Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Since you are reading the reviews, you are probably researching LED strip light options and trying to figure out which you should buy. I also did a ton of research, bought and used three different brands of products, and figured out that these are by far the best, based on quality, function, and price (it’s so nice when one of the best products is actually one of the cheaper ones). I just went by a big box store, and delighted to see they had a similar product for sale. But it was super-low-quality, and they wanted $70 for just the light strip. With the power and controller it would be over $150 for a worse product than Rxment sells direct. Since buying my first, I’ve acquired five more sets, and have not been disappointed. So, let me tell you why... First off, you want to get good LED lights, and there are a bunch of them that are older, crappier, or less functional to wade through. Rxment is selling SMD 5050, which means they are big, newer chips that put out a lot of light. (SMD means surface-mount-diode which are the small chip-like LED packages you see on the rolls of tape. The 5050 means that the packages are 5 millimeters x 5 millimeters. Bigger is better, and SMD5050 are bigger and better than SMD3528 which are 3.5 millimeters by 2.8 millimeters.) Secondly, you really want to get RBG lights, with each LED able to put out any color of light! There are other options that have one color, or sequences of red, blue, and green diodes on the string. If you only ever want one color, then buy them specifically, but otherwise get RGB packages that can shine any color from each light. (The chips actually have a single SMD5050 package with three individual LEDs next to each other. Figure 1 -- A set of three SMD5050 RBG lights with US Penny for scale To shine white light, you turn on the red, blue, and green LEDs. To shine red light, you turn on only the red LED. To shine custom colors, you add a little power to each led color to mix them and provide any color. The controller that comes with the kit does this, allowing you to instantly change the color to any of the pre-programmed colors, or custom tune the color that matches your party-theme Thirdly, the number of LEDs you are buying is very important. You’ll see various densities of lights on the products out there (the better products will specify them), but typically they are offering 150 LEDs per 5 meters or less. 150 LEDs per 5 meters is good. However, these have twice that density – 300 LEDs per 5 meters – that’s really really good. (Rxment sells both of these densities, so check the product that you are ordering). Higher density is better – the closer the lights on the strip are, the less they look like individual points of lights, and the more they look like ribbons of light. And of course, with twice the density, you can cram twice the luminous flux (number of lumens, or brightness) into the same length of space (for example under a cabinet or behind a TV) to get a better effect. I’ve found that these lights are bright enough for task lighting when set to white. The controller also lets you dim them if you want subtle mood lighting at night. Fourth, is function, which is pretty standard among all the products, with these being no exception. A lot of people offer the same 44-key remote and controller and it’s nice. You can turn on and off the lights, dim them, switch to pre-set colors, create a custom color to match the margaritas you are mixing, or set it to slowly fade or jump between colors. Figure 2 -- Rxment Light Set with 5M of tape with 300 LEDs These are amazingly flexible (figuratively and literally) to put up. You just plug the power block into the wall plug, plug in the controller, and plug the light tape to the controller. Then unroll the tape and stick it wherever you please. If you are putting it on top of something (e.g. on top of your cabinet crown molding or tray ceiling molding) you can clean the surface and use the attached 3M tape to hold them in place. However, if you are mounting them against gravity (e.g. under cabinets, on a wall or ceiling, or behind a TV) then the tape alone will not hold them. You’ll want to buy something else to affix them. You can get a 3M glue specifically for that purpose, little screw-in mounting brackets, or aluminum channels with covers. Since the aluminum channels would cost twice what the lights cost, I think you’re best off using clips in a house, and perhaps the glue in automotive situations. Figure 3 – Rxment LED Light Strip Mounted Under a Kitchen Cabinet You can also cut the light strips into any length you want just by taking scissors and cutting them at the indicated places. (They have cut marks every three SMDs – about every 2 inches.) If you are just making the light strip shorter, that’s all there is to it – cut it off and you are done. If you are moving the cut off piece to another location (like around the corner, or over to the next set of cabinets in the kitchen) then you need to run some wire between the two cut sections. You can buy lengths of cheap 22-guage insulated color-coded RGBB wire for this purpose, and you can buy solder-less connectors either pre-wired or for soldering yourself. Figure 4 -- You can cut the LED strip every 2 inches at the copper contacts You can also extend the lights with additional pieces; however, you have to understand power requirements in order to do so. Rxment sends you some nice big DC powerful supplies, some of which are over-powered for the strips they send you. Thus, for some of them, you can connect additional light strips and have them fully-powered. But on the 10M sections, with 600 LEDs, you cannot add much more without adding another power supply. And if you are adding a long length of wire and more LEDs, you’ll probably want to add a signal amplifier with power supply. It’s really cheap to do so, and you can make huge-impressive displays, but if you can’t calculate power draw from specs and apply Ohm’s law, you probably should have someone spec out your power needs before designing a huge install. So if you’ve read this far into the review, you are way over-analyzing this (which is what I tend to do too ;-). At this point you know you are getting $200 worth of product for under $50, so you should be like Fry and say “Shut up and take my money!”. But in case you still can’t picture it, I’ve attached some pictures and videos from a kitchen installation of these. Figure 5 -- Magical Rxment Under-Cabinet and Glass Cabinet Lighting Example I am in the process of installing 40 feet of Rxment’s LED lighting in a new DesignCraft kitchen.  I am placing it under the counters, in glass-door cabinets with glass shelves, and in glass-door over-cabinets.  It’s not complete yet, but the effect is already looking incredible. The lights are positioned almost invisibly under the front low-profile valance of the DesignCraft cabinets, which allows them to shine over the full workspace, providing bright task lighting on white.  They also make amazing mood lighting shining through the glass with green and blue colors.  I hope that it’s inspiring to see what can be done with these LED lights!