Ulanzi VL 49 RGB review: high-quality on-camera light with chips

I wel­come every­one! I present the expe­ri­ence of using an exter­nal on-cam­era RGB light, which has decent char­ac­ter­is­tics and has extreme­ly thought­ful fea­tures that save you dur­ing oper­a­tion.

Bought here:

GO TO THE STORE

Equipment

The lamp comes in a bud­get card­board box with good print­ing. The front side shows the appear­ance of the lamp, man­u­fac­tur­er and mod­el (VL49 RGB). The kit con­sists of a short USB‑C cable, sil­i­ca gel, the device itself and instruc­tions in Chi­nese and Eng­lish.

Appearance

The device has com­pact dimen­sions (65x65x30 mm). The front side is absolute­ly sim­i­lar to sim­i­lar lamps, only the dif­fuser stands out. On the back side there are con­trols: a mode selec­tion but­ton, but­tons for adjust­ing the bright­ness / tem­per­a­ture of the light, a switch, a dis­play, a charg­ing port (Type‑C) and an indi­ca­tor for choos­ing a col­or. Of the addi­tion­al advan­tages — a pow­er­ful mag­net is used on the back side, which can with­stand the lamp with­out any prob­lems.

The weight is almost 100 grams.

When turned on, it meets a bright dis­play with col­or tem­per­a­ture val­ues ​​​​(from 2500 to 9000 K in incre­ments of 10 units), bright­ness lev­el (as a per­cent­age, incre­ment of 1%), and a bat­tery charge indi­ca­tor. The col­or tem­per­a­ture and bright­ness are adjust­ed using the left and right arrow but­tons. The remain­ing but­ton is respon­si­ble for the tran­si­tion between the nor­mal back­light mode and RGB.

The lumi­naire uses warm and cold glow LEDs (pho­tos tak­en at 2500K, 6000K and 9000K)

Using a UNI‑T UT383 light meter, the lev­el of illu­mi­na­tion was mea­sured at var­i­ous bright­ness­es and col­ors. The test took place at an illu­mi­na­tion lev­el of 26 lux and a dis­tance from the lamp to the luxme­ter of 15 cm. Pho­tos of the results are under the spoil­er.

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• Tem­per­a­ture 2500K, bright­ness 100%:

• Tem­per­a­ture 4000K, bright­ness 100%

• Tem­per­a­ture 9000K, bright­ness 100%:

• At 6000K, a more detailed test was car­ried out at bright­ness lev­els (25, 50, 75, 100%):

Next, sim­i­lar actions were per­formed, but in RGB mode with a step of 30 °. Pho­tos were tak­en in RAW.

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• Col­or index 0°, bright­ness 100%:

• 30° on col­or index, 100% bright­ness:

• 60° on col­or index, 100% bright­ness:

• 90° on col­or index, 100% bright­ness:

• 120° on col­or index, 100% bright­ness:

• 150° on col­or index, 100% bright­ness:

• 180° on col­or index, 100% bright­ness:

• 210° on col­or index, 100% bright­ness:

• 240° on col­or index, 100% bright­ness:

• 270° on col­or index, 100% bright­ness:

• 300° on col­or index, 100% bright­ness:

• 330° on col­or index, 100% bright­ness

Parsing

After unscrew­ing the 4 bolts locat­ed on the back side, the dif­fuser and the mount that holds it are removed. After remov­ing the dif­fuser, 20 diodes of cold and warm shades become vis­i­ble. The LEDs are stag­gered and there are also 20 RGB LEDs.

When nor­mal (tem­per­a­ture 6000K) and RGB modes are on:

Under the LED pan­el are the ele­ments shown in the fol­low­ing pho­tos.

As you can see, there is room for anoth­er micro­con­troller and some SMD com­po­nents. The bat­tery has a declared capac­i­ty of 2000mAh.

On the back side, in addi­tion to the but­tons and the dis­play, there is a micro­con­troller (I did not find a datasheet for it), a choke, resis­tors and mos­fet tran­sis­tors.

Heat

The device was left for half an hour at 6000K and 100% bright­ness. The result is the fol­low­ing:

The front side warmed up sig­nif­i­cant­ly, almost up to 50 ° C, the back — up to 43.3 ° C. There is no dis­com­fort dur­ing use, the device is very warm, but not burn­ing.

conclusions

A use­ful thing that is suit­able not only for pho­to / video shoot­ing (it can be used both for the back­ground and as the main light when using sev­er­al pieces), but also as a portable flash­light in hard-to-reach places. The device has excel­lent auton­o­my (about 2 hours), com­pact dimen­sions and shines quite pow­er­ful­ly.