Review on 🔆 Aputure AL-MX Amaran 128 LED Bi-Color On-Camera Video Light with 2800-6500K Adjustable Color Temperature and Aircraft-Grade Aluminum Body - TLCI/CRI 95+ & 3200lux@0.3m Booster Mode - Includes PERGEAR Mini Tripod by Charles Ahmar

First I would like to say that I bought my flashlight from Revain thought it was defective spoke to customer service they quickly sent a replacement and asked them to fix the problem and the old one to return the device. It's been a pretty solid customer support experience. Secondly, I would like to say that despite positive experiences with customer support and receiving a second unit, the issues I had with the first unit still persist and I will not seek another RMA-style return. I've had the Aperture AL-M9 in my backpack and camera bag for a year. It is quite bright, the density of LEDs greatly affects the uniformity of lighting. The built-in color temperature capabilities are handy and less of a hassle than the tiny gels that came with the AL-M9. I have yet to test the CRI in this light but from what I've seen the temperatures are pretty accurate and the skin tones look beautiful. The brightness of the light is satisfactory, and the number of dimming levels is good. Battery life is about an hour in my experience, maybe 1.5 hours at 80% brightness, mid-range color temperature (all LEDs on). Now let's move on to the cons: This light is very specific in terms of power supply. When charging with 2 different fast charging USB-C chargers that I have for Google Pixel devices, the charging LEDs would not come on and would not charge. I could leave it plugged into a phone charger overnight (5V at 3A) and it would be dead in the morning. I spoke to the support team about this and found that only the cable that came with it is suitable for charging the device. I'm not sure why this particular issue occurs, but it's incredibly inconvenient. Even though the included USB-A -> USB-C charging cable is long, it would be great to be able to use the existing charging infrastructure in my apartment and video setups to keep the lights going. A minor flaw of the device that could potentially be useful in an updated version: the color temperature selector only has 5 different settings. Two of those settings are all white LEDs or all orange LEDs, giving you 3 notches in the middle to cover everything in between. I'd be a lot happier if it had around 15-16 total color settings to give more range between cold and warm temperatures. Finally, I have to talk about the diffusion screen. The AL-M9 had a much better design in this regard, with powerful magnets both in the light and on the diffusion shield. The AL-MX has 4 small screws on the corners of the light that hold the diffuser shield magnets in place, but the connection is a lot looser than the old model and I had trouble getting the shield to line up properly as there is no polarization to guide the plate in place. That's it for my review, it's a good pickup but a bit pricey considering a few odd feature gaps. If you need something portable, this is a good pickup. If you're just looking for general light, you might want to look at a larger LED panel with more color temperature settings and a better diffusion solution.