So they got me... Amazon showed me a "flash deal" and I bit. It seemed like a really good deal though, two lights - AND STANDS for 150$?? Sign me up. So yes, while I bought these myself I have nothing to do with Neewer and the "affiliate links" below are only mine.
So I ordered them and got them the next day. Packaging was ok, the light and stands came in their own boxes inside a larger box. Inside those boxes where more boxes inside of professionally tightly wrapped plastic bags. Inside of those boxes in bags were plastic covered canvas bags, which inside of those nice zippered canvas bags were the lights and power cables... each inside of individual bags...and we all wonder where these microplastics are coming from. Anyway-
First impressions after setting these up on the stands is that they were bright, like real bright. They came with a diffuser screen that slides into the frame behind the barn door shades. There are little locking tabs that hold this in place. The tabs themselves were a little weird to work with with the barn door attachment in place, but I guess that might be good to have as a sturdy thing to hold them in place. You can fully remove the diffusion slide too if you want. The barn doors are sturdy metal, screwed in to the frame of the light. The stands overall feel kinda cheap, its a common three leg, with two extension sections that have wing screw with plastic handles clamped for locking the height. They came packaged with a Neewer branded power supply brick with a DC barrel jack that outputs 15v/3a 45watts. The bag they came with are pretty nice "plastic" sort of canvas zippered bag. I'll likely get a hard case though that I can fit both in. HOWEVER...batteries not included... more on this later.
Build
The lights are pretty solid. The barn doors are metal and attached to the light frame with metal screws. the stands they came with are kind of flimsy but they are sturdy enough to hold the lights well and will not fall over.
There are two different dials on the back which will let you manually choose the color temperature. You have to dial this in yourself, there is no dial to set like a specific color temp. There is a "yellow" dial and a "white" dial. Each one basically just turns up or down the power output on one set of the LEDs on the light since there are two different sets, white and yellow/orange LEDs.
Performance
Overall these put out a decent amount of light for small indoor areas. You would not be able to take these out into the daylight and have enough light to add anything meaningful to a shoot.
I used these on my recent menu update for Foodhisattva to throw a little more light onto some shadowed areas of a dish and they were enough to expose the area a little more. The area I used them on is a little bit of shadow underneath a dish that my two AD200s, which were mounted above and at the side of the table, were not hitting. I also used them to add a little bit of back lighting on the dishes.
Power
The lights came with an ac adapter which will power them well enough. They have two slots for the batteries which unfortunately did not come with the lights so that added another 80$ to the cost.
The AC vs battery is controlled by a three way rocker switch which has positions for battery/off/ac in that order. With AC plugged in it did not seem to charge the batteries so you'll need to charge them separately.
I did a little testing with the batteries to see how long they lasted. The batteries I used were Neewer Basics NP-F970. Attaching the batteries they do snap in place a bit but there is no sturdy locking mechanism, so if you carry the lights with the top pointing down the batteries will slide off if given a slight tap.
I did a little testing for how long the light will operate using those batteries and had some interesting results. The first row shows the start and end times with both the White and Yellow lights on full power, the next is with just the yellow lights at full power. This was with two NP-F970 batteries plugged in.
| Start | End | |
| White 100 Yellow 100 | 5:04am | 8:04am |
| White 0 Yellow100 | 9:15am | 4:15pm |
I was honestly surprised how long the lights lasted with just the Yellow LEDs on full power.
Final Thoughts
These will be some nice lights if you have some focused areas on a small product shoot, or if you're a streamer wanting to blast some light in a small room. These are not studio grade lights and would not do well out in the daylight.
LINKS
Yes these are affiliate links, I'll apparently get some sort of compensation for it if you purchase through them. I purchased these lights myself and they looked nice and I wanted to give an honest review.
NEEWER 2 Pack Bi Color 660 LED Video Light and Stand Kit
Neewer Basics 2Pcs NP-F970 Batteries 7800mAh
