Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp review

Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp: Introduction

• Lighting type: Smart floor lamp with 3 lighting zones
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
• Ecosystems: Matter, Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, SmartThings and more

Back in June, Govee took the covers off of a trio of unique new smart lamps, with the Chinese brand’s new floor lamp series made up of three distinct models, designed to do more than a regular lamp.

The Torchiere, Tree and Uplighter Floor Lamps aim to turn your walls and ceilings into mood-setting light shows, and it’s the latter that I’m reviewing here.

The Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp, to give it its full meaty moniker, is a triple-threat, with a ceiling-facing ripple light up top, a decorative RGBIC strip in the middle, and a lower lamp that beams out 1000 lumens of white light for task lighting.

The Uplighter is Matter compatible, using Matter-over-WiFi, as we have seen with previous smart lights from the brand, including the Strip Light 2.

I’ve had the Govee Uplighter Floor Lamp illuminating my office for the past few weeks, read on for my full review.

Design and building

The first thing you’ll notice when unboxing the Uplighter is that it’s a big unit and it comes packed in the box like a robot vacuum cleaner.

The first thing you’ll have to do is a bit of assembly but it’s incredibly straightforward, even to a DIY-idiot like me.

The pole comes in four parts, connected by the main wire, like some sort of elaborate smart light nunchucks.

You simply have to screw these together and then screw them into the base and the main unit up top.

The top pole also has a couple of buttons; on/off and a scene switcher, which you can also hold down to to adjust the color temperature.

Once you’ve screwed the bottom pole to the base, there’s a gap underneath that allows you to feed the cable through one of three different options, depending on what way you need to aim it for your power socket.

Standing 1.7m tall when fully assembled you can, if you want to, actually remove some of the poles and make it a smaller light, as the cable just feeds through the hollow poles and is not attached. The cable simply plugs into the main power cable at the bottom and into the main unit up top.

Speaking of which and that weird spaceship like dome up top, measuring 28cm across and 8cm thick, is the main lighting unit, consisting of a 10-inch white ring downlighter, a 5-inch ripple effect projector up top, and an ambient color ring on the side.

It moves 60 degrees (30 up / 30 down) so you can angle the lighting effect as you want it. On the top you’ll notice it’s covered in a rippled plastic; this is what is used to create the main effect of the Uplighter.

Setup and the app

When you first power the Uplighter up you’ll notice that color ring on the side emits a pale pink glow and the other lights come on with a soft white.

Adding the Uplighter to your smart home is possible in a couple of different ways, either directly using the Matter QR code that you’ll find right at the top of the pole, or via Bluetooth through the Govee app.

I did the latter and the Govee app recognised the light without me having to do anything, prompting me to add it to my setup.

Bear in mind the Uplighter is 2.4GHz Wi-Fi only, so you might have to disable 5GHz temporarily on your router if you encounter issues.

Obviously, a key component of a Matter smart home system is that you don’t have to bother with a brand’s app if you don’t want to; instead you can control devices through whatever smart home ecosystem you use, whether that be Apple Home, SmartThings, Amazon Alexa or Google Home.

I won’t go into too much detail her on exactly what Matter is and what it means for you smart home, as we’ve got pretty comprehensive guides and explainers on our Matter hub page.

However, in order to get the most out of the Uplighter, as with any Govee smart light, you’ll have to sync it up to the Govee app. This unlocks all of the bells and whistles and, if you’re already using another Govee light, such as the Lyra Floor Lamp and the Neon Rope Light, then you’ll know exactly what to expect.

And you can always grab a Matter code from within the Govee app and sync it across other smart home systems after your initial setup.

The good news is that the Govee app has been revamped and improved greatly in the past 18 months or so, and is now much easier to get a handle of.

It’s still super busy, with an absolute barrage of options on offer, and can therefore still be a bit daunting, especially for newbies, but it is much less clunky than it was and is much easier to navigate now.

Under the Scene tab you’ll find a multitude of different lighting effects, categorized under headings like Funny, Festival, Natural and Life; there are about 100 on offer.

There’s also the AI bot built into the Govee app, who you can chat or text with, in order to create personalized lighting effects. Think things like ‘Forest camp fire,’ ‘Midnight at the ocean,’ or even ‘Celebration party for a dog who only sees in black and white,’ and the bot will use its AI smarts to match your prompt to a lighting effect.

I found that if you keep it relatively simple, it pretty much nails the vibe that you’re after.

If there’s not an effect already set up that you like you can pretty much customize to your heart’s content in the DIY section. And you can also share your designs with the Govee community, or use one created by someone else

Performance

In terms of how the Uplighter performs, well… there’s a lot going on here.

Let’s start with the headliner: that ripple-effect uplight. On first glance, it’s a pretty slick ceiling show. Think RGB waves gliding across the top of your room like someone bottled a swimming pool reflection and told it to vibe.

But if you look closer, or tweak the colors in the Govee app, you’ll quickly hit some frustrating limits.

Despite Govee’s usual flair for color mixing – I’d say it’s the best in the business – there’s none of the RGBWW light beads and color blending algorithm action on show here.

Instead that upward firing projector uses separate red, green, and blue LEDs that rotate beneath a fixed plastic prism. That’s how you get the ripple effect; there’s actual physical movement involved.

But it also means you can’t blend colors in the way you might expect. Pick purple and you’re not getting a smooth hue; you’re getting red waves and blue waves that kind of overlap. It’s the same deal with yellow (red and green), cyan (green and blue), or anything on the orange spectrum. It’s technically all there, but the colors never really mix they just coexist.

It’s not bad, and the effects are incredibly pretty and dynamic but I just wanted a bit more, given what Govee usually does when blending lights.

The prism is also always engaged, and there’s no way to kill the effect entirely, so you can’t have a fixed light firing upwards. You can slow it down to a standstill, but it will still be stuck in that wavy pattern.

In terms of that ambient side ring, it essentially glows a solid color that can be set independently.

The downlighter is a 10-inch white-only ring that does cold through warm color temps at 2700 – 6500k, and it puts out a strong, uniform light and works great as a regular lamp. There’s no gimmicks or ripple drama here; just solid task lighting when you need it – and it’s plenty bright enough too, at 1000 lumens.

In the room I was testing the Uplighter in, I have pretty low ceilings, at around 7-feet, and so the effect was pretty limited, with only a wash area above of around 2m across.

However, I took a couple of the poles off to replicate a higher ceiling and it created a great effect across whole room; so I’d say to think about where you’re intending to use the Uplighter. Higher ceiling rooms definitely benefit more.

There’s also a dynamic Music Mode, powered by an integrated mic or via music on your phone directly, where the lights pulse and react to your tunes in sync with other Govee lights, creating a lively atmosphere, which is ideal for parties or simply enhancing your audio-visual experience.

Final thoughts

The Uplighter is classic Govee: bold, bright, and a bit bonkers. There’s nothing subtle about it, from the massive, spaceship-style dome to the swirling RGB waves bouncing off your ceiling. It’s a smart floor lamp that’s trying to be more than just a floor lamp, and in many ways, it pulls it off.

But the mechanical limitations of that ripple projector do hold it back. There’s no real color mixing, no ability to switch off the effect entirely, and no white/color combos unless you stumble across the right pre-set scene. For a brand that usually nails flexibility, this one feels unusually locked in.

Still, if you want a statement lamp that doubles as a conversation starter, it delivers. Just give it room to shine, literally. The more ceiling space you give it, the better the payoff.

How we test

When we publish our reviews, you can rest assured that they are the result of “living with” long term tests.

Smart lights usually live within an ecosystem, or a range of products that – supposedly – all work in harmony. Therefore, it’s impossible to use a connected light for a week and deliver a verdict.

Because we’re testing smart home kit all day, everyday, we know what matters and how a particular light compares to alternatives that you might also be considering.

Our reviews are comprehensive, objective and fair and, of course, we are never paid directly to review a device.

Read our guide on how we test smart lights to learn more.