Recommended White LED Strips

All things considered, the best easy to use strip with everything included is the Pautix Tunable COB LED strip which had the highest CRI, highest brightness, acceptable flicker, and completely tunable color temperature using the included infrared remote, with the downsides being the highest price per meter, and a relatively low power efficiency.

The Govee Warm White strips also performed well with good brightness, low flicker, and high efficiency, at less than half the cost per meter of the Pautix strip, but I was disappointed that the CRI was only 83.2, and the Govee strip is obviously not tunable like the one from Pautix. The Govee strip also doesn’t come with a remote, so brightness can only be controlled by pressing the buttons on the controller itself. But both the Govee and Pautix remember their last state when powered on, so you can control them with a smart outlet or timer by cutting the power completely.

All things considered the best overall strip for DIYers was the Joylit 24V COB LED Strip which had an awesome full spectrum CRI of 95.8, the second highest brightness at 5377 lumens and only 0.6V of voltage drop over the entire 5 meter strip, with the downsides being a relatively high price at $34 and middle of the road efficiency at just 841 lumens per watt.

From a budget standpoint the LEPro 12V LED strip lights are hard to beat with a cost per meter of just $2, and the second highest efficiency at 1209 lumens per watt, with the downsides being a CRI of just 80.3 and a voltage drop of 1.57 volts over 5m indicating a more cheaply made strip with thinner copper traces, but if you’re on a budget and not extremely concerned with CRI they are an excellent value.

If you’re looking for something plug-and-play with Amazon Echo and Google Home control, I think the $19.99 Pautix WL5 is the best option due to its configurable power on behavior, configurable LED strip type, no banding or flickering, and nicely sized screw terminals that can accommodate 14 AWG ferrules, with the only downsides being not having connections for an external button, and the fact that it runs on Tuya which is a cloud-based service.

Overall, for addressable strips, I like the 12V WS2814 non COB strip which is quite a bit cheaper than the rest at just $30 for 5 meters, or $6 per meter and has a great white CRI of 92.8, is controllable in 5cm segments of 3 LEDs and had an acceptable voltage drop of 1.12V over 5m, with the downsides being significantly lower brightness and efficiency than non-addressable strips.