Skip to main content

This super-bright LED is like holding a mini sun in your hands

Unboxing a $500 LED...
Light-emitting diodes have played a part in a number of the cool projects we’ve
Recommended Videos
covered over the years here at Digital Trends, but rarely have we been quite so in awe of an LED as we are of Yuji LED’s mighty “Daylight 5600K.” A totally different animal to the kind of diminutive LED light you’ll find used as the flash on the back of a smartphone, the $500 Daylight 5600K pumps out a massive 500 watts of light. That’s $1 per watt, and more than enough light to illuminate a decent sized garden at night.

The Daylight 5600K is the subject of a new YouTube video by popular U.K.-based vlogger DIY Perks. Based on the fact that the video has already garnered upwards of 600,000 views on YouTube within a couple of days of it being posted, we’re not really going out on a limb when we conclude that other people are going to be equally interested in it.

“The idea behind the video was to show how far LED technology has come,” Matthew Perks, the creator of the video, told Digital Trends. “One of my favorite aspects of the particular 500w LED I tested is its colour rendition. Honestly, it is up there with the nicest ‘daylight balanced’ light sources that I’ve come across, and because of this it makes it usable for lighting applications that require a ‘nice’ looking light source, like installations or studio lighting. Hopefully the video will bring attention to this, and inspire people to come up with some innovative lighting solutions.”

As Perks notes, array-style LEDs like this one are a bit different from the usual LEDs you’ll find in a flashlight, or the aforementioned flash on a smartphone, because they’re made up of a grid, or array, of much smaller diodes. Each one emits light, and due to the fact that they are packed so tightly together they appear to be a single unit.

“The biggest surprise for me was when I took it outside to test it out,” he continued. “I was blown away with how well it lit up my surroundings, and it was surprisingly empowering. It might have been night, sure, but I had a small sun in my hand and I could see everything with detail all around me. Very cool indeed!” Who are we to argue?

Luke Dormehl
Former Digital Trends Contributor
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
The Weather Channel is coming to YouTube TV
YouTube TV on Apple TV.

The Weather Channel -- which previously had seen relatively small reach on streaming platforms in the United States -- is starting to branch out. YouTube TV will gain the 24-7 weather service this year, according to a press release from Allen Media Group and Google.

The addition is a big deal because The Weather Channel had been limited to two of the smallest streaming platforms -- FuboTV and DirecTV Stream. It also fills a pretty big void in the YouTube TV lineup, which doesn't currently have an all-day weather channel. YouTube TV is believed to be the second-largest streaming service in the United States. It last announced a ballpark figure of "more than 3 million subscribers" in October 2020. It hasn't given any sort of update since then. For context, Hulu with Live TV has a publicly announced 4 million paid subscribers.

Read more
Hisense adds mini-LED and Google TV to its 2022 QLED TVs
Hisense 2022 ULED TVs.

In just a few years, Hisense has evolved from a relatively obscure brand to a company that makes an impressive range of affordable and feature-rich 8K, 4K, and laser TVs. At the end of 2021, the company finally debuted its first 8K TV, the U800GR, but at CES 2022, the company has revealed how the rest of its 4K products will benefit from new technologies like mini-LED backlighting, advanced gaming features, and Google TV, which replaces the older Android TV system on all of Hisense's non-Roku TV ULED models.

Here's the full run-down.
U9H Series

Read more
Sony claims mini-LED superiority with 2022 8K and 4K TVs
Sony 2022 Bravia XR TV lineup.

For Sony's TV ambitions, 2022 is looking like a banner year. Not only has it become the first company to bring a QD-OLED TV to market (the Sony A95K), but it is also branching out into mini-LED backlighting for its non-OLED flagship models, the 8K resolution Z9K, and the X95K, a 4K model. And naturally, Sony believes its version of mini-LED is better than the competition, thanks to a new version of its XR Backlight Master Drive and improvements to its Cognitive Processor XR technology.
Better mini-LED?

Why is Sony so confident that its min-LED TVs are better than TCL's mini-LED models, Samsung's Neo QLED TV, and LG's mini-LED QNED models? Apparently, none of these competitors are applying sufficient algorithmic control over their backlights, according to Sony, which results in less-than-ideal picture quality.

Read more