Which TV Sync Backlight RGB Lightstrip Should You Buy?

Hey what’s up, Alex here! TV backlight has become  one of my must have smart home products in the house. I have it installed on both of my 65” TV  and I also shared it in one of my renovation tips video. Some of you might think that ahhh  these RGB lights are so lame. But I can tell you, once you see it in-person, experience one, then  you might not think the same way anymore. If I am only allowed to have just one RGB lights in  the house, then 100% no doubt, it will be a TV backlight. Unless yo

u are going with those  wall-mounted TV that flushed with the wall, such as the Samsung frame TV, for the rest  especially if your TV is sitting on a stand, then you should definitely consider  installing a TV backlight. In this video, I am going to check out and showcase 4  different products from 4 different companies. First is something new and very different from  Philips Hue this year. This is a very interesting solution because the sync is actually managed  by a TV app. Right now it only w

orks on Samsung TV that is released in 2023, you will need to pay  for a one time fee to use the Philips Hue TV app, as well as buying the light strip itself.  Philips Hue products are mainly based on zigbee, so if this is your first Philips Hue product then  you will need to get their bridge. Unboxing the light strip, you will be able to find the light  strip itself. I really like that their light strip comes with a diffuser. You have some  brackets to hold the light strip in place, a control b

ox and of course a power adapter. The  installation is very straightforward. First stick the brackets, two at the top corners, one in the  top middle, and one at each side. After that, just simply fit the light strip into the brackets,  there is no need to stick the strip which makes the installation very easy. Lastly, just connect  the end to the control box, followed by the power adapter and you are done with the installation.  You can see that the light strip didn’t cover the entire TV and th

at’s because this is a 65”  tv and at the time of shooting this video, we only have the 55” light strip in Singapore. I  am told that the 65” light strip will be coming in Q3 next year. An alternative workaround now is you  can install their Hue play bars at the two bottom corners. But even with the 65” light strip, it  will not cover the bottom at all, and the reason is they find that having the bottom lights does  not really matter and affect the whole experience, especially if the tv is sitti

ng on a stand or you  have a sound bar placed right below. You can only start to play around with TV app settings once  you have paid for the app. One of the downsides is how Philips Hue licences the app usage. The  app is bind to this specific TV, 1 app 1 TV, so basically you can’t shift the entire setup to  another TV. Inside the app, you have 2 modes that you can set, video mode and game mode. Within each  mode, you are able to set its own brightness and intensity level. They have a very inte

resting  setting here that I don’t commonly see, background lighting that allows you to set whether  you want a background light even when the screen is black. If you have other Philips Hue products  that you like to sync them together, you can do so easily within the mobile app to set the placement.  For smart home integrations, Philips Hue can work very well with all the major platforms no issue.  Overall, I really like this solution because it has the cleanest setup, no camera, no sync box an

d  it is able to work with all your native TV apps. The lights, the color gradient is something that  I feel that Philips Hue stands out from the rest. Some of you might be wondering, so how about  Philips Hue HDMI sync box? One simple reason why I am not covering it is because it does not support  HDMI 2.1, to me that’s super important. And that brings me to the next product which is a HDMI  sync box solution from Lytmi. This is for 65” TV, they have many options for different tv sizes,  from 2

7” all the way to 120”. Inside the box, you have a nice user manual, power adapter, then  you have the HDMI sync box. There are 2 button controls, 5 HDMI ports, 1 for your TV and the  rest for all your HDMI devices. They provide a HDMI 8k cable to connect to your tv, some clips  to secure the strip and lastly the light strip itself. Here is a close up look at the LED lights  and that’s everything you will find, you will need separate HDMI cables for your input devices.  Input devices can be your

TV setup box, laptop, PC or gaming consoles like playstation, xbox or a  nintendo switch. Follow the user manual to install the light strip in the correct orientation, after  that just connect everything to the HDMI sync box and that’s all. If you don’t know about this,  Lytmi is a Tuya device, which means you can use the smart life app and add the device in. Smart  Life has official integration to Google home, Alexa and SmartThings. If you are using home  assistant, once you did the Tuya integ

ration, you are able to see the entity as well. Inside  the smart life app, there is no configuration required, it’s like plug and play. The only  settings you can change is the brightness and degree of diffusion which is like the intensity  level. There is also no way to synchronize it with other lights in your setup, purely standalone. Actually I have been using the previous model that only support HDMI 2.0 to my Playstation 5.  But I run into lots of issues when I am trying to play the latest

high graphics games, especially  with things like VRR and ALLM. Lytmi have a pro version but clearly states here that it will not  work for LG TV. So that’s one of the major concern with using a HDMI sync box solution, you will  also be limited by the supported resolution and refresh rate. For this, it supports 4k 120hz or  8k 60hz. This is of course good enough for now, but after a few years time might not be, so there  is no kind of future proof. But having said that, I will still be using it

for my PS5 setup,  i like that the colors you see are not very colorful so it’s not very distracting.  I don’t have other lights I like to sync with in this room so that’s also fine. Next product is something that has gotten very popular in the recent years, a camera based  TV sync solution and Govee is probably the OG for this. Unlike the previous two solutions that  have some big restrictions or limitations, this kind of TV backlight uses a camera to pick  up the reflections, read the colors

and have the light strip to adjust accordingly. As such,  there are literally no restrictions, you can use it on any TV brands, whether or not you have  a HDMI input device or if you are just watching directly from the TV native apps, anything goes.  What I have here is the Govee TV Backlight T2, which is like their 2nd gen. This is the smallest  size for 55 to 65 inch TV, they have another two more sizes all the way up to 100” TV. Opening  up the box, you will first see the camera, I realized t

his is much bigger compared to  their T1. Next is the control box which looks very similar to the T1, a bunch of brackets to  secure the strip, USB-c cable for the camera, power adapter, alcohol pads and lastly the light  strip itself. Again, give you a close up look at the LEDs and now time for installation. For Govee,  the light strip has been trimmed for the 4 sides, in a way you don’t need to twist the light strip  at the corners, this way is much easier to stick the light strip. But this al

so means that the 4  corners will be slightly darker since there are no LEDs there. Then place the camera at the top  align to the center, this camera has like 2 lens pointing at 2 different sides of the TV. Comparing  this to their T1, you can see the big difference. Stick the control box to the back of the TV, and  plug in the light strip, camera and power adapter all to the control box and you are done with  the installation. The most important step for such camera based solution is the calib

ration. You  need to do this step properly, plotting the exact corners of the TV based on the camera view, if not  the color accuracy you see later will be very off. Inside their app, you have the option to select  All and the strip will be set with a single color if that’s what you prefer, it is also able to do a  sync with some of the other Govee lights in their product line, such as their standing lamp I have  here. One small little complaint I have for Govee products is their smart home inte

gration. Google  and amazon alexa works fine, but for the rest it’s not officially supported. Even the integration  with home assistant, it didn’t work quite well with lots of intermittent issues. In terms of  color accuracy, camera-based will not be as accurate compared to the previous 2 solutions just  now, but the good thing is they come at a cheaper price. You will also need to be ok having a camera  on top which I know is a deal breaker for some. Last product is from a new player in the TV 

backlight space, but they are no stranger to the smart home world, one of the best RGB smart  lighting companies that produce very high quality products and that’s Nanoleaf. Their solution is  also based on the camera screen mirroring type of concept, so straight off you know that this will  work as long as there is a display on the screen. What I have here is the kit for TVs and monitors  up to 65”, which means you can totally use this for 55” or smaller TV. They also have another  longer kit

for up to 85” TV. Official integration support for all the major smart home platforms  here and including home assistant. Unboxing this, you can find some nanoleaf sticky pads, the light  strip itself, give you a closer look at the strip and the LED lights. Then you have the power  adapter, the camera holder and separately the camera that has a privacy cover which is magnetic,  very nice. The control box here that has an on/off button, lastly 4 corner brackets optional whether  you want to use t

hem. And here is everything in one glance, everything you need for the setup.  For the camera placement, you can either have it placed on top of the TV or another way if you  have a TV console below, is to not use the camera holder at all and just have the camera placed  on the console, you are able to tilt the camera at an angle facing the screen. For the control  box, you can either stick it behind the tv, hide it somewhere or just placed somewhere if you are  going to use the button controls.

So basically, the camera, the light strip and the power adapter  will all connect to this control box and that’s all for the installation. For all camera based  sync, you will need to calibrate the camera, and if you have other nanoleaf products that you  like to sync together as well, you can easily add the placement inside the app. For Nanoleaf, you  can set the mirror modes, 1D, 2D, 3D or 4D. 1D gives you a simple white ambient lighting, 2D  will give a single color to the strip based on the

screen display, 3D will give multi-colors and  for 4D, you will see lesser colors but it includes some lightning effects and varying brightness  which becomes a little too much for me at times. There are also a vibrancy setting - cinematic,  vivid or custom. Their differences are quite obvious, cinematic tones down the RGB  by a lot while vivid showcase Nanoleaf’s RGB to its full potential. If you have  other Nanoleaf products in the setup, it syncs very nicely with them. You can see that  I ha

ve the Nanoleaf Lines at my front door area. Ok, to summarize some key points. The  Philips Hue TV app is only available for Samsung TV models from this year, very  clean setup, work with native tv apps, but upfront cost is quite high. For lytmi  HDMI sync box, works only with a HDMI input device, best color accuracy but very  limited by the specs like HDMI 2.1, 4k 120hz or 8k 60hz and doesn’t have other  lights to sync with. Then for camera based solution like the Govee T2 and Nanoleaf 4D, you 

need to be ok with the camera sticking on top, for Nanoleaf you can have it sit on top of a  console instead, colors are not as accurate and they tend to be more on the colorful side, able to  work with any tv content and is generally cheaper. Hope this video is useful in helping you  to pick the TV backlight product that is suitable for your requirements. If you are  still hesitant in trying out a TV backlight, I really suggest you to give it a try,  I am one that is also skeptical at first bu

t I can say I really love having one now,  and that’s also why I want to do this video and share this with everyone. That’s all  from me, see you in the next one.. BYE!