Govee Ceiling Light review: light up your living room by voice

Controlling the lights by voice once felt like a futuristic dream, but now no smart home is complete without it. The best smart lights come in various forms, from lamps and light strips to bulbs and ceiling fixtures.

Smart lights are worth having, and not just because they’re cool. They can save you money on your energy bills, and they last much longer than traditional incandescent bulbs. You can choose to illuminate the room in hundreds of different colours, warmth levels, and brightness. Set up schedules to turn them off automatically every night and to turn them on as the sun sets in the evening. You can control them remotely from your smartphone or by voice using one of the best smart speakers. They'll create a cosy atmosphere for relaxing evenings in or for getting you in the mood for a night out. The possibilities are endless.

If you’re looking to replace your ceiling lights with smart lights, the Govee Ceiling Light is a cost-effective option that will allow you to replace several at once. I’ve had one installed on my ceiling for over a month now, and I think it’s great value for money.

How much does the Govee Ceiling light cost?

You can buy the Govee Ceiling Light for £69.99 from online retailers like Amazon. It’s available to buy in both a round and a square version.

Govee has recently announced a new, bigger, brighter Pro version of the ceiling light, which will currently set you back £99.99 from its online store. Because of that, it’ll be worth keeping an eye out for deals and discounts on the older model, because it’s still definitely worth buying in 2025.

Is the Govee Ceiling Light easy to set up?

The Govee Ceiling Light takes about 15 minutes to set up. The hardest part is installing the base plate to the ceiling because you’ll need to drill four holes in the drywall. After that, you simply connect the neutral and live wires and rotate the main lighting unit to lock it into place.

Setting it up with your smartphone and smart assistant is as easy as with any other smart home device. This uses WiFi and Bluetooth, so there's no need for a hub. But to use it as part of a wider ecosystem, it will still need to be controlled by a Matter controller like the Philips Hue Bridge, Samsung SmartThings Hub or certain smart speakers like the Amazon Echo Studio.

To get up and running, you'll need to download the Govee Home app, available for iOS and Android, and press the + symbol. It takes a matter of minutes to get the light hooked up to your WiFi network.

I use Amazon Alexa, and adding a new light to my ecosystem was super quick and easy. I opened the Alexa app, searched for the Govee Home skill, signed in to my account and added a new device. After that, I could control it through my smart speaker using voice commands. The light is also compatible with Google Home.

Once installed and set up, the Ceiling Light looks sleek and will absolutely fit in with any modern home. The area light comes from is 30cm in diameter, it’s framed with a white plastic border, and it sits relatively flat up against the ceiling (it has a depth of only 3cm). Light also shines from around the edges, projecting colours onto the ceiling above it.

Is the Govee Ceiling Light good quality?

As you’d expect from any smart light, the Govee ceiling light can illuminate in white and offers a range of brightness levels (you can set it anywhere between 0 and 100%). More impressively, it can emit around 16 million different colours and can simultaneously display several colours across the main lighting panel and the top light.

There are all sorts of cool ways to use this light. In the app, you can choose from up to 71 lighting scenes, including fire, sunset, forest, aurora, spring and starry sky. The light looks fantastic and fits any scenario, whether you’re settling in for a movie night or hosting guests for a cocktail evening.

There’s a DIY section in the app where you can create your own scenes with custom colour combinations, patterns and animations, while the AI section allows you to use prompts for creation as well. You can save these customisations for later use. The settings you choose can be synced with your other Govee lights around the house, if you wish to do so.

The app also allows you to set it to Music mode, where the light dances along to the rhythm of the track playing on your smartphone. It’s perfect for parties. The downside is that you need to be playing music from your handset with the Govee Home app open.

At night, this Govee light illuminates the room well. However, in a large room with multiple light fittings, it’s worth having a couple installed to reach every corner.

The light responds quickly to my taps inside the app and to voice commands through my Alexa devices. I wasn't able to change the light to different scenes via Alexa, though. I could only turn the light on and off or change the colour.

The Govee Home app works well and is easy to use. You can group and control your devices by room. On the home screen, it lets you know if any are offline or aren’t connected to the Alexa app yet. For each light, you can set a timer to turn them off at night or set up rhythm lighting to match the colour, warmth and brightness settings to the time of day. For example, you can have the light gradually get brighter in the morning to wake you up or have it automatically dim late at night. Although, of course, this is possible as a routine in the Alexa app.

Govee Ceiling Light review: verdict

If you want to build out an extensive smart home ecosystem with app-controlled lights in every room, Govee offers a wide range of options at a reasonable price. The Govee Ceiling Light is an excellent choice for mounting on the ceiling to replace traditional bulbs.

Whether you choose the original model or the brighter Pro version, it looks sleek, is easy to install and set up, and doesn’t require a hub to function. It illuminates the room with a vast array of whites and colours, and the fact that it projects light onto the ceiling above it is a nice touch.

I really appreciated all the different lighting scenes. They made finding the perfect colour combination and pattern a breeze. The music mode is a bit gimmicky, and it's a shame that you can't set scenes by voice. The ability to schedule when the light turns on and set off-timers is useful, although most people will probably prefer to set this up as a routine in the Alexa or Google Home app instead.

Alternatives to consider

There are loads of different smart lights that you can install on your ceiling.

The most obvious option is a smart bulb that screws into the fitting you already have. Philips Hue bulbs are some of the best in the business, they’re easy to use and very bright. They use Zigbee, so you will need a smart home hub or a device with a hub built in (like the latest Amazon Echo speakers) to get the most from it.

Philips Hue also offers a range of ceiling fixtures, similar to Govee’s, in a variety of round and square designs. I’ve been using the Philips Hue Infuse large ceiling lamp in my living room for a while now, and it’s a really effective piece of kit. But you will need to spend a lot more money on it than you would on one of Govee’s equivalents.