Your Guide To Buying LED Strip Type : Knowledge Article Applicable Product: Strips and Strings Tags : LED Strip Published Date : Mar/23/15 View : 52 Comments : 0

Your Guide to buying Led Strip Comparison between 3528 LEDs and 5050 LEDs: What are SMD 3528 and SMD 5050 LEDs?Here's an easy-to-understand comparison between the two LED chips. 5050 SMD LED Chip these LED chips are called SMD 5050 because the dimensions of the chips are 5.0mm x 5.0mm. They have 3 LED diodes in one housing (sometimes called tri-chips), and are a lot brighter than individual 3528 LED chips. They are used when you need high illumination for your project area and especially RGB color changing lights. Theoretically, SMD 5050 LEDs can offer a light output 3 times that of the 3528 strips, and therefore the 5050 LED is well suited for lighting up areas that may be subject to high levels of ambient light. However, since they are larger in size, there are only so many you can fit onto the PCB. There are some brightness restraints when using the 5050s in this way. Though they produce more heat than smaller chips, it is still drastically lower than other lighting options. These types of LEDs require a thicker PCB to draw the heat away form the chips. The 5050's are different from the 3528 LEDs in that 5050s can combine the three different chips to inside the housing to create millions of color variations. While the 5050 chip can be used in single color applications, we have found the 5050 LEDs to be better for the RGB and the 3528 SMD LEDs in high density better for single color applications. 3258 SMD LED chip They are called SMD3528 because the dimension of the chip is 3.5mm * 2.8mm. These LED chips (one LED per chip) are bright but not as bright as the 5050 side by side but when used in higher quantity can be brighter then a comparible strip of 5050s. These lights are great for TV backlighting, color splashing walls, accent lighting for crown molding and pictures, under tables and cabinets, bars, etc. 3528 LEDs can be most cost effective, but will not be as bright when compared individually to a 5050 chip, but when there are 600 of them on a reel, they can be brighter than a 5050 strip.  To sum it up, the SMD 3528 chips are more power-saving and cost effective but not as bright as the SMD 5050. Flexible SMD 5050 LED lighting strips are high-performance, bright and have a wider array of options such as their availability in single colors and also as a RGB color-changable type. The SMD 5050 RGB version requires an additional control unit but features highly flexible multi-color mode and can easily be adjusted into various colors and color combinations. SMD 5050 is about 3x brighter than the SMD 3528 type and is often used where higher light-levels are needed and can be used as a replacement for traditional fluorescent light tubes. Both the SMD 3528 and the more powerful SMD 5050 version are usually supplied in 5 meter reels, with the average power consumption of SMD 3528 being ca. 5W per meter, while SMD 5050 consumes more power and a ca. 7.5W per meter, while sometimes LED manufacturers might also offer extra powerful ultra-white SMD 5050 LED light strips that can emit up to 720lm per meter with a power usage of up to 14.5W per meter. From a cost perspective, the more powerful SMD 5050 LED light strips are more expensive however and for illumination settings that require high luminosity one would mostly opt for SMD 5050 because the cost per lumen is lower than with SMD 3528. We at LEDLuxor recommend the usages of flexible SMD 3528 LED light strips for normal residential usages with mid-power requirements and when cost-saving is the key factor, while SMD 5050 LED light strips are better suitable for RGB color settings and when luminosity requirements are higher and more demanding.

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