This is what a generic LED strip looks like.
It's got no frills
and I got it off of Amazon.ca for about $20.
So, it's cheap and generic.
Unlike pricier options such as the Philips Hue LED strip
which features an app,
this one doesn't have any fancy features;
but if you take the price into consideration,
you might want to gun for this instead.
You see, the Philips option costs a solid $90.
Now, that is not to say that they don't have a great product,
I find that many of Philips' features are very useful;
but this LED strip is more than 4 times cheaper.
That means, for the price of 1 Philips Hue LED strip,
you can purchase 4 of these.
Honestly, you aren''t even
losing out on too much with one of these.
They're still capable of producing your RGB colours.
Maybe just not as precisely.
Now, when you look for one of these on Amazon,
The pricing does vary, but it does float around $20.
If you purchase the complete package,
on the inside you will find a remote for controlling the strip,
an infrared controller,
a generic power adapter,
and of course, your LED strip.
My strip here is 5 metres long, and that is plenty.
I can actually cut the strip at any of these
brass-looking contact points.
As long as you do it properly, it will still work fine.
Do note that, unlike premium options,
in order to control the lights
you have to point the IR remote at the receiver.
In my opinion, that's a minor inconvenience.
Still acceptable.
The controller obviously controls the colour of the light,
but it is also capable of processing basic effects.
My particular unit here is capable of doing
flash, strobe, fade, and smooth.
The speeds of the effects can always be adjusted
by using the brightness buttons.
My unit also happens to be waterproof;
it's rated IP65
and as long as you don't submerge and of the important components,
you can actually use this under water.
What more can I ask for, really?
Besides an app...
Well actually, there is a little bit I can ask for.
The first thing is a better power supply.
At first, I thought it might've just been my unit here,
but according to Amazon reviews, more people have been having this issue.
When you're using a lot of power, and I mean like
maximum brightness on white lights,
you can actually get a little bit of flickering from time-to-time
It's very occasional, but it's present.
The second thing is,
my package came with a very short cord for the power adapter.
I mean very short; it is under a metre long.
I imagine that's probably unacceptable for a lot of situations.
It certainly was for mine.
It's a good thing it's generic, and you can probably find a longer one.
The third thing I don't like about this product is how it produces colour.
Now, this one can vary between strips,
but there are essentially two types.
For the first type,
every single light on the strip is capable of producing every colour.
This would be ideal, and you'll find out why after you find out about the second type.
The second type has individual LEDs that correspond to one colour;
red, green, and blue.
With the second type, if you press red on the remote,
only the red LEDs will activate.
Only the green LEDs will activate if you press green.
The issue arises when you want something in between.
Say you want something like aqua,
what happens is, it activates the green LED and the blue LED,
and it mixes the two.
The brightness levels of those LEDs
are adjusted according to the shade that you want.
The colours do come out okay,
but if you don't hide the LED strip,
just above the LEDs you will see a rainbow effect.
This is most prominent on white.
This effect is also visible
on the shadows that are casted by the LEDs.
It's not very good looking, and it just screams "cheap".
For my lack nit pick, we're going to go back to the controller and the remote.
It's the fact that you have to point it in the direction of the LED strip.
I know earlier on in this video I said it was acceptable,
but that doesn't mean we can just ignore the issue.
What if we had 2 or 3 of these strips?
They all operate on the same frequency,
so you can just use the same remote for all of them,
but that is a lot of pointing.
It might even get a little confusing
if you're trying to set individual colours.
So clearly this LED strip has its flaws,
but for $20, it's still a pretty good product.
If you have a pretty clean gaming setup
and you just want to add a little more to it,
I would recommend looking into one of these for a budget option.
They are significantly cheaper than their more premium competition.
Yet, they still manage to produce a similar effect.
In my opinion, that's a win!
That's it for this video,
thank-you for watching,
and I'll see you in the next one.