Understand the differences between SMD, COB, and CSP light strips

With the popularity of the "no main light lighting" design concept, LED linear light strip products are becoming more and more popular in home decoration and whole-house customization projects. There are three common LED flexible light strip products on the market, namely SMD LED light strips, COB LED light strips and the latest CSP LED light strips. Although each product has its advantages and differences, the editor will try to use one article to let you understand the differences between them so that you can make the right choice.

01 SMD LED light strip

SMD refers to "Surface Mount Device", which is the most common type of LED device currently on the market. The LED chip is encapsulated into the LED bracket shell with phosphor glue and then mounted on a flexible printed circuit board (PCB). SMD LED strips are particularly popular due to their versatility.

SMD LED devices come in many sizes: 3528, 5050, 2835, 3014, 2216, 2110; they are generally called according to their approximate size. For example, the size of 3528 is 3.5 x 2.8mm, 5050 is 5.0 x 5.0mm, and 2835 is 2.8 x 3.5mm, 3014 is 3.0 x 1.4mm

Since ordinary SMD LED flexible light strips use separate SMD LED components, the distance/gap between two adjacent LED devices is relatively large. When the light strip is lit, you can see individual luminous points. Some people say that For hot spots or highlights. So if you don't want to see hot spots or bright spots, you need to use some covering material (such as plastic cover) to place it on top of the SMD LED strip, and you must leave enough height for light mixing to cut the glowing spots Bright spot effect, so the aluminum profiles usually used are relatively thick.

02 COB LED light strip

COB is the abbreviation of Chips On Board, which means chip packaging on board. Similar to SMD LED light strips, COB LED light strips also have multiple LED chips on the surface of the flexible circuit board. The difference is that COB LED lights usually have more LED chips and the distance between these LED chips is closer .

Thanks to the continuous phosphor glue coating, COB LED strips can output uniform light without a very obvious single light spot, so they can output evenly emitting light with good consistency without the need for additional plastic covers. , if you still need to use aluminum troughs, you can choose very thin flat aluminum profiles

03 CSP LED light strip

CSP is one of the latest technologies in the LED industry. In the LED industry, CSP refers to the smallest and simplest package form without substrate or gold wire. Different from the SMD light strip board technology, CSP uses innovative roll-to-roll FPC flexible circuit boards.

FPC is a new type of cable made by laminating insulating film and extremely thin flat copper wire through an automated laminating equipment production line. It has the advantages of softness, free bending and folding, thin thickness, small size, high precision, and strong conductivity.

Compared with traditional SMD packaging, CSP packaging has a simpler process, less consumables, lower cost, and the light-emitting angle and direction are much larger than other packaging forms. Due to the particularity of its packaging process, CSP light strips can be smaller, lighter and lighter, and have smaller bending stress points. At the same time, its light-emitting angle is large, reaching 160°, and the light color is clean and soft, without yellow edges. The biggest feature of CSP light strips is that they can see the light but not the lights. The soft and dull spots are