The IDS-UI-3060CP-M has the highest gain available, but still keeps the read noise relatively low with 6 electrons.  This in low light WITH gain, gives us a nice image in nearly dark environments.

But while we're slightly annoyed by the fact that it doesn't come with a stand, tripod (we used one of our own in the above photo) or mount, its quite-strong magnetic back makes it truly unique. No matter where you go, you'll be able to adjust it on the fly. It works with Elgato Stream Decks for your home setup, but it's also adjustable on the fly (brightness and warmth) via Android, iPhone, PC and Mac devices. Some of the below ring lights are rechargable, but the Key Light Mini is that plus so much more.

Ring Lightwith Stand

1st Vision is the leading provider of industrial imaging components with over 100 years of combined imaging experience.  Do not hesitate to contact us to discuss your applications!

However, for the price, it’s quite a useful selfie light that allows you to set the brightness at three different levels. It can also be used with a variety of devices, including a smartphone or laptop, which can be useful when you have a meeting and want to make the lighting look soft and natural. It’s ideal for those photographers who want to shoot casual selfies or video clips. It can also be controlled wirelessly.

On the light itself, there are two knob controls to adjust the color temperature (3000K to 6000K) and brightness of the light. It comes with a power supply, but no batteries, which makes this more suited for studio or home scenarios. It also comes with a built-in USB port to keep your smartphone charged. A nice extra on this ring light is that it lets you rotate the light head 180 degrees horizontally. The included tripod stand, meanwhile, can extend up to 78 inches.

Ring LightAmazon UK

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What’s nice about this ring light is that it’s small in size and lightweight, so it will fit into many pocketbooks, or even a jacket pocket. It comes with a USB micro cord, in order to recharge the unit’s battery. The manufacturer claims this ring light has a battery life of 1-5 hours.

It runs on the included AC power adapter or, when you’re far from a power outlet, on the two included NP-F750 lithium-ion batteries. While the Neewer RP18B Pro can run on batteries, that light doesn't come with them included, meaning the Wescott is the better of the two for portability straight out of the box. The included batteries provide up to 70 minutes at full power, according to the manufacturer. It’s also fully dimmable and equipped with an adjustable color temperature ranging from 3200K to 5600K — this is a much narrower range than the Neewer RP18B Pro.

This topic can be very complex!  If we were to dig in even deeper, we’d take into consideration charge convergence of the pixel which effects sensitivity aside from looking at just QE!.. That’s probably another blog post!

In low light situations, we can always add camera gain, but we pay the price of adding noise to the image.   Depending on the camera image sensor, some have the ability to provide more gain than others.  This is another factor to review when considering adding gain.  We need to also take into account read noise as this will get amplified with gain.   Our next part of our test is to turn up the gain to see how we compare.

We absolutely loved the Neewer RGB62 in testing. This compact portable RGB LED is super affordable at $26 and, as an RGB light, isn’t limited to only yellow or white like many ring lights (although it does have a bi-color mode with a very wide 2500K-8500K temperature range). It comes with a diffuser to soften the light and has an internal battery so you don’t need to plug it in. It also features four cold shoe mounts to give a wide variety of mounting options — you can mount this panel on top of your camera, then mount 3 more accessories to the light itself, or you can daisy chain several of these lights to make a more powerful lighting setup. You can also control it with the Neewer app which allows you to fully control the lighting, as well as assigning a range of effects, such as music synchronization. It also comes with a magnetic back, so you can simply clip it to anything metal without the need for a light stand.

As a studio light, however, the MS60C is expensive, so if you’re on a tight budget one of the ring lights above will be better suited. This light is aimed more towards burgeoning enthusiasts and serious content creators. It also won’t give you the trademark ring in your eye that you’ll find with actual ring lights, so if you’re shooting beauty content and want the ring light “look” this won’t be for you. Annoyingly, it doesn’t come with a stand or batteries, either, both of which are expensive.

Ring lights are perfect for vlogging, especially if you're producing beauty content, as they light your face evenly and also give you that telltale ring reflection in your eye. However, they also have downsides: they can be expensive, while they're also relatively inflexible as they're designed primarily for lighting faces. If you want to do more types of content, a ring light alternative might be best for you.

PriceFirst, consider how much you’re willing to spend. The models in our guide give you rough estimate of the price range of ring lights, which can run as little as $6 or a much as $189. However, there are pricier ring lights available for more professional or specialized uses. For example, some models can cost as much as $500, but are extremely powerful and versatile.

This portable LED kit also comes with a 61-inch light stand, constructed from aluminum alloy, giving it exceptional strength. It also has a 360-degree rotatable smartphone holder, plus a Bluetooth receiver for controlling your ring light remotely. Oh, and it even comes with a handy carrying bag.

ProfessionalRing Light

Much like the Logitech Litra Glow, we like the Elgato Key Light Mini because it offers a different path to illumination as a ring light alternative. Small and light enough to hold in your hand if you need to move and direct its lighting on your on, the Key Light Mini's internal 4000 mAh power supply lasts a while on a single charge (and charged speedily via USB-C in our testing).

You get lots of options with this model: it can be used with a phone or nearly any type of stand-alone camera, since the kit comes with two cold-shoe mounts and a 1⁄4-inch-20 mounting option.

Below is a chart comparing the e2v EV76C661 NIR, Sony Starvis IMX178 and , Sony Pregius IMX174 image sensors found in the IDS Imaging UI-3240NIR, UI-3880CP and UI-3060CP cameras using EMVA1288 data to start. This provides us with accurate image sensor data to evaluate.

If you’re looking for a versatile ring light kit that has a professional build quality and provides you with lots of features and options, the Westcott 18-inch Bi-Color LED Ring Light Kit with Batteries and Stand will fit the bill. Westcott has a long history producing top-notch lighting equipment for pros, and is an excellent choice, whether you’re using it for vlogging, live streaming, capturing video or shooting still photos for portraits, food, still life and many other types of genres.

An Industrial camera can be easily selected based on resolution and frame rates, but image sensor performance is more challenging.  We can collect data points from the camera EMVA1288 test results and spectral response charts, but one can not conclude on what is best for the application based on one data point.  In many cases, several data points need to be reviewed to start making an educated decision.

As a reference, this image was taken with an Iphone and set to best represent what my eye viewed during our lab test.  Note that the left container with markers was non-distinguishable to the human eye

For this comparison, our objective is to determine which sensor will perform best in low light applications with broadband light.  From table 1, the IMX178 has very low absolute sensitivity (abs sensitivity) with taking ~ 1 photon to help make a adequate charge, however the pixels are small (2.4um), so maybe not gather light as well as larger pixels.  It does have the best dark noise characteristics however.  In comparison, the e2V sensor has 9.9 photons  for abs sensitivity (not as good as 1 photon) and has a larger pixel size (bigger is better to collect light).  The IMX174 proves to be interesting as well with the largest pixel of 5.86um and the highest QE @ 533nm.

Although the RP19H is cheaper than the Neewer RP18B, it doesn’t feature Bluetooth connectivity or a wide temperature range like the more expensive model, so we think you should spend a little extra on the RP18B if you can. This ring light does feature decent build quality, however, and comes with a metal light stand (again this is not as sturdy as the stand that comes with the more expensive RP18B).

FeaturesDo you need a ring that lets you adjust the light’s color temperature or brightness? Or do you need the option of powering the ring light either by an AC adapter or using batteries?

The QIAYA selfie ring light is the most lightweight of the products we looked at for this guide. In fact, it’s also compact, enough so that you can easily carry it around in your pocket. Overall, it has a very simple, straightforward design, but doesn’t provide a lot of options when you compare it to more expensive models.

Conclusion We can review the data points until we are blue in the face and they can be very confusing.  We can however take in all the data and help make some more educated decisions on which cameras to test.  For example in the first test, we had a good idea the NIR sensor would perform well looking a the QE curves along with other data.  In our second test, we may have seen the UI-3060CP had 24X gain vs others still with low read noise, giving an indication, we’d have relatively clean image.

If you want to take your lighting to the next level, or you want to shoot more than just to-camera or vlogging content, you might well be better off investing in a proper video light. Look no further than the Neewer MS60C. This portable video LED is super powerful and will allow you to craft professional-looking sets. It’s RGB, so you aren’t limited to just yellow or white, can run off either mains or battery power, and comes with a handle for handheld usage, making it a very flexible and portable tool. It’s also pretty small for a studio light, as it doesn’t need an internal fan. As with other Neewer products, you can control the MS60C fully via Bluetooth through the Neewer app.

This 18-inch Neewer ring light has a fixed color temperature of 5500K, which matches a daylight-balanced light source. However, it also includes two color filters (white and orange), made from high-light-transmission plastic, which allow you to easily switch temperature from 5500K to 3200K. There's also a stepless dimming knob, which lets you adjust the brightness.

Using the data from the spectral response curves however, helps give us more insight across the light spectrum.  Given we are using a NIR enhanced camera, we will have significant more conversion of light to a create a charge on the sensor across most of the light spectrum.  In turn, we expect we’d see brighter images from the e2V NIR IDS UI-3240 NIR camera.

Our favorite ring light overall is Neewer's 18-inch RP18B Pro, thanks to its great build quality and the included accessories in the box. It also features Bluetooth smartphone control, industry battery compatibility and a wide bi-color temperature range. However, if you’re on a tighter budget or simply need something different, you'll find something to suit among our picks of the best ring lights. All you have to do now is read on.

The ring light itself is decent, rather than class-leading: color temperature is fixed unless you use filters and there's no way to adjust the brightness. But if you're looking for something small, portable and well priced, this could be the right ring light for your phone.

In the end, 1st Vision’s sales engineers will help provide the needed information and help conduct testing for you!  We spend a lot of time in our lab  in order to provide first hand information to our customers!

Firstly, you'll want to consider whether you want a ring light or a different type of light. Ring lights are the best for vlogging or beauty content, as they're primarily aimed at lighting faces. If you are doing lots of different types of video, one of the best ring light alternatives above might be the better choice for you.

Although this inexpensive ring light has a barebones design and feature set, it can be used on various mobile devices, including most phones and tablets, as well as on laptops. The model also lets you adjust the strength of the light’s brightness by setting it to low, normal or high.

This ring light has user-friendly controls and a hassle-free setup, and it claims to have high color accuracy. It also has a built-in diffuser which produces soft, beautiful lighting that fills in shadows on your subject's face with iconic catchlights in the eyes.

As a note, one more data point is to look at the pixel well depth.  Smaller pixels will saturate faster making the image brighter, so if other variables were close, this may also be taken into consideration.

The Logitech Litra Glow is small and requires less desk space than some of the larger options in our list, but on the flip side it's not something you can mount a camera or phone into the middle of for easy streaming on the go.

The following set of images was taken again with the same lens + f-stop, lighting, but with gain at max for each camera.

The Wescott 18-inch ring light does have one advantage in that it comes with NP750 batteries to run away from mains sockets. And while the RP18B Pro is cheaper than the Wescott, buying Neewer’s battery plate plus two NP750 or compatible batteries will take your total spend higher. That said, most people will be using a ring light in a home studio set up where mains power is reachable, so we don’t think this is a deal breaker, especially as the RP18B Pro offers better features all round. One slight gripe we had is that the screw handles for securing the ring light to its frame are made out of cheap feeling plastic, although the rest of the light and the tripod all feel very sturdy.

As you might expect from its name, the Rotolight Ultimate Vlogging Kit is designed for content creators making videos or streaming to YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. With that in mind, it comes with a mini tripod that can turn into an extended camera grip: very helpful if you often switch between shooting in a studio and on the go.

Terry Sullivan is an experienced technology journalist who has covered consumer electronics including cameras, smartphones, audio tech and software among many other things. His work has appeared in the likes of Consumer Reports, PCMag, Lifehacker, and the New York Times and he is also a teacher, photographer, artist, and musician.

Use casesThink about how you want to use the ring light. Are you just capturing casual photos on your phone? Then, you won’t need to spend a lot of money. But what if you are producing a weekly video podcast or episode for your YouTube channel? Then, you’ll want to pay more for a ring light that gives you more options.

Most will work with either cameras or smartphones (we've got a separate list of the best ring lights for phones if you're specifically interested in that side of things) and they're a great match for one of the best cameras for vlogging. Some also appear among our pick of the best TikTok lights.

CameraRing Light

These simple, donut-shaped devices generally use LED lighting to produce a diffused, continuous glow which makes you look your best on screen; unflattering shadows will be a thing of the past once you're using one.

Magnification of the images differs due to sensor size.  Working distance of the cameras was kept identical in all setups and focused accordingly with distance.

The RP19H is the ring light to get if you need to shoot on more than one device simultaneously, as it has three cold shoe mounts. This means you can mount three smartphones or cameras for shots at different angles. This feels like a bit of a gimmick, as the space between the mounts is small, meaning the angles won’t be hugely different. Using three smartphones or cameras might be useful if there are a group of you in shot, though, as you can all record the same content on your own devices. You could use the cold shoes to mount an extra accessory like a microphone, though.

If you do want a ring light, with so many available at so many different price points, how do you choose which model is right for you?

Here at Tom’s Guide our expert editors are committed to bringing you the best news, reviews and guides to help you stay informed and ahead of the curve!

We think the Neewer RP18B Pro is the best ring light you can buy. It’s more affordable than the Wescott 18-inch ring light below, while also offering a wider adjustment range of 2700-7000K, Bluetooth connectivity for lighting adjustment and FX options via the Neewer app, plus a sturdy metal stand which features a heavy duty metal locking cuff mechanism. There’s also a mobile phone holder included so you can place your phone in the centre of the ring light. It also comes with a ¼” thread ball joint adapter instead of the mobile phone holder so you can use this ring light with one of the best cameras for vlogging. The RP18B Pro also comes with a carrying case that features a near light stand compartment so you can keep everything organized on the move.

The best ring lights are a must if you're looking to improve the quality of your videos, whether you're streaming on YouTube or hosting a work Zoom call.

Ring LightAmazon

Why not check out our other photography picks:It's important that your other kit matches up to your competent new ring light. Make sure you read our guide to the best cameras if you're thinking about upgrading kit. Already know which side you're taking in the mirrorless vs DSLR debate? You'll want to read our picks of the best DSLR cameras or best mirrorless cameras. On a tight budget? Make sure to read our picks of the best cheap cameras. You need to be a dab hand in the edit suite these days for your photos to stand out online, so make sure you read our guides to the best photo editing software and best photo editing apps. The same goes for video too, so consider finding out what we think is the best video editing software, best free video editing software and best video editing apps. Finally, all those photos and videos are going to need to go somewhere, so make sure you know all about the best photo storage sites if your drives are already nearing full.

SizeAdditionally, consider the size of the light: some are quite small and portable, which means you can take them on the road with you; others are larger and heavier, which may weigh you down.

Our job as imaging specialists is to help our customers make the best decisions on which industrial camera and image sensor works best for their application.  This is not a trivial task as there are many data points to consider, and in the end, a good image comparison test helps provide the true answer.  In this blog post, we conduct another image sensor comparison for low light applications testing a long time favorite e2V EV76C661 Near Infra Red (NIR) sensor to the new Sony Starvis IMX178 and Sony Pregius IMX174 image sensor using IDS Imaging cameras.

With that in mind, the Logitech Litra Glow is more a tool for lighting your work video calls or Twitch streaming sessions than it is a full-fledged do-everything option — but within its ideal use-cases, it excels. Setup is super-simple and integration with Logitech's G Hub gives you full control over its functions. Better still, if you have a Logitech keyboard or mouse you can use them to turn it on and off, or change settings. It does a great job of lighting calls and never once gave us a headache in our testing, while its $60 price puts it squarely in the middle of the best ring lights.

The downsides? The onboard controls can take a bit of working out, especially if you’re new to lighting. And while it’s powerful for its size, I’m not sure it’ll function well as a main light if your trying to shoot higher end content for socials or YouTube (unless you daisy chain two or three of them together with the cold show mounts). Still, on its own, a single RGB62 should be more than enough for video calls and would serve as a great secondary light to cast shades of color into the background of your frame.

Bestring light

There are several mounting options, including a tripod ball head, which lets you use a DSLR or mirrorless camera. Plus, you have the ability to mount up to five phones at the same time on this model. And as a nice extra, the back of the light comes in two colors — pink and black.

We also look at the Quantum Efficiency (QE) curves for the sensors to see the sensor performs over the light spectrum as seen to the left.  (As a note, QE is the conversion of photon to an electrical charge (electrons)

The following images were taken with the same exposure, lens + f-stop in the identical low light environment.  In the 2nd image, the e2v image sensor in the IDS-UI-3240CP NIR provides the brighter image as some of the data points started to indicate.  The IDS UI-3060CP-M (IMX174) is second best.

Like Westcott and Nanlite, Godox has a good reputation for making quality lighting products. The LR150 is no exception, which is why it makes our list of the best ring lights.

As one can see, this is not trivial, but evaluating many of the data points, can give us some clues, but testing is really what it takes!  So, lets now compare the images to see how they look.