This Affordable Ambilight Clone Is Much Better Than Expected

The Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite offers a surprisingly effective way to add dynamic ambient lighting to your TV at an affordable price, using a clever camera solution that sits on top of your TV and “watches” the screen for color changes.

Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite

Using a camera that sits on top of your TV, the Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite offers an affordable and easy way to add ambient lighting to your TV viewing experience. It’s bright, responsive, and with DreamView mode you can expand your system with other Govee lighting. 

Brand

Govee

Hub Required

No

Music Reactive

Yes

Multicolor Capable

Yes, pixel LEDs

Color Composition

RGB plus white

Type

RGBICW

Connectivity

Bluetooth + Wi-Fi

Price

$90

Length

55-65″ and 75-85″ versions

Pros

• Mostly accurate color-matching and responsive changes
• DreamView mode to link with other Govee lights
• Can operate without the TV as a generic smart light

Cons

• May be tricky to calibrate with other smart lighting in the room
• Camera must sit on the top of your TV

How the Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite is Different

The original TV “Ambilight” from Philips is built into the body of the TV, offering the most compatible and accurate solution by monitoring the signal internally. This means it works with any smart apps that you run on the TV, as well as external inputs. Of course, it also requires buying a new TV, and having integrated lighting probably shouldn’t be your primary decision-making factor.

Nowadays, you can purchase many off-the-shelf retrofit ambient lighting kits, but most use an HDMI input to analyze the signal and provide accurate color matching. This can limit compatibility (often not working with 120Hz gaming systems or variable refresh), and potentially introduce lag as the signal is passed through. It also won’t work with built-in smart TV apps, since those don’t use any external HDMI signal. You can even build your own Ambilight-clone with a Raspberry Pi—but I wouldn’t bother, because the Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite is actually cheaper.

Instead, the Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite uses a webcam on top of your TV to “watch” what’s on the screen, and match the LEDs to that. This means it’s compatible with both the TV smart apps and external inputs—because it doesn’t need to examine any signal, it just sees everything on the TV screen, the same as you do.

The system has its downsides, but after a few iterations, I’m pleased to say it’s remarkably accurate and responsive—and at a fantastic price.

If you’re concerned about privacy (especially if your TV is in your bedroom), then don’t be. The webcam is strictly facing the TV at all times, and even if it were to catch some reflections of other things happening in the room, the stream is immediately discarded after local analysis for color matching—there is nothing to hack into over your internet connection.

Installation: Fiddly but Simple

Included in the box is the strip of lights, a small control hub, webcam, and mounting accessories. The LED strip is broken into sections with a flexible connector cable in between.

Starting from one of the bottom corners, lay each side roughly in the center and about an inch or so away from the edge—or wherever you can place them without being able to see the LEDs from the front or normal viewing angles. Since I’m fitting these on an actual Philips Ambilight TV for comparison’s sake, I was also constrained by the built-in LEDs.

You’ll need to check your TV size before buying to avoid disappointment, as they’re designed to work only within a certain range. The kit I have is for 55-65” TVs, though a slightly larger one is available too. If your TV is smaller, you’ll end up with LED strips hanging off the edge.

Before attempting to stick the strips to the TV, you should definitely use the provided alcohol wipes, which will ensure a grease-free surface to adhere to. Even then, I found the sticky gray rubber adhesive on the back of the strips was quite easily to pull off. Thankfully, Govee also provides some extra stick-on clips, which are a lot stronger.

I also used some of these to pull back the connector cables on each corner. For reference, my TV is 58”.

Finally, affix the control hub. It doesn’t need to be in the center, as long as the USB-C cable can reach the web camera that will sit on top—the cable on the end of the LED strip is quite long. The webcam sits in between the two uppermost ports, the LEDs in the lower one.

The camera placement is crucial: it must sit on the top of your screen, not underneath, and you must ensure the bracket on the underside of the camera arm sits at 90-degrees to the screen—the quick installation guide explains this better. The main arm of the webcam ends up sitting at a slight upwards angle.

Take care with this step, because it’s a little counter-intuitive to how I would have placed the camera without instructions. If you do this wrong, the camera won’t see the top of the TV.

Setup and Software: Calibration is Crucial

Once plugged in and turned on, you can launch the Govee app and add a new device. It’ll be automatically detected over Bluetooth, then you can walk through the configuration. You’ll need to add your Wi-Fi details; the app claims it’ll only work with 2.4GHz networks, but sitting next to my dual-band access point it connected fine.

Your TV should now be placed back into its final home, and you should be looking at the front of the screen as usual; then ensure the sides match the onscreen instructions (or choose a layout that does match).

The most complex and important part of the setup involves the camera. You’ll need to place seven sticky-backed orange cubes around your TV screen for calibration, then drag out the corners and middle of the bounding box to match. This can be especially tricky as the image is distorted and fairly low quality. Ideally, you won’t have reflections on your TV, either, but that’s unrealistic in most households.

By default, it’ll launch in video reactive mode, so the lights will replicate whatever on your TV. You can change modes from the Govee app.

Performance: Mostly Accurate, but Not Perfect

I ran through a series of Ambilight test videos. The default mode is “Movie”, which seems to delay color changes. Change that to “Game” mode for faster response times (though you might find it a little too flashy).

Generally, I found the colors followed the on-screen content nicely, though the blues tended toward purple lighting at times, and white tended to light pink. This is to be expected with any camera-based ambient lighting.

While you can fix most of the issues with another color calibration step, if you have smart lighting elsewhere in your room, the camera will pick up on the subtle hue changes in reflections.

Running through the tests again with the original Philips Ambilight re-enabled, I couldn’t have told you a difference. In practice, with movies and gaming content, it seems to be remarkably accurate, which I really didn’t expect from a camera-based system. Another small benefit of the Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite (above) compared to the original Philips Hue Ambilight (below) is that you get the same number of LEDs on the base of your TV as the top. With the Ambilight built-in the TV body, the base features fewer LEDs to accommodate the TV stand (and on some models, none at all along the bottom edge).

The only issue I found was screen-off detection, and that was likely due to unavoidable reflections. With the TV off, the Govee Backlight produced a light yellow on the left and right. Since my TV power strip uses a smart plug anyway to save power, this isn’t a huge issue for me. When watching movies with black bars, the system correctly recognizes those, ignores them, and replicates the actual movie colors instead.

Other Features: DreamView, Music Modes and More

If you have some additional Govee lighting in your TV room, you’ll appreciate the DreamView integration. This enables your TV Backlight 3 Lite to control up to five other Govee lights, matching on-screen content in exactly the same way as the LEDs on the back of your TV. You’ll be able to position the lights around the room to match the left or right edge appropriately, and nearly all Govee lights are compatible.

Since it’s entirely separate from your TV, the Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite also functions as a standard Govee smart light. This gives you control through voice assistants, and Bluetooth or Wi-Fi control through the app. Having an impromptu party in your living room? Music-synced beat-matching scenes will add a bit of dynamic party lighting. Or just chill out with some ambient mood lighting, with hundreds of scenes in the app to suit any occasion. And if you purchase the special Dune edition of the Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite, you’ll get even more scenes, which you can add to your app by scanning the included QR code.

Should You Buy the Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite?

I was extremely skeptical of the Backlight 3 Lite coming into this review. I’ve steered clear of any camera-based TV backlights because I suspected they’d be too slow and inaccurate to provide accurate color reproduction (and in fairness, the first few generations of these weren’t brilliant). While the TV Backlight 3 Lite isn’t ever going to be as accurate as an HDMI-signal kit, it’s good enough that I needn’t have worried. As a way to enhance your TV and movie immersion, it works great. It’s also a lot cheaper than other options, and the fact it can work with any content shown on your TV and not just external inputs is a big point in its favor.

If you want a TV backlight on a budget of less than $100, look no further. It’s easy to install, and after a little calibration, just works.

Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite

Using a camera that sits on top of your TV, the Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite offers an affordable and easy way to add ambient lighting to your TV viewing experience. It’s bright, responsive, and with DreamView mode you can expand your system with other Govee lighting.