Introduction
For me, nothing says the festive season has arrived more than breaking out so many Christmas lights that my house can be seen from space. It’s a bit of a chore every year, though, and never fun when they all have to come down again when January rolls around. Govee’s permanent smart lights have long been a fire-and-forget alternative, and this latest set is easily the best of the bunch.
The Permanent Outdoor Lights Prism triple down on the number of colour-changing LEDs, letting you be more creative with your lighting effects as well as bathing more of your home in lights. A refined mounting design also arguably makes them more ‘permanent’ than previous efforts.
As ever they are quite the investment: a 100ft set will set you back $540 (there’s no word on UK or European pricing just yet), while the 150ft and 200ft sets cost $700 and $860 respectively. That’s way more than you’d spend on a few sets of basic holiday string lights – do they shine bright enough to justify the outlay?
Design & installation: head for heights
Govee has essentially taken 2023’s Permanent Outdoor Lights Pro and tripled the number of LEDs, for an even more expansive light show and much greater colour control. Each Permanent Outdoor Lights Prism light unit is about three times the size as a result, and you get six of ’em per string now rather than ten.
You’ll get the best effect by fitting the lights in the eaves of your house, which will be easier said than done if you aren’t a fan of heights. My review kit’s arrival was conveniently timed with my landlord having some guttering replaced, so I was able to borrow the contractor’s ladder and walking boards for installation; most buyers will either need to get their own, or pay a professional for fitting.
Each light unit has pre-fitted 3M tape on the back side, so you’ll only need to break out the screwdriver when placing them somewhere that’ll be fully exposed to the elements. The lights themselves are IP68 rated and the TUV testing body has given them the thumbs up for temperatures between -30°C and 60°C, so the fixtures should fail long before the LEDs do.
Moulding screw mounting points into every light unit was a smart move by Govee; it’s something the older Outdoor Lights Pro lacked, and meant many owners resorted to 3d printed enclosures to keep them secure.
What you don’t get, though, is any kind of cable management. I had to go out and buy a mix of stick-on and nail-in clips to keep the wires out of sight. Zip ties also came in handy for hiding the cables behind my gutters. It would be great to see Govee include even a few ways to tame cables in future kits. As it stands, the 100ft kit I was sent for testing came with six bundles of LEDs, a few extension cords of different lengths, some cable splicing kits, and a power supply, along with some drywall anchors, screws, and spare mounting tape.
A sensible move would be to work out how many strings of lights you’ll need before you break out the ladder, as well as where the power source is that you’ll be routing them to. In most cases, this will involve some amount of cable cutting. The instruction manual clearly explains how to assemble the bundled splicing kits – though the wording could be clearer on which direction is which, as I managed to fit it backwards on the first attempt.
You need to supply your own cable stripping tool, and some electrical tape to protect the exposed copper would be a smart move. If you can rewire a plug you’ll have no trouble aligning the three strands and clipping them into the water-sealed connectors. It does feel like a waste to simply lop off an LED altogether, but it’s pretty much unavoidable if you want a clean installation.
Software
As well as being your first port of call for getting the Permanent Outdoor Lights Prism connected to your various smart home ecosystems, Govee’s companion app has a list of customisation options that’s beyond extensive.
There are over a hundred preset scenes to pick from, including obvious categories like festivals and holidays, plus more esoteric ones inspired by emotions, the night sky, or the planets of the solar system. You can just pick a single colour or stick with plain white illumination if you want subtlety, or set it to sync with the music being played from your phone if you want the opposite. Being able to set multiple timers was handy; as the days got shorter during my testing, I could be sure the lights would come on just after sunset.
Community-made presets are available if you don’t want to spend the time to make your own, which I can understand as Govee gives you about four different tools of varying complexity to do it. There’s also an effect-creating AI chatbot you can ask to come up with patterns to match a particular theme or feeling.
It can honestly be a bit overwhelming, and the rest of the app is very keen to sell you other Govee kit. Once I’d paired them (as easy as pressing a button on the power supply when prompted) and picked my colour scheme, I largely just used Google Home to turn the lights on and off; they also play nicely with Alexa and Matter, meaning Apple HomeKit can also get in on the action by proxy.
Performance
As soon as I powered them on, it was clear the Permanent Outdoor Lights Prism have a much wider light coverage than the old Outdoor Lights Pro. The angled cones of illumination are way more distinctive than a basic set of holiday lights, and the colour blending between the three separate LEDs is fantastic.
They look pretty classy in pure white, and get properly bright too. Equally you can create some truly tacky animated colour combos. At the time of writing Halloween is coming up, and I’m already working on a mix of purple and orange patterns to let the trick or treaters know to call by.
Importantly the LEDs are rated for tens of thousands of hours, which is a lot more than a basic set of Christmas lights is usually good for. With no need to go up and down a ladder every year, or untangle a jumbled spool of cable each time, you could feasibly get decades of use out of a set of these.
Govee Permanent Outdoor Lights Prism verdict
These lights have plenty of wow factor, are easy to install (a fear of heights notwithstanding) and almost infinitely customisable. While they’ll set you back considerably more than a seasonal set, app-controlled or not, the the Permanent Outdoor lights Prism will last longer and only need putting up once – with no need to take them down again once the holidays are over.
I can’t say I’d illuminate my house with them every evening – that’s a look more suited to a country manor than my rented suburban semi-detached – but it’s great to have them ready to go any time there’s a party or event in the calendar.
