The Govee Floor Lamp 2 is a huge update over the original

A few years after bursting onto the scene with a huge array of affordable smart lights, Govee is back with a new floor lamp that’s brighter and better looking than before.

The new lamp is simply called the Floor Lamp 2, but the original was the Govee Lyra. The first thing I noticed about the Lamp 2 is that it’s extremely bright compared to the older model from 2021. The company says that it can hit a max brightness of 1,727 lumens, and in my testing, I’d say that appears accurate. This version is extremely bright.

Beyond that, the next big upgrade is the new light-up base. Instead of being a solid piece of plastic, Govee has made the bottom of the base transparent and stuffed a few more lights in it. You can turn on the base to act as some nice mood lighting or light up the whole lamp for maximum RGB fun.Like a lot of other Govee products, the floor lamp two has a ton of RGB options. You can build custom scenes, get the lamp to react to music, and more. You can even program your own RGB light shows with specific patterns and colours.

One major holdup I have with the lamp is its Matter support. It’s supposed to work with Matter in Apple’s HomeKit, but all the times I’ve tried to connect it have failed. There’s also a concerning line of text buried in the fine print at the bottom of the Matter menu that says, “You need to complete the network connection of apps that support Matter within 15 minutes after the product is powered on when using Matter for the first time.” I’ve tried a lot of different ways to connect the lamp, but it never ends up working. Looking up Govee Matter support online leads to many comment threads of people with similar issues.

That being said, I’m not that mad about it. The lamp comes with a handy remote, and if I wanted, I could more easily add it to my Google Home or Alexa apps to tie it in with my other smart home devices. If you’re using HomeKit, though, I think it’s too much of a battle to be worth it.

Finally, I’ll also note that I used my original Govee Lyra quite a bit, but after about two years, the lamp started to glitch, and finally, a few of the LEDs broke. Now, I can only use it at low brightness, or the whole lamp will flicker pretty aggressively. It’s difficult to tell if this is a one-off, but again, it’s concerning to see LEDs break after such a short amount of time. I’ve had lots of Hue lightbulbs for over 10 years, and not a single one of those lights has broken.

Overall, if you can catch this light on sale for closer to $100, I think it’s a fair deal, but at its regular retail price of $179, to have HomeKit not work is pretty annoying. Users with Google Home or Alexa might care less, but combining this with the fact that my Lyra only (sort of) lasted two years makes me worry about spending a lot on the Floor Lamp 2.

You can buy the Floor Lamp 2 from Govee or on Amazon.