bit of Ambience and make the workouts feel a little nicer with switchbot I brought that strip into Samsung SmartThings and I've tied that to another LED strip in my kids room through the smart things button that he has there so he can turn on both of his LED strips and it's a great effect when he's playing games with his friends with Govi I attached that strip to the t2 backlight system that I have on my TV in my bedroom I'm going to use those two together to make that TV synchronization look even better and I probably will add an extension to that strip when I can't I want to make that really bright and really exciting and continue to add some of govi's other light fixtures to that setup to just make it pop I could also use it with a lot of Amazon's routines and that opens up a number of motion sensor and door sensor options for me but I think for now just going to leave it tied to that other backlight but what was really interesting was that Govi allows me to set up some minor automations in their application that meant that I could turn it on whenever the backlight T2 turned on and turn it off whenever that turned off I could also do the reverse which means I can now control my TV's backlighting through Apple homekit or Samsung SmartThings this is really beneficial for me and it's all because of matter now there's one thing that I found out when speaking with Govi that you should know about that light strip for the next couple of months you're going to be able to replace existing M1 strips with this new matter version and you can do that for free they'll send you a new controller module and all you have to do is fill out the form on their website that means you can get that free matter upgrade for your existing M1 strips and I think all of you should take advantage of that right away from an overall standpoint I think it's pretty obvious that I'm preferring what Govi is doing they have the best effects the best colors and the experience has been near perfect from a physical and installation perspective they manage the gap between convenience and quality and I don't see a lot of cases where you're going to mess up installation of that device they also have great features when it comes to integrating with Amazon and I hope they continue to expand that with some Edge drivers for smart things as well as hopefully an Adaptive lighting feature with homekit now if you're a home kit or a SmartThings person I do think Philips Hue makes the most sense even though it is so expensive that's because it's a multi-color light strip has adaptive lighting options and the scene options in SmartThings we also know that Philips Hue will continue to update their platform and if you buy something like the view tab dial switch with it it'll work out really well for control now there's nothing truly wrong with any of the other light strips and I hope you understand that you could fit a lot of those in different locations throughout your home and create really great experiences I also hope you have a full understanding of how to get the best experience now with any light strip that you're looking at and if you're looking at other Smart Home Products and you want to check out our other comparison reviews in the playlist that's up on screen now most recently I reviewed four of the most popular video doorbells and I think you'll be surprised with some of the results there otherwise thanks for watching today and of course don't hate automate

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Id: 8oFVFts9htI

Length: 41min 22sec (2482 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2023