The short answer: lux at 1mis the number that decides whether a light can be your main light, and it is the one most listings bury. The Godox SL60IID publishes 18,600 lux at 1m; the amaran 100x S publishes up to 30,500 lux at 1m with its hyper reflector at 5,600K; the pocket-sized Aputure amaran MC publishes 100 lux at 1m. All three are "high CRI LED video lights". Only two of them can light a face. After output, the number that matters is CRI (or better, TLCI) — above about 95 you can stop worrying about colour; below about 90 skin tones go strange in a way no editor fixes.
Lighting listings are written to make every light sound like every other light. "High CRI", "dimmable 0-100%", "bicolor", "app control", "professional". The four specs below are the ones that actually separate a key light from a fill light from a decorative accent, and three of them are plain physics. Learn to read them once and listings stop being persuasive.
1. Output: lux at a stated distance
Lux is illuminance — how much light actually lands on a surface. It is quoted at a distance because light obeys the inverse square law: double the distance and you get one quarter of the light. A light quoting 18,600 lux at 1m delivers roughly 4,650 lux at 2m and about 2,070 lux at 3m, before you have put any diffusion in front of it. That is why the distance in the spec is not a footnote — a number quoted at 0.5m and a number quoted at 1m differ by four times for the same light.
Watts are not output. A wattage figure tells you what the light consumes, and LED efficiency and optics vary enough that two 100W lights can differ substantially in delivered lux. Likewise, a lux figure quoted with a hyper reflector— a narrow optic that concentrates the beam — is not comparable to one quoted bare or with a standard reflector. The amaran 100x S's published 30,500 lux at 1m is specifically with the hyper reflector at 5,600K, and that is the honest way to read it.
2. Colour accuracy: CRI, TLCI, TM-30 and SSI
CRI (Colour Rendering Index) scores how faithfully a light renders colour against a reference, out of 100. It is an old metric with known weaknesses — it is weak on deep reds in particular — which is why better spec sheets publish more than one figure:
- CRI — the common one. Above 95 is genuinely good; 90-95 is usable; below 90 shows up as muddy or sickly skin tones.
- TLCI — Television Lighting Consistency Index, which weights what a camera sensor sees rather than what an eye sees. For video it is the more relevant of the two.
- TM-30 Rf and Rg — fidelity and gamut. Rf is accuracy, Rg is saturation; Rg near 100 means colours are neither flattened nor pushed.
- SSI — Spectral Similarity Index, how closely the actual spectrum matches tungsten or daylight. The strictest of the four, and the one where cheap lights fall apart.
Here is why publishing several matters. The Godox SL60IID publishes CRI 96 and TLCI 97. The amaran 100x S publishes CRI 95+, TLCI 97+, TM-30 Rf 96 and Rg 102, with SSI of 89+ against tungsten and 87+ against daylight. The pocket amaran MC publishes CRI 96 and TLCI 97+ but SSI of 84 tungsten and 74 daylight — the CRI headline is identical to the big lights, and the SSI number is where the difference lives. A light that only publishes "CRI 95+" and nothing else is not necessarily bad, but it has told you the least demanding thing it could.
3. Colour temperature and bicolor
Colour temperature is measured in kelvin: around 2,700-3,200K is warm household and tungsten light, around 5,600K is midday daylight, and 6,500K is a cool overcast sky. A daylight-only light is fixed near 5,600K. A bicolor light mixes warm and cool LEDs so you can dial anywhere in a published range — 2,700-6,500K on the amaran 100x S, 3,200-5,600K on the Neewer panels.
Why you care: mixed colour temperature is the most common thing that makes home video look amateur, and it is invisible to your eye because your brain corrects for it in a way a camera does not. Point a 5,600K daylight light at someone in a room lit by warm bulbs, and half the frame goes orange while half goes blue. Bicolor lets you match the room instead of fighting it. Daylight-only lights are usually brighter per watt and cheaper, and the fix for them is free — turn the room's own lamps off, or gel them.
A third category, RGB (or RGBWW), adds full hue and saturation control on top of tunable white — 360 degrees of hue and 100 levels of saturation on the amaran MC. That is not a key-light feature; it is for colour in the background, a practical lamp effect, or a deliberate wash. Never buy RGB in place of output.
4. Mount, control and the boring specs that decide the setup
Bowens mount is the one spec that quietly determines your next five years of lighting. It is the industry-standard bayonet for modifiers, and a light that has it can take any softbox, umbrella, dome or reflector from any brand. Both the Godox SL60IID and the amaran 100x S use it. A panel light with a proprietary or no modifier mount can only ever be the light it is on the day you buy it — and since the single biggest quality jump in any lighting setup is putting a big diffuser in front of a small bright source, that limit is a real one.
Power splits the field more than people expect. Mains-powered COB lights are bright and tethered; battery panels and pocket lights are portable and weak. The Neewer kit publishes built-in 4,000mAh batteries, which is what makes a two-light setup possible outdoors with no power run at all.
Fan noise is a video spec, not a comfort spec. Anything over about 60W has a fan, and a fan two feet from a microphone is on your audio track forever. Listings that mention a quiet fan are telling you something real.
Reading four real spec sheets side by side
Same four lights, their own published numbers, no commentary. This is the table the listings do not print.
| Light | Published output | Published colour accuracy | Colour temp | Mount / power |
|---|
| Godox SL60IID | 18,600 lux at 1m (70W daylight COB) | CRI 96 / TLCI 97 | 5,600K +/-200K, daylight only | Bowens, mains |
| Aputure amaran 100x S | Up to 30,500 lux at 1m with hyper reflector at 5,600K (100W bicolor COB) | CRI 95+ / TLCI 97+ / TM-30 Rf 96, Rg 102 / SSI 89+ tungsten, 87+ daylight | 2,700-6,500K bicolor | Bowens, mains |
| Neewer 13in LED Panel Kit (2-pack) | Two bicolor panels, 0-100% dimming (no published lux figure) | Listed as high CRI; no published number | 3,200-5,600K bicolor | Stand mount, built-in 4,000mAh batteries |
| Aputure amaran MC | 100 lux at 1m (1,100 lux at 0.3m) | CRI 96 / TLCI 97+ / SSI 84 tungsten, 74 daylight | 3,200-6,500K plus full RGB | Magnet and 1/4in thread, USB-C battery |
The amaran MC and the amaran 100x S publish an identical CRI headline and differ by 305 times in output at the same distance. That is the entire argument for reading the lux figure first — and it is why the pocket light is an accent and the COB is a key.
So which numbers do you actually need?
For a key light on a face indoors: you want a mains COB with a Bowens mount and a published lux figure in the thousands at 1m, CRI/TLCI in the mid-90s, and a quiet fan. Both the Godox and the amaran qualify; the difference between them is bicolor control and roughly 60% more output.
For a two-light setup you can carry: you want battery panels and stands, and you accept that no panel competes with a COB on output. The Neewer kit exists for exactly this and is the cheapest honest route to a key and a fill.
For fill on a close subject, a catchlight, or colour in a background: a pocket light is correct and a COB is overkill. 100 lux at 1m is useless as a key and perfectly adequate at 0.3m, which is where a pocket light actually gets used.
The full rankings with live prices are on best lighting for video, and the product-specific set is on best lights for product photography.
The spec that beats every other spec
Modifier size. A bare bulb is a small, hard source and it produces hard-edged shadows and specular highlights on skin no matter how good its CRI is. Put a softbox, dome or umbrella in front of the same light and the apparent source becomes large relative to the subject, which is the entire mechanism behind flattering light. The honest ranking of what changes an image is: modifier size first, position second, output third, colour accuracy fourth. A CRI-98 light pointed bare at a face from the camera position still looks like a flash photo.
That is also the practical reason to insist on Bowens. A $139 light with a standard mount and a $40 softbox beats a $250 light with no modifier option, in every image, forever. The technique side of this is in how to light a YouTube video.
Is higher CRI always better?
Up to a point, then it stops mattering. The gap between CRI 80 and CRI 95 is visible on skin and in fabric; the gap between CRI 95 and CRI 98 is mostly a line on a box. Past the mid-90s, spend the money on output, a modifier mount or a second light instead — those change images, and three more CRI points do not.
What do lumens mean on a video light?
Lumens measure total light emitted in all directions; lux measures what arrives on a surface at a distance. For video lighting lux is the useful one, because a light's optics determine how much of its lumen output actually reaches the subject. A high lumen figure with a wide, uncontrolled beam can deliver less usable light on a face than a lower-lumen light with a reflector. If a listing quotes only lumens, treat it as a marketing number.
Do I need a light meter?
No. Your camera has one, and for video the waveform or zebras in the camera are more useful than a handheld meter anyway. Use the published lux figures to decide what to buy, and use the camera's own exposure tools to decide where to put it — the settings side is in best camera settings for video.
