I’m totally new to RGB lighting and this is my first chance at trying out a product like this: VZF’s NEO 1 is an ambient RGB light bar that reacts to music and sound from the environment.
UNBOXING
The unboxing experience is pretty nice, I liked the materials of the box and it contains all we need: the ambient light bar itself, a power cable, a little pice of plastic supposed to be a stand to prop the light bar up and some adhesive paper to stick the light bar wherever you want.
There’s also a piece of very high quality paper with instructions and a QR code for the use of the light bar: they’re only in Chinese, so I had to use an app to translate the content. The QR code redirects to a WeChat service probably, but I don’t have a WeChat account and weren’t able to create one, so probably I’m missing out on some features of this light (this is most probably to activate the 1 year warranty). Problem is WeChat is not really something used outside of china, so I think no one in the west probably could really use the light bar to the maximum of his potential.
FEATURES
There’s something that immediately threw me off: for some reason I thought this was a battery powered device, so after the unboxing I tried immediately turning it on, with no luck, and only after connecting it to a power source thanks to the included usb-a to usb-c power cable I was able to turn it on and start experimenting.
The device presents two light sources, the biggest one on the front and one smaller on the back. On the back you can also find the usb-c port for power, the microphone holes that the device uses to listen to environmental sounds and music to make the light appear in rhythm, and two buttons, one for changing colors (M) and one for powering and changing light modes.
As far as I know, there’s no app to connect the device to and no way to connect the device to smart home services like Alexa, Google home or Apple HomeKit, but this was expected considering the type of product and the price point, even though it would have been appreciated.
Pressing the two buttons together let’s you change the microphone sensitivity to audio and sounds, from max sensitivity, to a mode where it detects only intentional noises and music.
RGB LIGHT
The light itself though is very good: it is bright and colorful, vibrant, and full of different shades. But I can’t really explain by word the quality and colors of the light, so I’ll just let the videos talk. (you can find the videos in the review on the heyup page for the product
CONCLUSIONS
Very interesting, although niche product here, by VZF. I like it, the microphones work pretty well and after all is a very nice product and funny to use. I think it looks great in a desk setup or in the car, but I only have one very big real gripe: why is there no option to use the light bar as a normal one with no music response? I’d have really appreciated to use the light bar with static lights, to light my desk setup.
That’s why I’m giving 3,5-⅘ to this product.
Once again thanks to HeyUp for the free sample and for making possible this review.
