Cheap Mood Lighting - From Chinavasion
Saturday, July 16, 2011 at 10:57PM 
A couple of weeks ago Chinavasion sent me a over a list containing a few of their lower priced items and asked me which one I'd be interested in reviewing for them. I chose an £8 mood light. The reason I chose this is because I already have a Philips Living Colours lamp and was interested to see how the £8 lamp would stack up against the £100 Philips version.
You may be wondering why anyone would need a mood lamp - and the fact is that no-one really needs one - but if you have a room with an uncluttered light-coloured wall they do make for an entertaining home decoration. Rather than paint an accent wall with one colour which you soon get tired of, instead paint that wall white or cream and then uplight it with a different colour every night - or have it continuously cycle through hundreds of colours.
The £8 lamp does feel quite cheap - but that is probably because it actually is cheap. Although, that being said, the internals do perform as advertised, after all they are only a control circuit, a battery and an LED. Makes you wonder what else goes into the equivalent mini Philips lamp to warrant their £50 premium.
The bigger £100 Philips livingcolours lamp is brighter, more stylish and comes with a remote. However you can also get a very similar large style lamp from Chinavasion (some might even prefer this design over the Philips one) for about £60. I wish this had been available before I spent £120 on my large Philips light - it looks to do exactly the same job, and maybe the remote control won't eat through batteries like my Philips one does.
One thing really surprised me when I was doing my tests on the lamp - the 4hr 10min battery life, I wasn't expecting anything beyond about 2 hours. By the way, the image at the top is a screenshot of my edit timeline in iMovie11 - I thought it was too interesting not to share.
Here are some links to the products on Chinavasion
The £7.72 small mood lamp (minimum order 5)
The £53.91 large mood lamp (minimum order 1)
Note these prices are without postage.
Although amazingly quick - international couriers can be rather expensive, so it is better to buy a few things at once to get the maximum value out of the postage cost.
Reader Comments (3)
Thanks for this review...these mood lights would be great stocking stuffers or "elephant gifts." Can't agree that your the kind of person who is not organized as the videos you produce reflect a high level of organized thought.
Excellent site...always worth a laugh. Keep up the good work. These lights are great but £19 p&p is a bit excessive for 5 so I didn't bother in the end. Keep them coming. Well done.
Cheers
Excellent site...always worth a laugh. Keep up the good work. These lights are great but £19 p&p is a bit excessive for 5 so I didn't bother in the end. Keep them coming. Well done.
Cheers