Boling P1 On-Camera RGB LED Light Review

Is there a new king of small portable LED lights? One that is built like a thank, lasts a long time on battery, has great brightness and is very versatile.

I had the need of a small light on a shoot recently to light up the background behind an interview. I wanted to have a different color than my main light so I reached for the Boling P1 LED RGB Video Light. Being an RGB light, there are now 360 colors of RGB light to play with in a small portable light. No need to place a filter over your light to change its color. I just set the color I wanted and now my background had a different color.

This is one powerful light for 160 bucks. In the box we see: The first is the light with a cleaver transparent cheat sheet to tell about the controls on the light. Down below, there is a product manual, USB-C cable, a very nice case for the light and a cold shoe adapter with a ¼ inch thread. About that later.

The light fit my needs very well because it is small and lightweight at just 262 grams with the battery and light bracket built in. The size is 150mm by 70mm by 15mm. This thing feels like a tank because of the metal aviation aluminum that should be a very effective heat radiator. We will see later.

One of the unique things about this light is mounting bracket. Some small light have it built-in but you can only tilt the light up or down. This one is a very innovative because of the multi-function bracket pivots 360 degrees so the light can be at any angle. The bracket folds out 180 degrees to give it height. You can also extend the bracket to 270 degrees. It made it easy to set up on a tripod. To mount the light on a camera, attach the included cold shoe with the ¼ inch thread to one of the threads on the bracket.

Included also is the case that the light slides into for protection and storage. Under the Velcro is a hex wrench for tightening the built-in mount.

I really appreciated the built-in Li-Ion battery because it lasts for almost 2 hours and is charged by an included USB-C charging cable in a couple of hours. The USB-C can also power the light as it is charging from a USB battery or power adapter if it runs out of juice.

The controls I found are easy to adjust. Better than some other RGB lights that I have used. The power switch is on the top next to the USB-C port. A slide to the right turns the unit on. On the right side there is a SET button for the CCT or Hue, HSI or colors and Special effects. There is also one round lever on the side that controls FN or function and one round wheel labeled DIM for brightness control.

The LCD display on the back of the unit was easy to see and use. It can be used for precise output control on the back of the unit. It displays battery level, brightness level and RGB Color index.

The unit comes the SET button set to Hue so the light can be adjusted between 2500 and 8500 kelvin for indoors or outdoors or anything in between. I set it for blue or 240 degrees.

The button labeled SET is what makes this light nice. Push it in and you change to the RGB mode. The LEDs that can be adjusted to 360 colors with the FN lever. Red Green and Blue and anything in between can be set by moving the lever up or down. 0-360 degrees can be set with 0 and 360 being Red. 60 is Yellow, 120 is Green and 240 is Blue. There is a very small color guide on the back of the light. I was using these controls without the manual.

The light memorized the last settings as when you turn it on again the same color will appear which was great when it turned it off between takes. A great use for these color effects is for a lighting effect on backgrounds, or where you would use a filter.

Not only can you set the colors but also there are the special effects that come into play. There are 9 common scenario simulations available. The icon that looks like a flash, is that, it flashes the light with 3 different ways. To cycle through the three effects just move the FN lever up or down. The next one below, that looks like arrows going around and does that, the color cycles through all the colors repeating when it has gone through all of them. The third icon on the bottom looks like a bulb or old cop light is for cop light flashing type effects.

Turning the DIM round wheel that controls the brightness. The brightness can be decreased in 1 percent increments from 100 up to 0 percent. Just turn the wheel until the desired brightness is set.

All these features are nice but how bright is the light? This is quite bright light for its size. The is light packs 80 LED’s in an 8 x 10 rows. Now let’s check how bright the spot that this LED light makes at a one meter distance. With the built-in diffuser, at the center of the spot the light produces 315 Lux at one meter and as it is a broad light with the intensity slowly dropping off towards the edges to 156 Lux at one meter on the edge 20cm away. Pretty even. I found the the Light lasts over 2 hours with a full charge at full brightness and does not lose its brightness over time so no need to adjust exposure.

So, the brightness is nice, but what about light quality? We did detailed light quality testing using a professional spectrometer to see how accurate it will be with the color from this light. The Light spectrum is very typical for high quality white led lights. The color temperature of the light was measured at 5498 kelvin which is pretty close to a standard daylight setting for cinema production which is at 5500 kelvin. You can usually set the camera to preset daylight and get good flesh tone.

At 3200 Kelvin the CCT is 3246. Again very good accuracy. Now this light also has the RGB spectrum so we measured that as well. The Blue is rated at 22617 CCT. The Green is 6443 CCT. The Red is 2517 CCT.

How good will the colors be of items lit with this light? For such a purpose, we can use a lot of different color quality measures. Let’s focus on a few of the most important. There is a lot of the old and new standard considering quality of light. Here we touch only on two of them. The first is the color rendering index aka CRI. The measured result is 93 and it is really good for a cinema light. The accuracy is very good (close to the ideal 100).

Let’s move to TM30-15. It is a much more modern way to measure the color rendering quality. And, it uses a more carefully chosen and more real set of colors, making it simpler to see difference with the referenced light, yet without unnecessary exaggeration. The TM30 is 88.0.

We took a thermal picture of the light after the light had been on for a while and the heat is well distrubed over the whole light. The light got warm to the touch but not hot on my shoot. The hottest spot is near the status LCD on the back.

What we can tell after such a detailed evaluation of this light? The light has proper color temperature and the light quality is really good for the price. There are so many uses for this little light besides on camera. It makes for a great kicker light or product light. With the RGB adjustment it can be a colored light for backgrounds and special effects.

I finished my shoot and put the light back in it’s nice carrying case and it did a trouble free job. This is my new favorite small light and I like how easy it is to use. Being small and light means it will be in my kit all the time.

Boling P1 (Daylight setting), Measurement using CV600, Russian Lab processing

We cover spectrum, color temperature, and all modern color quality standards, including latest 2016 and 2017 years ones.

Never select light based on just CRI number.

Focus on TM30 and CIE 224 and look for color distortion and Rf values.

Boling P1 is good light with light quality suitable for videos.

Color temperature

CRI color quality

CQS color quality

TLCI 2012

TM30 color quality

TM30 details

All TM30 color samples Rf values

CIE 224 2017