Monday, January 06, 2025
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Today at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Govee is debuting a series of new light products, and while previous endeavors like lamps and holiday lights have focused on function, today’s releases are all about fun. Govee has also leaned in hard to a retro theme, debuting a set of digital tablets that display pixelated images or gifs: They're giving a real Lite Brite vibe.
The Pixel Light looks a lot like a gaming console, so much that I spent some time trying to figure out if that was a feature I could unlock. Instead, it is a large pixel display, and you can use Govee’s app to change what it displays.
While it’s not the touch screen I’d have liked for my 2025 Lite Brite fever dream, it does offer the same feel through the app, which does allow you to hand draw what you’d like to see on the screen using the DIY feature. You can select colors, shapes, and drawing tools, and when you're done, you tap “apply,” and the image is sent to your display.
There are also lots of presets, from nature to sports to food. This is perhaps the best use of the tablet, because these images are well-refined already and there are many animated gifs you can use. You can display livestreams of information, from weather to sports scores to Bitcoin values. There are patterns that will move to any music you play, and some patterns play 8-bit music.
Now, if you’re looking at a wildly pixelated image alongside 8-bit music, and early Nintendo games don’t come to mind, you’re playing in a different technological bubble, because it is all I could think of. And while the console did come with static images of arcade games you could display, it didn’t have any animated gifs, and I thought that was a real miss. If this tablet showed Frogger or Super Mario Bros. or Donkey Kong incessantly, I’d let it play until it burned itself out.
You can upload an image of your own and have it sent, in wildly pixelated format, to the display. This wasn’t fantastic, if you ask me, but it was an interesting experiment.
There is an AI engine you can ask to generate images for the tablet, and experiences will vary. For instance, I asked a number of times for Rainbow Brite or Super Mario Bros. (I was determined), and in both cases, the AI engine had no idea what I was talking about. But if you ask for a rainbow, you get one.
The last thing is that you can, actually, create an animated gif of your own. However, it’s unlikely you would from your phone, which is where my issues with the Pixel Light lie. All of the DIY and drawing tools are touch screen but are absurdly small. Too small to reasonably use the tip of your finger in drawing. It’s very clumsy, perhaps intentionally so (so you lean into the “fun” aspect), but I can’t imagine spending the time to create an animated gif because of the frustration with the touch screen size.
The Pixel Light comes in two sizes: 5.75 x 7” and 5.75x 10". It comes with mounts for the wall or a shelf. It’s expected to be released for sale in early summer, with a target price of $100-$200.
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