A few months back, I covered how I was getting colored lighting in my video b-roll using
the Philips Hue home kit.
It works, but I have to use my own home-made diffusers, the LED refresh can really spazz
out on camera, and color accuracy isn’t perfect.
Today I’m reviewing what is essentially the “professional” version of this small
“budget” solution - the Luxli Viola 5-inch RGB LED camera light.
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The Viola is a pretty premium kit - which I would expect for the price.
In the box you get the LED itself, a sadly tiny 2200mAh battery, battery charger, and
a very premium ball joint mount.
This light comes with a 1-year warranty.
I’m quite disappointed with the battery capacity, but they use Sony NP-F or L-style
batteries, which means it’s easy to buy upgrades for fairly cheap.
I have a couple 4900mAh batteries I bought for my main LED kit that I can easily swap
into this one.
Still, for the price, I’d probably expect a bigger battery.
They also have a diffuser kit - which is kind of neat, and we’ll touch on in a moment.
Now there’s a couple neat features about this light.
Not only does it have super-accurate LED chips to fine-tune your color temperature exactly
where you need it, with pretty handy indicator icons on the LCD screen on the rear of the
light - BUT there are also RGB LEDs throughout, too.
So you get the full white range of temperatures with strong accuracy, but you also get all
sorts of colors through the RGB chips.
The LEDs are protected by a bubbled shell, which feels pretty durable, which is nice.
The light is VERY bright.
It provides a much stronger light, with none of the LED on-camera nonsense that the Philips
Hue kit or other cheap RGB LEDs have.
It shows up perfectly on camera.
To control the light, you have some options.
As I mentioned, there’s a small LCD screen on the back of the panel.
This shows battery status, Bluetooth status, brightness percentage, as well as color temperature.
Below this, you have a power button, and a small button to switch between white color
temperature control or RGB mode.
On the left side of the panel you have two knobs.
One controls overall brightness of the light, and the other controls color and temperature
- based on whether you’re in white or RGB mode.
The right side of the panel features a DC power jack and microUSB port for updating
the firmware.
A wall power cable is not included, but if you’re used to buying camera gear, you can
buy your own generic power brick between 7 and 15 volts for this one.
A button release secures the battery on the rear, and a nice brass quarter-twenty tap
mounts on the bottom.
The included ball joint mount works for normal tripods and light stands, or a cold shoe mount
to go on top of your camera.
This is much higher build quality than the crappy plastic mounts that come with cheap
LED panels and gives you fine control over the position of the light.
Another cool feature is via the Bluetooth connectivity I teased earlier.
They have a mobile app - but unfortunately it’s currently only available for iOS.
I sourced an old iPhone 4S for this purpose.
The app lets you choose the color of the light from a big spectrum, or automatically choose
a couple white presets.
There are a couple of baked-in effects - a rainbow and strobe, mostly.
You can use the phone’s camera to take a picture, and then use that picture to create
a new effect, which is really neat.
Just please, release an Android version of the app….
Come on.
The diffuser kit is nice - they include a few different levels of diffusion panels.
It mounts around the panel with a custom-fit rubber grip and does a great job of diffusion
this bright LED panel, but I can’t say it’s worth the 80 dollar price jump above the already
expensive light purchase.
Given the ridiculous amount of money I have spent going through LED panels this year prior
to getting this one for review, I would probably say the Luxli Viola is worth the 350-dollar
price tag.
Getting both a bi-color LED and RGB in the same panel is great, but what this light accomplishes
in such a small form factor is actually really impressive.
It gets bright AF, regardless of what color temperature you’re at - and the white temperatures
are very accurate, which can be important with bigger productions.
It’s certainly a nice step up from my Philips Hue and scissor lamps mess I’ve been using.
It’s also great for lighting white backdrops to provide a bit of color.
I’ve been experimenting with this more and more, but the paper backdrop specifically
just won’t work in my space.
I am going to attempt using just the white wall at some point with it, too.
My big complaints are the random pops or creaks it makes when it heats up.
They’re not random, usually not too loud or pervasive - but I wouldn’t set it up
right next to the microphone.
I also don’t like how unintuitive the app is, on top of the fact that it’s iOS only.
Other than that, this is one badass little LED that basically cuts out the need for a
full box of LED panels that I currently own.
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