I know I say this every time, but I mean it this time
when I say that this...
might just be the best value LED light available.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What is happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone
and today, we're gonna be taking a look
at this pocket sized LED light from Sokani, the X21.
They packed a lot of stuff into this little package,
so let's do an unboxing
and then we'll talk about the features
and why you need this light in your bag.
[electronic music]
♪
Alright, so let's talk about some of the features
and make the obvious comparisons to the Aputure M9,
but first, a little disclaimer. I did want to let you know
that this is not a sponsored video.
Sokani did send me this unit for review free of charge,
but they did not pay me to make this video,
so my opinions are obviously my own.
Also, I want to let you know that I was able to fit
everything you saw in the unboxing, except for the gels
because I didn't want to crinkle them up
and cram them in there, into this little bag,
which is great. It's two zippers and it's soft and nice
and I think for the price that we're paying here,
this is a really great, little value add.
So, let's unpack it and we'll talk about what we got.
So, we've got the light and it comes with
two sort of magnetic-- there's a CTO and a diffuser
and they just magnetize to the front of it there
and I think you can use the diffuser one
to hold the gels on and the CTO just clips onto that,
so that's pretty great. And then, in the back pouch,
I've got the USB cable and the little head
that they give you. And, this is similar quality
to what you'd get from Aputure. It's metal.
It's decent weight. I wouldn't put huge rigs on it,
but it's pretty solid head that you get for free.
Well, not for free, but you know what I mean.
Included in the package for the price. It's pretty great.
What I really like about this thing is the chassis.
It seems to be all aluminum which is pretty high
fit and finish for the price point.
Three button design. It kind of reminds me
of iPhone 5 generation, I want to say.
The square bezels and the circular, little push buttons.
So, there's a power button there and on the side,
and when you hold that, it turns on the interface, I guess,
which gives you a battery indicator
and the current power of the light,
and then the plus and minus go up in one degree
to set the power that you want.
And then, once you press the power button again,
that actually turns the light on and then power again
turns it off. You have to hold it down to shut
the device down or boot the device back up,
but then it's a single tap to turn it off and on.
And then there's just the USB. This is micro-USB.
It's not Type-C. I kinda thought it'd be Type-C,
but it's no big deal, but they include
a micro USB cable with it. So, that's that.
It's called the X21 because there's 21 LEDs,
which means it's actually pretty powerful
for the size and they're kept behind a protective case,
which I like. Some of the earlier LED panels,
obviously they had like those open bulb,
Lite-Brite looking LEDs that you could break
and then they have to give you replacement ones.
[announcer] Lite-Brite. The toy that lets you create
beautiful pictures with light. Lightbulb not included.
This covering piece of plexi mixed with aluminum
I think makes this a pretty rugged, little device.
So, just before we power it on and give it a test,
let's give it a quick comparison to the Aputure products
because Aputure has some great products,
some well-known products in this pocket size,
credit card size LED light. They've got the M9
and then now the MX and I think the comparisons
that you see often are to the M9 with this light
and that's probably because of the price
because the M9 is around $45 USD or $70 CAD
and this one would be $50 USD.
And so, I see why they would make that comparison,
but when I was looking at the specs a little bit closer,
I actually think it compares more closely to the MX,
which is much more expensive,
although there is a feature that's missing.
So, I'll just run down the specs with you real quick.
So, the MX is at one meter, it's rated to be 200 lux
and this light at one meter is 200 lux as well,
so it's similar power to the MX,
which is the $150 USD or $200 CAD light from Aputure.
Now, the MX is a bit of a different kind of light.
It uses a different type of bulb.
It has 128 of these SMD bulbs and it has the ability
to colour change built into it,
where this light obviously uses CTOs and gels
and stuff like that. And then, the battery life
is somewhere in between. Because it's more powerful
than the M9, it's not going to last as long.
The M9 is rated on their website to last
around 1.5-2 hours at maximum brightness,
where I assume that this one would be
more in the 0.5-1 hour at maximum brightness,
which is similar to the MX. So, I would like
to think of this one in terms of trying to figure out
where to place it. It's, I think, better than the M9
in most ways at this price point
because at the $50 price point, this is more powerful.
It's, I think, a better build. You've got more features with it
and I like the display and all the information there.
Your battery bar, the 1% increments and stuff like that.
Those are all better, where I'm pretty sure
that the M9 has like a nine-step power increase.
This is by 1%, which is great. So, in that way,
it makes it a lot like the MX,
but the MX is three times more expensive than this one
for essentially just the ability to colour change
and it has a couple more modern features,
like it has the Type-C USB connection
and it came out very recently from Aputure,
but other than that,
this is basically the non-colour changing version
of the MX for one third of the price.
So, I think in that way, it definitely beats the M9
and the comparison should be put more on the MX
and I think for one third of the price,
this is definitely the best buy.
At $50, I don't think I've ever seen a better light for $50.
I'm just gonna put it that way.
Now, let's stop talking about comparisons
and we'll get into a little bit of a test here.
So, right now, this light that's hitting me,
my key light is a big LED panel, but what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna put this little guy on the light stand here
and we'll see how well it works as a key light.
This is not what this is for. This is much better
for like a kicker or doing some fun accent stuff with,
but we'll put it on here anyway
and we'll just get an idea of just how powerful it can be.
Let's turn off this light so you can see what it looks like.
This is just my screen that I had the specs up on.
This is the only light that's coming in now
and the screen's kinda working a little bit like a fill.
This is all you see, okay?
And let's turn on the little guy over here.
Oh. There's an interesting little fact.
So, after a little while, it shuts down,
probably to save battery life,
so now you can't just tap it on and off.
I'm sure if it was fully on, it wouldn't shut off,
but if you do nothing with it for a while,
it kinda goes to sleep, so we'll have to boot it back up
and now we can turn it on.
And this one is at 5500K, I believe, naturally
and then if you put a CTO on it,
it should probably take it down to 3200.
Let's put on the mini-diffuser that comes with it.
There we go. So, I don't have the angle exactly the same.
This is at 60% power, by the way.
So, let's crank it all the way up and see.
I think that's it. Let me have a look at the back of it.
So, now we're at 100% and I'll put it a little further away
to give it sort of an equal test.
Okay, so the angle may not be exactly the same,
and there's not gonna be as much of an overall--
'cause I'm filling the umbrella with other light,
so it's making a much bigger look.
It looks like this again. So, it kind off--
you can see the whole thing going on, right?
But this is it for just a little pocket sized guy at 100%,
that's what it looks like.
Alright, so I got this little guy running at about 40% power
right now and then we've also got all these different gels
that we can use and we also have the CTO,
which gives it kind of a-- I think it's supposed to be
right around Tungsten there.
But, if we take off the diffuser that comes with it,
I think we can use this to hold one of the gels on,
so let's go with one of these purple ones
because that seems like fun.
So, we'll just put the purple thing right on the light
and then, use the diffuser and now it looks like that.
I don't know how purple it's going to come off to you,
but it should just give it like a cooler colour.
There's a lot more gels in here than I thought there was.
I think there's gotta be like 30 of them in here.
There's a bunch of different greens, yellows,
there's different blues and purples,
ones that seem to let a lot less light in.
Let's take a look at this one here.
So, can we just slide this out? Yeah, you can.
'Cause that last one was pretty transparent.
Whoa. So, that one's really blue and they also have a red one.
So, these are pretty cool. This is what I think
the whole point of the light is.
Obviously, you can play with it, throw a little colour
on something, but it's more like for accenting,
putting a little funky colours in certain shots
hitting the highlights a certain way,
changing the colours of the speculars
when doing anything from portraits
to product photography. I think that having something
like this in your camera bag will be really useful,
or even if you just want just daylight.
I just need a little bit of extra light over here.
I wanna pop it over here, bounce it off of that.
I think that's what it's for, but I guess if you're really
in a pinch, you could use it definitely
as a little bit of a fill light if you don't have
something set up or you've got a tight spot
and then it also comes with that little head
that I was showing you earlier
that has a little cold shoe mount on it
so you could run it on top of your camera as a video light.
So, I think at $50, this is probably the best value light
available right now. I think it's an exceptional value
and I actually really like the light and the design
and all the features that came with it.
I think it's great. So, I'll throw some links
in the description if you guys want one.
Check those links out. You can get one for yourself.
And that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found this video
helpful or entertaining, and if you did,
make sure you leave it the old thumbs-up
and consider subscribing if you haven't already,
but if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
feel free to hit the dislike button twice.
Alright...I'm done.
♪