We recently reported that lighting company Govee had teamed up with Evangelion to release indoor lighting products themed after the iconic anime. To recap, two of the products are wall mounted lights and the third is a desktop light meant to stand besides a monitor. We were fortunate enough to get our hands on one of the wall mounted light products, the Gaming Wall Light and gave it a spin…here are our thoughts.
Packaging wise, this isn’t something you’d see sitting on a shelf. The outer box is completely black and any lettering is in red foil and white. It certainly mirrors the computer UI found in the NERV base…but also reminds me of the monoliths which represent members of Seele.
Removing the outer box, you get something that you could probably put on a shelf, a largely purple box with an image of EVA Unit 01 as well as the wall light show on the box.
Opening the inner box you’re finally greeted with the product. 6x light segments, a square connector, a triangle connector, control box and an AC Adapter. The 6 sticks can be daisy chained, but if you want to angle these sticks you will need to utilize a connector…which the box contains one of each type. It’s rather unfortunate as promotional images show complex setups such as A.T. Fields, the EVA Unit faces, and the Spear of Longinus. However if you only bought 1 kit (which retails at $199.99), you’re ostensibly locked out of assembling anything outside of a straight line, cross or a slight hook.
Set up is quite simple, you use the connector pins to bridge light segments with either the control box, connectors or even another light segment. Plug in the AC adapter and the light should turn on automatically. Then you take to the Govee App to do set up. Wirelessly connect your lights to the app and it will detect what configuration your light is in. Connect the lights to a wireless network (although it can only connect to 2.4 GHz WiFi) if you wish to control the lights outside of your home and that’s it. In the app you can link it to various smart home setups such as Alexa or Google Home. In the package is also a card with a QR code that you can scan in the Govee app to redeem several exclusive lighting modes which include Angel Attack, A.T. Field, Synchro, EVA-01 Departure and EVA Unit 00-02. Outside of purchasing a new set of Govee x Evangelion products, you will not be able to redeem and access these modes.
Visually the lights are pretty neat. Switching to the various pre-set lighting modes show an array of colors that still images won’t do justice. EVA-00 utilizes yellow and white much light Rei Ayanami’s EVA, EVA-01 is a mixture of purple and green and EVA-02 utilizes Red, Orange and White. If you don’t want to use the presets, you can use the Govee app to customize your own display, but you don’t necessarily buy the EVA version so as to build your own color modes, but I do appreciate the option is there.
While I am impressed with the build and the thought that went into the aesthetics of the product. I was slightly blindsided that a single kit isn’t really enough to replicate the setups that were shown in promotional images. With 2 angled connectors in the box, what you can do is rather limited. The pricing of each kit is also pretty cost prohibitive ($199.99), you’d have to be all in and have pretty deep pockets to really do something with these lights. That said you can mix and match with the non-co branded version of these products to help bridge the gaps and reduce some costs, but the more anal retentive amongst us will be annoyed to see the mismatched light segments when they are not lit. In fact, let’s do some math.
In order to replicate the EVA Unit-01 eyes setup (as seen above), you will need 28x Light Segments, 6x Y Light Segments, 6x Triangle Connectors, 2x Square Connectors. So at minimum you will need to purchase the following:
- Wall Lights 6+2 Kits x4
- Y Lights Kit x2
- Expansion Kit x2
That’s roughly about ~1300 dollars worth of lighting products. However, when you can drop nearly three grand on a ROG x Evangelion PC (Hi Mike!), another thirteen hundred dollars to really bring the setup together shouldn’t be too big a deal.
Another thing that kinda blew my mind was the fact that the lights had exclusive modes that had to be redeemed and analogously can be compared to gaming’s “Online Pass”. I.E. Once redeemed to a Govee account, it’s tied to that account indefinitely and it locks out people who might buy pre-owned versions of this kit from accessing the exclusive lighting modes. I mean it could be tied to the licensing agreement, but it is still kind of wild to see in action.
These lights are certainly something that will drop the jaw of any fanatical Evangelion fan, however I think Govee really needs to make the square and triangle connectors available for sale a la carte. Yes, there is an expansion kit available, but you’re gonna need more than what’s included in that kit to create some of those cool configurations in promotional images (yes, I’m really hung up on those configurations…). In the meantime I have a package I need to prepare for my friend Mike.
Govee x Evangelion Gaming Wall Light was sent to us by Govee for testing purposes.
