Color lights are a great way to instantly glam up any room with easy tints to match any situation. Controllable RGB lighting goes a step further by allowing you to instantly change the look of your lighting, and reactive lighting works even better by instantly changing with your surroundings When it comes to PC gaming, an RGB setup is the bright and delicious cherry on top! . For some, it's a distraction. For some, it's a distraction and a hindrance. And for some of us, it's the secret reason we ordered the sundae in the first place.

Reactive RGB lights are one of the coolest things in gaming and entertainment setups. Placed behind a screen, they can color the room with the colors of the current scene, helping to immerse you in part of the environment. This is a great addition to the experience, but also a very expensive one. Many well-known brands charge a hefty fee for RGB services, but there are much less expensive products on the market.

Govee is one brand that offers a more budget-friendly option for RGB lighting setups. Many of their products are made specifically for gaming and TV applications (mounted on the back of the screen and specifically designed to react to the content on the screen).

One such setup is the Govee DreamView G1 Pro gaming light, which comes with an LED light strip for the back of the monitor, two tall side lights, and a camera and control unit. A pack of all this costs $180 (but is currently on sale for $160 (open in new tab)). This is a pretty decent price for a monitor desk-back setup that works completely independently.

The first thing to note is that setting up these lights on your monitor is not difficult, but you do need to do some checking first. It is noted on the Gove website (opens in new tab) that these lights will only work with a flat back panel. I was surprised to find that many of the monitor screens I have are not compatible with this light because the back portion of the screen does not allow the light mount to work. The panels I had that had flat backs worked easily, but would have been completely incompatible with about half the monitors in my house.

Once installed, they need to be calibrated with the Govee smartphone app for iPhone or Android and connected to the lights via Bluetooth. This is also a fairly simple process, but the lack of a desktop app is a bit disappointing given that it is to be used on a PC. The app offers calibration options for white balance, saturation, etc.

This is because the way the Govee lights work is with a camera mounted above the screen. Since the data is collected by a visual sensor, there will always be problems. It is impossible to perfectly adjust the colors because the light looks different depending on the angle of the screen. Also, the light is very bright, which is great, but can be adjusted by the app.

On my screen, I had trouble keeping the lights from making black and most dark colors look red. I played with the white balance and saturation to mitigate this, but have not yet completely fixed it. Bold color changes are less noticeable, but still occasionally make a big difference. Also, the camera feels like it is playing catch up, which sometimes makes the transition between colors falter. This is perfectly fine for general ambience and nice bright colors, but you won't get perfect color reproduction on such a budget device.

However, there is a positive side to the camera setup. There are a surprising number of apps that block screen-reading software, and some programs, such as Netflix and some games, often stop working regularly. Furthermore, by pointing the camera at the screen, it can be used on any gaming console, including those that are otherwise incompatible. Pointing the camera at the screen is not a half-bad solution either, although other RGB lighting products may get around this with expensive pass-through boxes.

Overall, the effect is very good, though not as good as more expensive products. The colors can be a bit off at times, but for the most part it's still close enough to your experience to well, add a really cool cyberpunk glow. Lighting the room is easy, and the two light stands can be set up fairly far apart. The downside is that there are quite a few more cables, which can be difficult to manage.

Still, it's a very complete, albeit slightly budget-friendly, setup that does a lot to enhance a gaming room, and you won't notice the cheap look unless you really look for it.