Gadget Guru’s magic box

As if to fully cement Guru’s new role as a high-level influencer, the nice folks at Govee sent him an Immersion TV backlight to try out. Govee is a company that has essentially looked at the smart lighting market, decided it can’t be that hard, and opened its gadget valve to spew forth a torrent of competitive devices. Govee has proven disruptive, with its gear coming in far cheaper than most alternatives, and doing a (mostly) bang-up job of showing Philips Hue what for.

The Immersion backlight is basically an Ambilight clone that carefully sidesteps Philips’ patents by employing a screen camera to work out what colours it should be showing. Even Captain Ham-Fist here didn’t have any trouble installing it; it’s basically just a case of applying a self-adhesive light strip and plugging some stuff in. It’s very neat, and once you’ve dialled in your settings through the (only slightly baffling) app the colour-bleeding effect is definitely there. Guru likes it, with caveats: processing what a camera sees means that there’s a little lag, it’s limited in the number of light zones around the screen’s perimeter, and it doesn’t seem to do white, which can be distracting. If you’re looking for precision, head Philips’ way, wallet in hand – but there’s plenty positive here.

Guru is, sadly, unlikely to be able to point his influencer finger in the direction of Tag Heuer, which is a shame given that the company has just partnered with Nintendo to launch a Mario-skinned version of its WearOS Connected smartwatch. It’s gaudy and silly and totally un-Tag, yet Guru would love to have one on his wrist just for the giggles.