XReviews Phobya LED Flexilight Review Today we are going to be looking at some LED flexilights which were kindly supplied by Phobya. For a while now I’ve been wondering if are worth twice the price of Cold Cathodes (CC’s). I currently have a cheap set of Asaka CC’s in my case which are doing a bang up job of lighting up my Masterkleer clear UV tubing and they only cost me a grand total of £10 off amazon. Although it seems to be rather rare, there are horror stories of cathodes exploding and being rather unreliable in general. On paper LED Flexlights seem to be the obvious choice. With Low power consumption, very little/non-existent heat production, no need for an inverter, apparently superior light and the ability to bend and fit into corners, it seems like a no brainer…So let’s put these lights through a few simple tests and see if they really are worth your hard earned Dollar. Features/Specifications Length 30cm Colour UV Width 10mm (in the light stripes) Number of LEDs 36 Voltage 12V - 14V DC Connection 4-pin Molex A closer Look Phobya have done somewhat of a decent job making these flexilights look nice by sleeving the cables, which for me is a must as it is in keeping with the rest of the cables I have on show in my case. One thing that strikes me is the length of the cables, they seem to be rather short which might be an issue when routing around larger cases. Also I’m a little worried about the double sided tape they have supplied, I cant imagine it being a permanent enough fix. My case tends to have a relatively cool ambient temperature so it shouldn't be too much of an issue, but for those with bad airflow/cases which turn into hotboxes, I can only assume they will have to find a more permanent way to secure the lights in place. And as the name suggests they are very flexible and shouldn't have any problems fitting into the corners and tight spaces. The “light”! The main area to be looked at here is the strength and quality of the UV light they emit. I compared them with my current CC lights against a black backdrop. Also to account for the fact that cold cathodes take a little while to warm up and reach their full brightness i ran the recording for around 10-20 seconds. I also tested the two main UV reactive materials that would be found in most watercooled (or modded) computers, UV dye in water and UV reactive tubing. It has to be noted that the Flexi lights do not have an on off switch so I had to start filming with the lights switched on. Also the different positions of the lights are due to the LED being much more direct in terms of the light they give off . So first lets look at the CC's. As you can see the light isn’t very strong, but both the dye and the tube give off a nice cool glow. Now compared with the cold cathodes the Flexi light are much brighter, but light given off by the them isn’t quite right. Although its bright the pipes and dyed water glow with a green tint , an almost turquoise colour, rather than that nice cool blue you get with the cathodes. Some might like that but I’m not too keen on it. This can be seen more clearly in the picture below Installation Ok so onto installing them in my case…I’ll end it there, it failed, miserably. I was planning on putting one at the top of my case and one in the bottom segment of my corsair 800D. Firstly trying to apply the double sided tape was a nightmare. The sticky side wasn’t very sticky so kept on peeling off. But after 5 minute of fiddling I finally got it to stay down. Unfortunately when i pulled the cover off the other side and stuck it to the door of my case the light simply peeled off after 5 minutes leaving the tape on the door and the light on the floor. After a couple more failed attempts, the felxilight refusing to stay stuck for more than 10 minutes, I gave up and decided to put one in the bottom where it wouldn’t need to be stuck down. The cable is rather short, as you can see in the pictures, so when trying to pull it through the wire management holes I tugged a little too hard and this happened. I will admit I might have pulled too hard but there was only about an inch or so poking out of the wire management hole once installed so not enough to work with in terms of routing. Having said that these should be much more robust, cable routing isn’t always the most delicate of actions (sometimes having to force wires into small spaces) And I was excepting a little more than a gentle tug to remove the wiring from the light itself. Conclusion I'm sorry Phobya but today isn’t your day. I was very disappointed with these flexilights and I won’t sugar coat it. I would not recommend these to people who want something to replace their aging CC's. I was quite impressed with the cable sleeving and as a product it looked much nicer on the packet than my current lights, but after testing it just didn’t make me want to use them. The Slightly green colour it turned my blue UV reactive pipes and water, flimsy wiring, and terrible double sided sticky tape these were not what I was expecting for the price. Overall:5/10 Pros: - Bright Light ( Probably more suitable as normal lights, red, blue etc, but not as UV.) - Very Flexible - Nicely presented ( cable sleeving) Cons: - UV light not quite right ( UV blue components more of a turquoise than a blue colour) - Flimsily wired - Application of double sided method fiddly and doesn’t last. - Short wires (can be an issue in large cases like the corsair 800d)
