COB LED Strip- New Trend, No Spots!

LED strip lights are a reliable and creative way to provide lighting to any space. Light strips are commonly seen in a variety of environments such as homes, businesses, and commercial properties. The COB LED strip, also called a dotless LED strip, is particularly interesting because of its continuous illumination line without hot spots. Let’s take a deep dive into what COB LED strips are and how you can use them.

In a Chip on Board strip, better known as a COB LED strip, the individual diodes are printed directly onto the circuit board. These diodes are placed close together and covered with a phosphor gel. The tight placement combined with the phosphor coating creates a continuous illumination effect.

What Is a COB LED Strip?

Some COB lighting strips come with tunable CCT and RGB color technology. This means with the help of a remote or app, you can easily change the correlated color temperature (CCT) and RGB color of your lights.

You can also bend COB lights to fit different spaces and shapes. COB lights are very flexible since their diodes are smaller and placed closer together, so they can curve into tight areas or fit around corners.

COB stands for Chip on Board, meaning the LED diodes are built directly into the printed circuit board. The main advantage of this technology is that there is no visible spotting, even when used in more shallow LED profiles and spaces, this ensures the finished installation will present a seamless uninterrupted finish. COB Strip Lights create a totally smooth, seamless line of light. The superior design will not show visible dots or hot spots, making it ideal illumination for reflective surfaces

What Is The Difference Between COB and SMD LED Strips?

The main differences between a COB LED strip and an SMD (Surface Mounted Device) LED strip are the distance between chips and the level of light density the strips give off. In an SMD LED light strip, the chips are soldered onto the circuit board and placed with space in between them. This space between chips means that SMD strips have a lower light density, while a COB strip light is considered to have a higher light density.

What Can You Use a COB LED Strip for?

COB LED strips eliminate hot spots due to their seamless illumination. Therefore, they are best suited for cases where you cannot hide the LED strip behind anything and do not want to see the individual chips. For this reason, COB strips are commonly used in situations where the light strip is placed close to a reflective surface since it will not show any hot spots in the reflection. Other popular applications include under cabinet lighting , jewelry/display case lighting, and toe kick lighting.

If You Find COB LEDS Get Hot?

All strip lights, including COBs, are designed to prevent excessive heat from damaging the lighting strips. The circuit board functions as a heatsink to take heat from the individual LEDs and transfer it to the surface that the strip is attached. Therefore, COB light strips are safe to use in temperature-sensitive locations because of their effective heat dissipation. For some higher-power LED strip lights, it is recommended to attach an additional heatsink, such as an aluminum channel, to make the most efficient heat transfer.

How Can You Use COB LED Strips to Customize Your Space?

COB strip lights can be cut at indicated cutting marks and therefore can be shortened to reach any length needed. For further customization, you can easily connect strip segments together by soldering or using one of the many solderless connectors we offer.

How Are COB LED Flex Strip Made?

The strips are manufactured with the same quality PCB as our other LED Flex Strip lights. Flip chip LEDs are then placed side by side down the center of the strip light, so tight that there are LEDs for every Meter of strip! The strips are finished after a phosphor layer is placed over the LEDs. This helps balance out the color temperature while also acting as a protective layering for the tiny flip chip LEDs underneath.

Advantages of COB LED Flex Strips

1. No LED hotspots, even in tight spaces!

The strips COB LEDs it would be pretty hard to pick out any hotspots on the COB Flex Strips. The strip illuminates a smooth, consistent light from start to finish. The uniform light has no dark spots and is much more attractive to the human eye, giving off a steady light even in the tightest of places. In fact, the only real way to see hotspots is to look at the back of the strip where it is easier to see the individually placed flip chip LEDs. The only other way you are going to see the individual diodes is if you dim the strips down to about 5% light output. This makes COB Flex Strips ideal for applications where:

The strip itself cannot be hidden from sight.

The surface that is being illuminated is within 2 feet of the strip light.

Reflective surfaces like granite/glass are around.

Those applications where you want a cool, neon effect.

2. Brighter Light

That’s right, these COB LED Flex strips are even brighter! At 1400 Lumens/M these are even brighter than our high-density strips! The consistent, bright light also emits at a wider angle thanks to the flip chip LEDs not being encapsulated in a plastic holder like SMD LEDs. This lets them emit some light out the sides so that they spread at 180 degrees off the strip. Wider light angle means more light for you so this is important in the long run for brightness as well!

3. More Flex

The flexibility of these strips is much better than other flexible strips because of the smaller diode size and even distribution of weight. The diodes are so small and tightly spaced that any point of the strip is the same as the other. The uniformity makes it easy to set up strips without having to plan around sticking out where you don’t need it. This added flexibility will make them easier to fit into tight areas and turn around corners in your application.

4. More Efficient, Less Heat

They are also much better at distributing heat as they are mounted directly to the flexible PCB board. This helps them spread their heat down into the PCB rather than keeping it all locked right in the light source itself. This reduction of thermal resistance within the high-density circuit greatly improves the lifetime of the LEDs.

The Conclusion

If traditional LED flex strips just won’t cut it for your job then I suggest looking to COB LED Flex Strips. They are new to the market but these LED strips will start becoming commonplace in the LED Strip world.