LED video lights have come a long way in the past five or so years. We’ve been looking for a replacement to our old 160 LED lights for a while. They aren’t very bright, they are made out of flimsy plastic, and they lack color accuracy.

Thankfully guys over at NiceFoto sent us their SL-120A just in time to try out. Let me show you some of the features of this bad boy and how we’ve been using it so far! Welcome to The Film Look.

These LED video lights from NiceFoto are going for about $90. Let me show you what you get in the box.

Firstly, a bi-colour LED light panel, ranging from 3200K to 6500K in 100K steps. It has a CRI rating of 96+ so it's got a clean looking white light. You can change the power 5% at a time so it has lots of room to dial in brightness. And it emits 1300 lumens of light.

It features a backlit screen on the rear so you can see your settings, buttons on the side for adjusting up and down, a button for switching between power and colour temp, and a power button which also puts the light to sleep at a click which is really handy if you want to do a quick on/off check on a monitor. Holding the power button down will switch it off altogether.

It has three ports on the bottom; two for charging, a micro USB and a USB type-C, and a mini USB to plug in the provided output cable if you want to use it as a USB power bank.

Unfortunately, you can’t use it as a power bank and a light at the same time. And the power bank can only charge 1000mAh. For context, my Samsung s8 has a battery of 3000mAh, so it won’t fully charge a phone...so really this feature is useless.

It’s got two ¼ 20 threads on the back and bottom to attach it to light stands or the provided ball head mount. In all honesty, the ballhead it comes with is very flimsy. This...is probably go in the bin.

It's charged via USB. It takes about 4 hours to fully charge and lasts for 1.5 hours on full power.

We’ve been using it mostly in dark scenes so we haven’t felt like it's running out of juice really quickly. Sadly, the charge cable provided doesn’t turn the light into a wired device. It will continue to lose power from the battery.

It does come with 2 modifiers; a diffuser plate and a grid, both of which don’t do their job well enough to use, to be honest. I would just chuck these straight in the bin.

Finally, you get a neoprene pouch so you can carry your light with you on a shoot and look cool doing it. With most budget LED lights, you don’t get a carry case, so this is a good addition for the price.

So what is this light good for? Well, because its so small, it’s ideal for placing in low profile spots, such as:

Hanging from a ceiling as a hair light or top light. It only weighs 525g so you CAN hold it up with some tape!

Using it to motivate a small practical light in a scene

Or using it as an emergency light in your camera bag if you are trying to find something in the dark!

There are many different versions of a light like this on the market right now. We’ve also been testing out the Moman LED video light, which is a limited bi-colour light that’s a bit smaller.

What i’d say is, buy the light based on the size you are after. If you need something really small to use for placing in difficult spots, you might want to go for something super small.

Personally, I really like the NiceFoto light. Without the useless modifiers, it does the job you’d expect. I won’t be using it as a key light any time soon, but it is a good addition to our lighting kit and we will continue to use it on YouTube stuff as well as films in the future.

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🎬 In case you missed it

Aputure Mini-20 Light Review: https://youtu.be/Pa58MhaeLlo

LEDGO G260 Light Review: https://youtu.be/_ML9dFIoKEU

AL-360RGB Light Review: https://youtu.be/iUBJc4qeI98

Pre-Lighting and Test Shooting: https://youtu.be/ExnH2KJSJoo

🎥 This episode's kit/gear/equipment:

🇺🇸 US links:

NiceFoto SL-120A: https://amzn.to/2HcSlLt

Moman LED: https://amzn.to/30alcHY

🇬🇧 UK links:

NiceFoto SL-120A: https://amzn.to/2Jfwtlc

Moman LED: https://amzn.to/2JdFN9a

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