• Trying to channel my childhood home theater experience, I purchased the Govee Backlight 3 Lite to put behind my TV.
• The white LEDs make for warmer and more vibrant colors, and reactive lighting responds to what’s happening on the screen.
• The companion app offers a sea of color combinations that are customizable.

I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself a cinephile, but my upbringing speaks to how much I love a good movie experience as an adult. My stepdad built home theaters in the basements of both my childhood homes—complete with surround sound, reclining chairs, and even a concession corner. It was a DIY luxury that I loved growing up, and one I definitely miss now as an apartment renter.

These days, I don’t have the space to recreate that exact setup, but I’ve been slowly making enhancements where I can. Over the last few months, I’ve added a soundbar with rear speakers and a subwoofer, and I’m now the proud owner of a good, old-fashioned DVD player. One of my favorite additions has been improved lighting.

The package includes everything you need to get started: an LED strip, a mountable camera for color sensing, adhesive-backed clips for cables, a control box, and foam pads for calibration. It’s essentially just peel, stick, and plug in. Then, I just followed all the in-app instructions, and within 15 minutes things were up and running. Initially, I wasn’t a fan of how far the camera extends from the screen, but I’ve since gotten used to it and now it just feels like it’s a part of the TV.

What really makes the Backlight shine is the use of RGBICW technology. Unlike traditional LED lights, these Govee lights combine red, green, blue, and white diodes with an independent control chip. As a result, the light strip is able to display different colors at the same time, creating a gradient or color-burst effect. A white LED sits next to each regular LED, and this reduces the sterile, bluish hue you usually get with standard RGB lighting.

That alone earns a gold star from me, because I am a no-big-light, cozy-vibes-only kind of person. I use the Backlight 3 as ambient lighting, too, and it’s nice being able to just set it to a yellowish glow when the TV isn’t in use.

The Backlight 3 is designed to be reactive, so it adjusts in real time to the colors on the screen. Whether I’m watching an action movie or something slow-paced, the colors change in a way that makes even a screensaver of floating jellyfish feel cinematic.

These LEDs stand out during horror movies, too. I’m a big fan of the genre, and when I recently watched Weapons, I set the LED strip to only show a deep red. It created such a spooky atmosphere that I genuinely did not want to walk through the rest of my dark apartment afterward (the image of those children running is burned into my memory).

The companion app has an impressive array of settings that make lighting combinations almost endless. I typically use the standard “Color” option, which allows me to select a single hue from a regular or gradient color wheel. If I find one I like, I’ll save it to “My Colors” for future use.

When I’m sitting down for movie night, I alter the settings to “Video” and set it to “Movie” mode for that reactive and dynamic experience. If you don’t want to fuss making a bunch of changes, the app offers plenty of presets to choose from.

Ambient lighting might seem like a subtle—or even unnecessary—upgrade, but it has completely changed how I experience my favorite TV shows and movies. It also sets the mood for my entire living room and makes it a much more inviting space. The Backlight 3 Lite is exactly what I was looking for: a warm-toned and affordable lighting option that boosts what I watch, and feels more like a valuable addition than a tacky extra.