GoveeLife Smart 50 Pint Dehumidifier review: Powerful and impressive, if you can overlook the noise

Anyone dealing with humidity or damp basement issues will benefit from one of the best dehumidifiers. And quite often, big dehumidifiers come with big promises to solve such problems.

The GoveeLife 50-Pint Smart Dehumidifier is no different: Govee claims this bad boy can dehumidify spaces up to 4,500 square feet, with a capacity of 50 pints and a 2-gallon tank volume. That’s a huge promise.

And while I didn't think this unit would be able to do much in a space that large — at least not on its own — the GoveeLife dehumidifier is a powerhouse.

Find out what happened when I tested the GoveeLife dehumidifier in my damp basement and home.

GoveeLife Smart 50 Pint Dehumidifier review: Price and availability

The GoveeLife Smart Dehumidifier is available for purchase now on Amazon for $239. You can also buy it through major retailers, including Home Depot, and more.

Interestingly, while Govee does have a website that’s set up for purchasing, I was unable to find any dehumidifiers on the website.

GoveeLife Smart 50 Pint Dehumidifier review: Design

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The GoveeLife dehumidifier is quite large — around 2 feet high — which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given the advertised 4,500 square feet perimeter it’s designed to handle.

I liked that it was packed with features, such as a washable air filter, 2-gallon tank, caster wheels, and easy-to-use top display. Within, the GoveeLife Smart Dehumidifier includes an auto-defrost feature, a tank-full reminder, auto mode to control humidity automatically, a dry mode to dry out your clothes in the laundry room, and an auto restart feature that gets the unit going again after a power outage.

Additionally, GoveeLife says the unit is made from 20% recycled materials, and the packaging materials are 100% biodegradable. One more nod to eco-friendliness: the GoveeLife Smart Dehumidifier earns Energy Star’s Most Efficient certification.

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In another important nod to sustainability, the GoveeLife Smart Dehumidifier uses R32 refrigerant. Typically, this refrigerant has lower emissions than other commonly used refrigerants, but it is also flammable, so when it’s burnt, it releases toxic substances. This shouldn’t be much of a concern during daily operation, but it’s important to care for this dehumidifier properly to avoid damage to the unit.

This model also includes a hose, so you can use the unit in continuous mode and drain into a sink or floor drain. The only caveat is the hose is super-short, so you’re better off connecting this to a garden hose.

The unit is also Wi-Fi-ready and you can pair to the app to control it remotely. From the app, you can monitor humidity levels in real time and change modes, among other features.

GoveeLife Smart 50 Pint Dehumidifier review: Performance

The GoveeLife 50 Pint dehumidifier is intended for large basement spaces, or other damp environments with a large footprint.

Although I don’t have a space as big as the advertised 4,500 square foot max, its efficiency in smaller spaces can be a good indication as to how useful a dehumidifier would be in spaces slightly larger than where I’m operating them.

That said, I started super small, in my basement bathroom. This space is about 100 square feet, and it gets very damp during and after showers. First, I got the space super humid — up to 90% humidity — before I turned the unit on. According to the app, the temperature in the room when I turned the unit on was 63 degrees Fahrenheit.

Other dehumidifiers of this size and stature generally take about 45 minutes to an hour to get the humidity level down to 35%, where I set the target humidity level. The GoveeLife Dehumidifier outperformed them all, bringing the humidity down to 35% in just 34 minutes.

During that time, the temperature in the room rose from 63 degrees to 71 degrees. That’s a big swing in temperature, which means the GoveeLife Dehumidifier runs hotter than its competition.

Usually, in these test parameters, I can expect the temperature to rise between two and five degrees, whereas the Govee dehumidifier raised the temperature in the room eight degrees.

Next, I wheeled the unit to my laundry room. This space is around 80 square feet, and it houses the washer and dryer, as well as our sump pump. This room can get quite damp in the spring, but right now in the dead of a Colorado winter, it’s fairly dry.

But I wanted to test out the clothes drying feature. Usually, I hang my synthetic clothing (athletic clothes for example) as well as any other clothing that needs to be hung-dried like wool sweaters.

With about ten clothing items hung up on the dry rack, I started the GoveeLife dehumidifier and let it run for about an hour. The ambient humidity in the room dropped quickly — 10% in just 15 minutes or so — but the clothing was only marginally dryer when I checked on it.

Again, I live in a fairly dry climate, so for my purposes, this function probably isn’t super useful. My clothes will dry quickly anyway. But if you live in damp climates, and you find your hung-dry clothes take forever to dry out, this function could be worthwhile.

In the largest space in which I can test the dehumidifier — about 700 square feet — the dehumidifier worked with similar efficacy. It took just ten minutes for the humidity level in the room to drop 10%. After just 25 minutes, the unit had dropped the ambient humidity from 52% to 35%.

Based on those numbers, it’s fair to say that this unit would work well in larger spaces, too. While 4,500 square feet seems ambitious for any single dehumidifier unit, I can see the GoveeLife Dehumidifier being useful in open spaces up to 2,000 square feet, depending on ambient humidity levels.

There are a couple of trade-offs for the Govee’s impressive power. For starters, it’s fairly loud. My decibel meter read just over 70 decibels when I used the unit on the highest fan setting. And as mentioned, it throws off a good bit of heat, which is fine in cool spaces but could be problematic in smaller spaces or areas that are already quite warm.

GoveeLife Smart 50 Pint Dehumidifier review: App

The Govee Home App is designed to work with any number of Govee appliances, not just the dehumidifier. But since I don’t have any other Govee appliances, I used it only to control this dehumidifier.

In that sense, the app is simple, intuitive, and fuss-free. I can control the dehumidifier from another room in the house.

The app works with Google and Alexa too, so if you want to set up those features, you can even control the dehumidifier from outside your home.

I mostly used the app to monitor humidity levels in real time, turn the fan up or down, set timers, and even change modes. All of that is super easy right on the main screen of the dehumidifier device.

GoveeLife Smart 50 Pint Dehumidifier review: Comparison

A close competitor to the GoveeLife 50 Pint Dehumidifier is the Frigidaire’s 50-pint Dehumidifier. Both are big and powerful, and both have simple controls that make it easy to set it and forget it. And both units are on the loud side.

GoveeLife beats the Frigidaire in a couple of ways however. For starters, it includes an app; the Frigidaire must be controlled using the buttons on the unit itself. And the GoveeLife works much more quickly than the Frigidaire.

The Honeywell 50-Pint Dehumidifier also ticks a lot of the same boxes as the GoveeLife Dehumidifier, in terms of big power and capacity. The Honeywell is quieter than the GoveeLife, too. But again, the GoveeLife works more quickly, and the Govee’s tank is much bigger.

GoveeLife Smart 50 Pint Dehumidifier review: Verdict

Given the impressive power of the GoveeLife 50 Pint Dehumidifier, I’m more than willing to look past its loud noise level and heat.

Most importantly, it’s powerful, capable of controlling humidity in medium and large spaces, and comes in handy for drying hang-dry laundry in damp climates.

And the app is super easy to use. I like being able to control the unit from just about anywhere (though I’m most likely to control it from another room in my house instead of from a place across town). It’s powerful and intuitive, at a fair price.

Of the many dehumidifiers of this size that I’ve tested, the GoveeLife Dehumidifier comes out on top.