Govee Outdoor Wall Light review: Smart sconces that dazzle

Price When Reviewed

$89.99

Best Prices Today: Govee Outdoor Wall Light

The final piece of Govee’s new line of outdoor lighting products (we’ve also reviewed the brand’s Outdoor Triad Flood Light and Outdoor String Lights 2), the Govee Outdoor Wall Light is perhaps the most niche-oriented product in the collection.

Specifically, it’s an exterior wall sconce–designed to be permanently mounted and connected directly to household wiring–with a particular focus on bringing color to what is typically a boring, monochrome part of the home. 

Installation

Assuming you already have exterior sconces with a standard electrical receptacle behind them–hardly a given–installing the Outdoor Wall Light is fairly simple.

An included backplate covers the receptacle and attaches with four included bolts. The standard black and white wires in the Wall Light connect to the corresponding wires in the receptacle, while the bare wire attaches to a screw on the backplate for use as a ground. Wire nuts are included.

This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart lights.

The Outdoor Wall Light itself then rests on top of the backplate via a small tab on the back of the device. Two additional bolts screw into the backplate from either side to secure the new sconce in place.

Homeowners are directed to caulk around the edges of the wall light to keep out water, though the device carries an IP65 weatherproof rating, denoting a dustproof design plus resistance to water jets sprayed in any direction. (Read up on IP rating in our in-depth guide.)

I had no trouble with any of the physical installation aspects of the device, but note that you will want to make sure your receptacle (and thus the backplate) are perfectly level before completing the installation process to avoid having to redo things later. 

If you don’t have a receptacle, Govee does include wall anchors and screws that can be used to attach the backplate (and thus the light) directly to any solid surface, though it doesn’t include formal instructions on completing this type of installation. 

Design and setup

The Wall Light hardware is made of gray plastic and measures 10 inches tall by 5 inches wide. The majority of the front and two sides is taken up by the light panel itself, shielded by a translucent white cover.

Christopher Null/Foundry

Christopher Null/Foundry

Christopher Null/Foundry

Beneath this cover you’ll find a bevy of LEDs that produce a maximum of 1500 lumens of light, drawing a maximum of 16 watts of power (per my own measurement). 

The light panel is split into three addressable zones, arranged in a vertical line. To control them, you’ll need to install the Govee Home app. The Govee Wall Light supports Matter and sets up with incredible ease, automatically discovering the nearby device and quickly bridging it to your home Wi-Fi network (2.4GHz only is supported).

Features and functionality

As is the case with all Govee lighting products, the user is quickly immersed in a bevy of configurability options the exploration of which can occupy the better part of an afternoon. Google Assistant and Alexa are also supported for those desiring voice control, while Apple HomeKit and Samsung SmartThings are also options via Matter.

Each of the three zones can be outfit with a color or a specific white color temperature (from a warm 2700K to a cooler 6500K), or you can task Govee with creating any number of scenes for you. Scenes are categorized as Natural, Festival, Soothing, or Life, and each has from 6 to 20 specific lighting looks underneath. These looks can be static or moving, though they can’t be tweaked further aside from setting the overall brightness.

Like other Govee products, the Wall Light has a music mode that allows the lighting effects to shift in time with ambient sound. However, note that the Wall Light does not have its own internal microphone, so only your mobile phone’s microphone can be used to listen for music with which to control the lighting. 

If you want to fine-tune your lighting setup (and I recommend as much), you will want to delve into Govee’s “segment management” management feature, which not only allows you to select a color for each of the three zones but a “relative brightness” for each zone. This is separate from the overall brightness of the Wall Light and can be a little confusing at first; the ultimate takeaway is that the relative brightness of each segment will top out at the overall brightness you’ve selected for the light as a whole. To maximize your flexibility, set overall brightness near 100 percent and lower the relative brightness settings accordingly. 

Christopher Null/Foundry

Christopher Null/Foundry

Christopher Null/Foundry

As I encountered with the Govee Triad Light, the configuration process was a little buggy and in need of fine-tuning. For example, if you switch to a scene and then switch back to manual color mode, the light won’t change until you alter one of the settings–even if you already had things just where you want them. To ease this process, make liberal use of the “Save snapshot” feature, so you aren’t constantly losing the settings you like the most. 

One item of note: When setting up segments, the app can be set with “gradient” mode on or off. With gradient mode off, the three segments are crisply defined, but with gradient mode on it causes them to blur into one another. The gradient mode looks best in almost every setting, with a smoother, sexier overall appearance, but it does come at the cost of making the three segments quite uneven. With gradient mode off, the three segments are perfect thirds of the lighting area. With gradient mode off, the bottom segment dominates about half of the lighting area, while the top mode is relegated to a slim sliver of light. 

The good news is that the Wall Light does not have the visible LED issue that mars the Govee Triad, where visible dots of light give the fixture the appearance of an LCD clock. Here, the translucent cover is thick and opaque enough to mask the LEDs underneath, giving the device a sophisticated and attractive appearance, even when it’s turned off. 

Should you buy the Govee Outdoor Wall Light?

At $89.99 (expect to pay a lot less at retail), Govee’s Outdoor Wall Light isn’t a bad value for a device that can crank out a lot of light and look good doing it, really jazzing up the outside of your house in process.

And, come to think of it, there’s no reason you couldn’t use it inside the house too, if you were so inclined.