Color accuracy is published as an index, and it is worth more than brightness · review

VIJIM VL120, 1250 lux with no distance, six filters review

The highest lux figure on this shelf, published without the distance that would let it be compared.

What it comes to The best-value creative light on this shelf: six color filters and a silicone softbox in the box, CRI 95+, 150 minutes at maximum power and stepless dimming — all for twenty-five dollars, and the filters do what an RGB panel costing twice as much does for saturated color. The headline number is the problem: 1,250 lux published with no distance, which the hub above says cannot be compared with anything.

What the maker commits to in print

One hundred and twenty beads with a color rendering index of 95+, and “the Max brightness illuminance up to 1250Lux”, delivering accurate color reproduction and reducing the workload of post-production grading
3200K to 6500K bi-color, with 10 to 100 per cent brightness, both adjustable in one switch, steplessly
Six professional filters — pink, red, yellow, purple, green and blue — for colorful visual effects “without expensive RGB lighting equipment”
An included silicone cover, which makes the light softer
A built-in 3,100 mAh battery providing up to 150 minutes at maximum power, Type-C fast charging, usable while charging
0.57 lb, with a cold shoe mount

NO distance for the lux figure. NOTHING about flicker. No TLCI.

Twelve hundred and fifty lux, and no distance

The highest lux figure on this shelf — if it was measured where the others were.

“The distance is part of the measurement and a figure given without it cannot be compared with anything.”

At 0.5 m (1.6 ft), 1,250 lux is a genuinely bright pocket panel, comparable with the NEEWER SL90C’s 1,090 at the same distance.

At 0.3 m (1 ft), the same reading is the equivalent of about 450 lux at half a meter — less than half the NEEWER.

The number looks like a win and cannot be cashed. This is the page on the shelf that proves the hub’s point.

Six gels, which no other light here supplies

Pink, red, yellow, purple, green, blue.

And the pitch says the quiet part out loud: “without expensive RGB lighting equipment”.

A gel is a sheet in front of a white light: one fixed color per sheet, a substantial loss of output — a deep blue can cost two stops — and six colors in total.

An RGB panel mixes any hue across 360 degrees, dials saturation, and loses nothing to absorption. It also costs more and renders white light less faithfully.

For a magenta rim light on a background, six gels at twenty-five dollars is the right answer.

And a silicone cover, which is the other half

A bare panel of 120 small beads is a HARD light: sharp shadow edges, and a specular highlight for every bead — which on a face is a cluster of tiny reflections in the eye.

A silicone diffuser spreads that into one larger, softer source. The shadow edge becomes a gradient; the catchlight becomes a single soft rectangle.

It costs about a third of the output, and it is the difference between a panel that looks like a video light and one that looks like a window.

A hundred and fifty minutes at maximum

A runtime AT a brightness — the useful form.

And the longest full-brightness figure among the pocket panels here: the NEEWER SL90C gives 113 minutes from a LARGER 4,000 mAh cell.

Ten per cent is the floor

Stepless, but from ten rather than zero.

Which means it cannot be faded out on camera, and as a background accent ten per cent of 1,250 lux is still a visible source in the frame.

Availability

About $25 on the American Amazon store when this page was last checked.

Everything in this section is the figure Keepa carried on the day of the last update to this page. Availability and prices shift without notice.

Prices quoted in this text were read on 8 October 2026. The live price is at the top of the page.

What it does well, and what it gives up

Strengths

Six color filters supplied, unique on this shelf
A silicone softbox cover included
A hundred and fifty minutes at MAXIMUM power
CRI 95+ sold as hours not spent correcting
Stepless dimming in one switch
A hundred and twenty beads at twenty-five dollars

Compromises

1,250 lux with no distance: it cannot be compared
Dimming stops at ten per cent, not zero
3200K is the warm limit, where three lights here reach 2500K
Nothing about flicker
No TLCI
A cold shoe and nothing else

Specifications

Output in lux with its distance	1,250 LUX, stated as "the Max brightness illuminance up to 1250Lux" — AND NO DISTANCE. That is the exact fault this shelf's introduction names: "the distance is part of the measurement and a figure given without it cannot be compared with anything". Twelve hundred and fifty lux at 0.5 m (1.6 ft) is a bright pocket panel; the same figure at 1 m (3 ft) would be four times the light, and at 0.3 m (1 ft) rather less than it sounds. Of the nine American lights on this shelf, this is the only one that publishes lux and withholds the distance
Color temperature range	3200K TO 6500K, stated as steplessly adjustable with brightness "in one switch" — a 3,300 K span, which is the narrowest of the adjustable panels on this shelf bar the published NEEWER pair’s 2,400 K. Three thousand two hundred kelvin is tungsten and 6,500 is a cool overcast daylight, so the range covers indoor and outdoor and does not reach the candlelight or deep shade of the ENEGON and the ULANZI VL49 RGB
Accuracy indices	CRI 95+, stated in the title and the first bullet, with the consequence spelled out — delivering accurate color reproduction and reducing the workload of post-production grading. That is the right way to sell an index: not as a number but as hours not spent. Ninety-five is the shelf median; 97 on the NEEWER SL90C and the ALTSON, 98 on the published Rollei. No TLCI
Dimming	10 TO 100 PER CENT, STEPLESS, "adjustable in one switch". Stepless is right; the floor is not — ten per cent is as dim as it goes, where the NEEWER SL90C and the Glendan-style panels reach zero. A light that will not fade below a tenth cannot be faded out on camera, and as a background accent ten per cent of 1,250 lux is still a visible source
Flicker	NOT MENTIONED
Power options	A 3,100 mAh cell for UP TO 150 MINUTES AT MAXIMUM POWER, stated — a runtime AT a brightness, which is the useful form, and the longest full-brightness figure among the pocket panels on this shelf against the NEEWER SL90C’s 113 minutes from a larger 4,000 mAh cell. Type-C fast charging, and usable while charging for uninterrupted streaming
Mount	A COLD SHOE, and 0.57 LB — about 260 g (9.2 oz) — published. What comes with it is more interesting than the fitting: a SILICONE SOFTBOX COVER that makes the light "softer and nature", and SIX PROFESSIONAL Color FILTERS in pink, red, yellow, purple, green and blue. No other light on this shelf supplies filters, and the pitch is explicit — colorful visual effects "without expensive RGB lighting equipment"
Amazon reference	B087RNN2PD
EAN	0708214686866

What people ask before they commit

Gels or an RGB panel?

Gels for saturated single colors on a budget; RGB for control. A filter is a sheet in front of a white light, so it gives one fixed color per sheet, cuts output substantially — a deep blue can lose two stops — and six of them is six colors. An RGB panel like the NEEWER SL90C or the ULANZI VL49 RGB on this shelf mixes any hue across 360 degrees, dials saturation and loses nothing to absorption, but costs more and renders color less faithfully in its white modes. VIJIM says the quiet part plainly: "without expensive RGB lighting equipment". For a magenta rim light on a background, six gels at twenty-five dollars is the right answer.

Why does the missing distance matter when the figure is the highest here?

Because the figure is the highest only if it was measured at the same distance as the others. Illuminance falls with the square of distance: 1,250 lux at 0.5 m (1.6 ft) is a genuinely bright pocket panel, comparable with the NEEWER SL90C’s 1,090 lux at the same distance. The same 1,250 lux at 0.3 m (1 ft) would be the equivalent of about 450 lux at half a meter — less than half the NEEWER. This shelf's introduction says a figure without a distance cannot be compared with anything, and this is the page on this shelf that proves it: the number looks like a win and cannot be cashed.

What does the silicone cover do that a gel does not?

It makes the source bigger and softer rather than colored. A bare LED panel of 120 small beads is a hard light: it gives sharp-edged shadows and a specular highlight for every bead, which on a face reads as a cluster of tiny reflections in the eye. A silicone diffuser spreads that into one larger, dimmer, softer source, so the shadow edge becomes a gradient and the catchlight becomes a single soft rectangle. It costs perhaps a third of the output and it is the difference between a panel that looks like a video light and one that looks like a window.

Where this one places on its bench

At $25, it is the 5 cheapest of the 11 models in this category published here.

Cheapest on the bench$10
Median$30
Dearest on the bench$52

This one against the other photo equipment

photo equipment from the same category, at nearby prices. Only what all of them publish is shown: a column with holes compares nothing.

Model	Price	Output in lux with its distance	Color temperature range	Accuracy indices	Dimming
VIJIM VL120, 1250 lux with no distance, six filters	$25	1,250 LUX, stated as "the Max brightness illuminance up to 1250Lux" — AND NO DISTANCE. That is the exact fault this shelf's introduction names: "the distance is part of the measurement and a figure given without it cannot be compared with anything". Twelve hundred and fifty lux at 0.5 m (1.6 ft) is a bright pocket panel; the same figure at 1 m (3 ft) would be four times the light, and at 0.3 m (1 ft) rather less than it sounds. Of the nine American lights on this shelf, this is the only one that publishes lux and withholds the distance	3200K TO 6500K, stated as steplessly adjustable with brightness "in one switch" — a 3,300 K span, which is the narrowest of the adjustable panels on this shelf bar the published NEEWER pair’s 2,400 K. Three thousand two hundred kelvin is tungsten and 6,500 is a cool overcast daylight, so the range covers indoor and outdoor and does not reach the candlelight or deep shade of the ENEGON and the ULANZI VL49 RGB	CRI 95+, stated in the title and the first bullet, with the consequence spelled out — delivering accurate color reproduction and reducing the workload of post-production grading. That is the right way to sell an index: not as a number but as hours not spent. Ninety-five is the shelf median; 97 on the NEEWER SL90C and the ALTSON, 98 on the published Rollei. No TLCI	10 TO 100 PER CENT, STEPLESS, "adjustable in one switch". Stepless is right; the floor is not — ten per cent is as dim as it goes, where the NEEWER SL90C and the Glendan-style panels reach zero. A light that will not fade below a tenth cannot be faded out on camera, and as a background accent ten per cent of 1,250 lux is still a visible source
EMART EM-7W-LTL, two spotlights, 600 lm each	$30	600 LUMENS PER LIGHT — and lumens are not lux. Lumens measure the total light LEAVING a fixture; lux measures how much ARRIVES on a surface, which is why this shelf's introduction asks for lux with a distance. The two cannot be converted without knowing the beam angle, and no beam angle is published here. Six hundred lumens from a 12-LED spotlight is a narrow, concentrated beam rather than a panel wash, so the lux at half a meter could be high and the coverage small. This and the published ULANZI K20 are the two pages on this shelf that publish a flux instead of an illuminance	5500 K, FIXED, described as a "perfect daylight temperature" — and then the mechanism that moves it: TWO WHITE, TWO ORANGE and TWO BLUE GEL FILTERS, two color gel filters, stated to change the kelvin temperature for cooler or warmer photos. That is color temperature by subtraction rather than by mixing: an orange gel in front of a 5,500 K source makes it warmer and dimmer, where a bi-color panel fades between emitters and loses nothing. The ULANZI VL49 on this shelf is the only other fixed-temperature light here, and it has no gels	CRI 90+, stated — the JOINT WEAKEST index on this shelf with the Torjim pair and the ULANZI K20, behind the 95 of five lights, the 96, the three at 97 and the 98 above them. On a spotlight intended for tabletop product work the index matters as much as on a portrait light: a 90-CRI source renders a red product slightly brown, and a product photograph that needs its color corrected is a product photograph that will be returned	NOT PUBLISHED AT ALL — no range, no steps, no mention. This is the ONLY light on this shelf with no dimming described, which on a 600-lumen spotlight means the only ways to reduce it are distance, a gel and switching one of the pair off. This shelf's introduction lists dimming among the things it compares; this page lists a swivel, a bracket, a temperature and a warranty
ULANZI Select VL-81, 81 beads behind a softbox	$20	NEITHER PUBLISHED. ULANZI says the VL-81 is "brighter, bigger angle" than the VL49 it upgrades, which is a comparison rather than a measurement, and gives no lux, no lumens, no distance and no wattage. Five of the nine American lights on this shelf publish no output at all, and this is one of them. This shelf's introduction makes it the first of three figures a continuous light is compared on	3200K TO 5600K, stated, from 41 WHITE and 40 WARM beads — and the DIVISION of the beads is published, which only this and the NEEWER SL90C do on this shelf. That matters because a bi-color panel reaches its extremes by turning one set off: at 3200 K the forty warm beads are working and the forty-one white ones are not, so the output at either end is roughly half what it is in the middle. This shelf's introduction says exactly this, and a page that publishes the counts lets you work out how much	CRI 95, stated in the title and the first bullet. The shelf median, behind the 97 of the NEEWER SL90C, the ALTSON and the NiceVeedi pair and the 98 of the published Rollei. No TLCI	NOT PUBLISHED AS A RANGE. The page says the color temperature "can be adjusted quickly" and names no brightness steps, no percentage range and no statement of whether the dimming is stepless or stepped — which is unusual for ULANZI, whose VL49 RGB on this shelf publishes 0 to 100 per cent and whose plain VL49 publishes five fixed levels. The runtimes imply a range exists: 150 minutes at maximum against 480 at minimum is a three-to-one draw
ULANZI VL49 RGB, 800 lux at 0.5 m (1.6 ft), magnetic back	$19	800 LUX AT 0.5 M, stated, with a 120-DEGREE illumination angle also given — which matters because a wide beam spreads the same light over more area, so 800 lux across 120 degrees is a different proposition from 800 lux in a narrow spot. One of three outputs on this shelf published with its distance, and the beam angle is a figure only this and the published ULANZI K20 give	2500K TO 9000K, stated as dimmable rather than stepped — the SECOND WIDEST range on this shelf, behind only the ENEGON’s 2500–9900K and level with the published Rollei. Two and a half thousand kelvin is candlelight and nine thousand is deep shade; this shelf's introduction warns that a mixed panel usually peaks in the middle of its range, so the 800 lux figure is unlikely to hold at either end	CRI 95, stated as "topest CRI95" and credited with matching sunlight. That is the shelf median: 98 on the published Rollei, 97 on the NEEWER SL90C and the ALTSON, 96 on the published NEEWER pair, 95 here, on the published RaLeno and on three other American lights, 90+ on the Torjim pair, the EMART spotlights and the ULANZI K20, and nothing at all on the ENEGON alone. No TLCI	0 TO 100 PER CENT, stated, with a BUILT-IN LCD DISPLAY "for accurate readings". The display is the part worth noting: hue, brightness and color temperature shown as numbers rather than guessed from a dial, which is what lets a second light be set to match the first. Three lights on this shelf have a screen

What sets the models apart, in photo equipment

If price decides: ULANZI VL49 RGB, 800 lux at 0.5 m (1.6 ft), magnetic back, at $19.
Highest Color temperature range in the table: EMART EM-7W-LTL, two spotlights, 600 lm each (5500 K, FIXED, described as a "perfect daylight temperature" — and then the mechanism that moves it: TWO WHITE, TWO ORANGE and TWO BLUE GEL FILTERS, two color gel filters, stated to change the kelvin temperature for cooler or warmer photos. That is color temperature by subtraction rather than by mixing: an orange gel in front of a 5,500 K source makes it warmer and dimmer, where a bi-color panel fades between emitters and loses nothing. The ULANZI VL49 on this shelf is the only other fixed-temperature light here, and it has no gels).

Where the price stands, among photo equipment

Details checked on October 8, 2026.

What use this one answers, among photo equipment

Colored accents and creative lighting on a budget, where six gels beat paying for a true RGB panel

What buyers actually choose

Amazon reports what buyers took in the month before this page was last checked: at least 100.

The figure is a floor, rounded by Amazon, and read through Keepa — it says what buyers picked, not what a maker claims.

Sources

Specifications: the manufacturer sheet for photo equipment and the matching Amazon product page. Prices and availability: Keepa. Every figure on this page names its source.

What we judge this photo equipment on

More of this catalog

LED video lights

ALTSON D6-02-ES, CRI 97+, clip and tripod adapter

CRI 97+, the JOINT HIGHEST on this shelf with the NEEWER SL90C · 60 LED beads · THREE light modes, white, natural and warm, across 2500K to 6500K · TEN brightness levels · 2,200 mAh with TWO runtimes published at TWO brightnesses: 15 H at 10 PER CENT and 4 H at 50 · a 160-DEGREE rotating panel AND a 180-DEGREE rotatable 1/4 inch head, with a CLIP and a HOT SHOE mount supplied · 3.9 × 2.8 × 0.78 IN, 95 G · a storage pouch · NO output figure · NOTHING about flicker · $9.68

Ten dollars for the joint-highest color index on this shelf, a clip, a hot shoe and a pouch.

Best for: Video calls, selfies and makeup at a desk, where a faithful color index at ten dollars is the whole point

≈ $10

Check price on Amazon Read the review
LED video lights

EMART EM-7W-LTL, two spotlights, 600 lm each

TWO TABLE-TOP SPOTLIGHTS · 600 LUMENS each — a LUMINOUS FLUX, not an illuminance, so it cannot be compared with the lux figures on this shelf · 12 LEDs per light · CRI 90+, the joint weakest here · 5500 K FIXED, with SIX GEL FILTERS to shift it — two white, two orange, two blue · a head swivelling 180 DEGREES · a RETRACTABLE SPRING BRACKET that folds into the base · NO dimming published at all · NO battery · 18 MONTHS of after-sales cover · NOTHING about flicker

Two spotlights that publish lumens where this shelf asks for lux — and gels instead of a dimmer.

Best for: Lighting a light tent or a tabletop set-up from two sides, where a concentrated beam and a folding stand matter more than a dimmer

≈ $30

Check price on Amazon Read the review
LED video lights

NEEWER SL90C, 1090 lux at 0.5 m (1.6 ft), CRI 97

1090 LUX AT 0.5 M — one of only three outputs on this shelf published WITH its distance, and the highest among the pocket panels · 2700K to 7500K in CCT mode · CRI 97, joint highest here with the ALTSON D6 and the NiceVeedi pair · 138 beads: 45 WARM, 45 COOL and 48 RGB · THREE MODES, CCT, HSI and FX with 17 SCENES · 360-degree hue selection · STEPLESS 0 to 100 per cent · 4,000 mAh for 113 MINUTES at full, with a USB OUTPUT that charges a phone · 15 × 8 × 1.2 cm (5.9 × 3.1 × 0.5 in), 235 g · cold shoe adapter and 1/4 inch holes · NOTHING about flicker

The brightest pocket panel on this shelf that publishes its distance — and the only light here that will also charge your phone.

Best for: A pocket key or fill light where color accuracy comes first and the panel has to earn its place in the bag twice over

≈ $40

Check price on Amazon Read the review