The best dorm room essentials for college students

Smart RGB lights are just a natural fit for dorm rooms: They add functional lighting, personal flare and they dance to music when it’s time to let off steam. Govee has long been one of our favorite “fun” lighting brands and I recently bought this Smart Neon Rope Light for a high school grad in my life who’s heading off to further education. It was well-received to say the least. The lights come with either nine, 16 or 32 feet of rope made from a flexible silicone, along with bendable clips to hold it in the shape you want. It sticks to the wall with adhesive, not nails, so you won’t anger your dorm manager by poking holes in the drywall.

The rope gives off millions of colors and combinations, all programmable and customizable with Govee’s app. There are also plenty of presets that work with a shape-recognition feature to automatically set the color scheme — helpful if you don’t feel like fussing with it too much. Govee lights are also Matter-, Alexa- and Google Assistant-compatible so you can tell your lights it’s time to pass out just by talking to your smart speaker. — A.S.