Govee Glide Hexa Pro

Govee Glide Hexa Pro: One-minute review

RGB lights now come in a variety of shapes and sizes, whether it’s a light strip, a bulb, a light bar or even a system that you can build over on with shapes like the product we’re looking at today. The Govee Glide Hexa Pro comes in a hexagon shape as the name suggests, and it’s split into three sections per tile to give a first of its kind 3D effects that we haven’t seen with previous RGB lighting products.

Instead of just using the RGB lights for ambient lighting purposes, we’ve seen a development in functions as well to make them more useful in daily routines, like waking you up in the morning, working with movies and music to immerse you in the experience on top of being used for decoration and purely aesthetic purposes.

Govee has been making RGB lights in different sizes and shapes since 2017, and the Govee Glide Hexa Pro provides a unique look and feel with a 3D design hexagonal shape that enables it to create attractive lighting designs.

The installation process and setting up the lights is a bit cumbersome because you have to individually connect cables between tiles. We much rather prefer magnetic clips that we've seen with other manufacturers. Although painful, it's not deal breaker as it's a process and you will only have to do once.

The Govee Glide Hexa Pro app is feature packed and offers many modes alongside integrations with Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Razer Chroma. This puts it head to head with Nanoleaf, but with a better design and higher tiles count.

The Govee Glide Hexa Pro isn’t cheap with a bit of a steep price tag of AED 915 (US$ 49) that might not appeal to all users who might want something cheaper for their home lighting purposes.

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Govee Glide Hexa Pro: Pricing and availability

The Govee Glide Hexa Pro is now available globally but will be coming soon to the UAE. Pricing is set at AED 915 (USD 249) which costs higher than its Nanoleaf counterparts (Nanoleaf Shapes - Hexagons) that go for AED 750 (USD 205) for the starter kit that comes with 7 tiles.

With that price point, it will be a bit of a hard choice to make with the Nanoleaf offering the cheaper option, while Govee’s offering has the better looks with its unique 3D design and higher tiles count with 10 tiles compared to only 7 tiles from Nanoleaf… you will have to decide according to your priorities and budget for this.

• Pricing score: 3/5

Govee Glide Hexa Pro: Installation and setup

Installing a new light kit like this should be an easy and streamlined process. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with the Govee Glide Hexa Pro as you’ll have to figure out your way around all the cables that you’ll need to connect to the back of each tile instead of a clipping mechanism.

There’s a strict rule of only allowing two cables for each tile, one coming in and the other going out, which has limited the ability to have more flexibility in the shapes you can create.

You’ll have to power up the tiles to make sure you install them in the correct direction or it will mess up your preset scenes and orientation of the colours. The tiles use a strong 3M adhesive to latch onto the wall. The adhesive is so strong that when we installed one of the tiles and tried to remove it, we removed some of the wall’s paint. 

You’ll have to choose where you install it wisely because it’ll definitely leave a mark on the wall if you decide to change the place or orientation. We highly recommend setting the tiles on the floor in the pattern you want before mounting them on a wall. Needless to say, you need a clean flush surface for best results and it won’t stick on textured surfaces.

When installing the Govee Glide Hexa Pro, you’ll get help from the Govee Home app to guide you through the installation process which makes your life a lot easier. Even then, you’ll have a hard time wiring the cables through the tiles and glueing them to the wall. It’s not a one-man’s job, and you’ll need you with the installation.

While it’s not the best method to connect the tiles, the cable connection gives you the flexibility to install the tiles over corners without having to buy additional flexible connectors like with Nanoleaf. You can also daisy chain the Govee Glide Hexa Pro to another kit to get up to a whopping 25 tiles.

• Installation and setup score: 3.5/5

Govee Glide Hexa Pro: Daily Use

The Govee Glide Hexa Pro uses its own “Govee home” app that works as a hub to connect and control all of your Govee products. The application plays nicely with Google Assistant through Google Home and Amazon Alexa allowing you to add the connected lights.

After linking the app to your Google Home or Alexa application you can control it using voice commands. You have access to basic controls such as changing colors and brightness levels as well as turning the panels on and off. While access to specific scenes and presets isn’t available through Google Home, using Alexa or the Govee Home app allow more customizations.

The Govee home application itself is intuitive and easy to use, with lots of preset scenes to choose from along with additional controls like the direction of the light, brightness level and speed of the animation.

You can create a new DIY preset and share it with a community of fellow Govee users through Govee light studio or, try presets from other users in Govee Light Studio. This keeps the scenes fresh so you never get bored of it.

You also have the music mode which turns on the mic to sync with the music or use your phone’s mic to pick up the music.

Govee has done a really good job in optimizing the lights with the 3D effects that make the Govee Glide Hexa Pro look very vibrant and flexible. Contrary to the Nanoleaf lights, you can only control the tiles through the app and there are no inline controls to cycle through presets without having to use the app.

• Daily use and application score: 4/5

Should you buy the Govee Glide Hexa Pro?

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