Whether you're a social media influencer or just want to upgrade your look in web meetings, a good ring light or LED panel is a must-have companion for your camera.

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally for 30 years, more than half of that time with PCMag. I run several special projects including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys, and yearly coverage of the Fastest ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs. I work from my home, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

You've probably seen it as you scroll through Tiktok or admire someone's incredible Instagram selfie: a tell-tale ring of light in the subject's pupils. That halo in the eye is a reflection from a ring light. It's the illumination option of choice, as it lets you centrally locate a recording device, usually a smartphone, right in the middle of a light that diffuses over your face or whatever you're photographing or recording. It zaps away the shadows with uniform light.

Light rings come in several sizes, from 10 to 22 inches in diameter. Most have hundreds of small surface-mounted LEDs that can be manipulated for brightness, as well as something arguably more important: color temperature. That's what gives light the appearance of a warm orange at the low end (1,000 Kelvin) all the way up to a blinding, bright blue at 10,000 K. Most ring lights keep the range between a warm white at 3,200 K and a cool white at 6,500 K. They're (usually) easily adjusted, either digitally or with a dial, to find the most flattering color temperature.

Light rings typically come with a tripod of some sort. Usually, it can adjust in height to be used on a desktop or standing fully upright to capture a subject far away. A mount in the center of the ring holds a phone, typically those measuring 3.6 inches wide or smaller. Many brands seem to use the same phone bracket, and it's not going to work with a tablet or even a very fat smartphone. Most light rings offer an option for a threaded tripod mount that works with high-end digital cameras and even some webcams. Some come with special carry bags, extra-flexible arms, or Bluetooth camera-shutter activators.

If you search online for ring lights, you'll find hundreds of models, many from Chinese companies you've never heard of before such as Ubeesize, Aptoyu, and Mactrem. We narrowed the selection down to names like Neewer, Yesker, and Lume Cube that had some good reviews, and we even found devices from Razer, the company behind some of PCMag's favorite laptops.

We purchased five models to try in 12-, 14-, and 18-inch versions, all priced between $60 to $120. None of the light rings, not even the Razer, bowled us over, which is the trade-off for keeping the price down. But some were quite effective, and many could have the right combination of features and performance for your budget.

Another category of illumination might better suit some people, especially work-from-home types: LED panels (aka light panels). These are fill lights for a camera, trained on you for meetings or while streaming, and engineered for use on or around the desk where you work or perform. They come in many shapes and sizes, and some have hefty price tags. But depending on your video presence, a light panel may be the better fit.

A ring light or LED panel may be just the beginning of your spiffed-up online persona. You may also want to learn How to Get Started in Game Streaming, and it's a perfect time to learn TikTok Tips for Beginners and Aspiring Influencers. Or maybe you just want to look nicer in a video conference. For even more ways to improve your look and even your sound, be sure to check out The Best Webcams and The Best USB Microphones.

Best Light Ring on a Budget

Razer's 12-inch offering is a standard, low-end unit with few bells and whistles. It sells for $80 direct ($20 less on Amazon). It comes in the usual great Razer packaging, however, so you feel like you're getting a treat even if the contents are pretty standard. Inside is the light, a tripod that can adjust for desk or floor use, a flex bracket to hold a phone, and a ball-joint bracket for other cameras (such as the Razer Kiyo webcam) that have a threaded tripod mount. The button controls for the light are all found on the power cable, which plugs into a USB-A port on a PC, outlet, or power block (but a 5V 2A power block is not included).

You don't get a range of color temps, only three pre-sets of 3,000 K (warm white), 4,500 K (balanced), and 6,500 K (cool white). Brightness is pre-set to 50% to start, but you can go down to 10% or up to 100% (500 lumens). The light has a threaded tripod hole, so you can mount the light ring on other tripods or holders; the included tripod goes up to 53.2-inches high.

I found the flex mount for the phone a little hard to work with. But once things are in place, this is an effective light to get your influencer career started. It can work behind the monitor as a decent fill light for meetings if you have the desk space. It's not perfect for either job, though the price is.

Best Light Ring for True Portability

For a little more money than Razer's offering, the $99 Lume Cube 12-inch Ring Light comes out swinging. Not only does this one has a battery option to go cordless, but it also comes with a carry case to make that portability a reality—the bag even holds the 6.5-foot tripod/stand. There's an AC power adapter in addition to the battery and its charger. The ball-joint camera mount holds the rotatable holder for your smartphone that goes in the middle of the ring.

There's an on/off switch on the back; once the light is on, you control it with a single dial to change the brightness. Depress the dial once to adjust the color temp (3,200 to 5,600 K); depress it again to see the amount of battery left. It's all displayed on a little LED indicator screen on the rear.

Mobility is great, but this unit has the flimsiest of all the tripod/stands of the units I tested—it simply would not stay level. It made the whole thing seem ready to tip over at any moment, which is not what you want when you're breaking down the latest TikTok dance trend.

Best Light Ring for Older Phones

Yesker's 14-inch ring light is a popular one due to the size and price ($89.99 direct, or $77.39 on Amazon). It comes with a travel bag, albeit one that doesn't hold the included tripod/stand. That stand has a telescopic rod and is identical in every way to the flimsy one that came with Lume Cube's 12-inch Ring Light, so you can kind of tell that all these companies have the same sources for parts and accessories. Yesker's 240 surface-mounted LEDs run off AC power, there's a flexible/rotatable holder for your phone, a hot shoe ball-joint unit for other cameras with a threaded tripod hole, and a small keychain Bluetooth shutter button controller with separate buttons for iOS and Android devices.

Unlike most of the rest, you don't get any digital read-out whatsoever to set the brightness (controlled by the on/off dial) or the color temp (a separate dial to go between 3,200K and 5,600K). If you have a color temp you like, you can set it and never touch it, but you can't with the brightness. There is a nice option, however: a USB-A charger port on the back to plug in your dying phone/camera battery as you record.

This light is light—as in flimsy-feeling—and coupled with the equally insubstantial tripod stand, it's for newbies, and not top of the line.

Best Light Ring for Those Who Eschew Control

I don’t' know why a 14-inch light would get a model number of RL-12, but it's right there on the box. Other mysteries of the RL-12 Ring Light are why it has a very rigid extender that the paperwork describes as "flexible" (it's not—bending it was like trying to twist a lead pipe), and why, when you see the color temperature options, would anyone buy this?

The light itself is nice enough with 180 LEDs, but bright as it can get, you get almost zero control of color temperature—all you get is a set of white plastic diffusers (the equivalent of 5,500 K) or orange plastic diffusers. That's it.

The plusses are the very sturdy tripod/extender that goes to 61-inches high, a carry bag (which doesn't fit the tripod), and that it has the little red Bluetooth shutter control that Neewer likes to toss in. Otherwise, this $110 ($94 on Amazon) kit is better avoided for even one of the less expensive models.

The Neewer 18-Inch arrived with a rattle inside that made me think it was shattered in transit. Thankfully, it was only the beads from a broken desiccant pack. There's not much else breakable, as the $109.99 ring is made of 204 LEDs mounted behind a white plastic soft filter. This unit seems incredibly large when set up, thanks to a substantial stainless steel tripod that keeps it upright. The tripod itself doesn't bend like the base on one of the many other, more expensive Neewer 18-inchers(Opens in a new window) , but the mount does angle.

There are two dials on the front, one for cool light, and the other for warm, rated for a color temp range of 3,200 to 5,600 K, but you can't tell what the setting is because this unit is all analog. The hot shoe mount in the center of the light is easy to work with, but was tight even on my iPhone XS, so larger phones will be a problem. There's a bright red, Bluetooth-based smartphone camera shutter remote in the box you can use to start or stop a video, or shoot a still with your phone mounted.

This utilitarian unit hits the sweet spot of price and usability for on-the-go video makers, but the sheer size makes it a lot harder to take with you. A carry bag will set you back another $57.

Best If Money Is No Object

The Razer Key Light Chroma isn't a ring, but a light panel that measures 10 by 14-inches and comes with a hefty black aluminum desk mount. It's not cheap; $300 is going to be beyond what newbies can or should spend, but this isn't geared toward budding influencers. This is more for established streaming gamers looking to up their (video) game, so to speak.

The light from this super-slim unit is stellar. It has a wide color range of 2,900 to 7,000 K, a blinding brightness up to 2,800 lumens, and is controllable from your PC or your smartphone using Razer's apps. Like almost everything from Razer, it supports a 16.8-million-color effect that you can use to dazzle—the light can even be set to react to events that happen live in your stream. Depending on the angle(s) of your camera(s), a panel like the Key Light Chroma might best be used in pairs, which means you're doubling an already substantial financial outlay. The apps can sync up to 11 lights. The panel can be mounted in portrait or landscape mode.

Razer fans and people with plenty of cash, this is what you want. If you find it hard to justify the spend for a couple of these, there are 2-packs of full video light kits from Neewer(Opens in a new window) at almost half the price, complete with phone controls. But they lack the temperature range, the Chroma effects, the desk mounts, and the overall coolness factor.

The 3-by-5-inch mini panel that is the Lume Cube Broadcast Lighting Kit is recommended to be used in pairs to avoid shadows. If the price of $99.99 was a little lower—a dual kit is sold for $189.99—that might seem more reasonable, but this is definitely a great runner-up to the Razer Key Light Chroma.

The Lume Cube kit does come with a sticky suction cup option for placing on your desk, or better yet, the back of your monitor, to accompany your webcam as a fill light. This is helpful because the tripod extender only goes to 30 inches, which in my tests wasn't quite tall enough to peer over my main PC displays. It helps that you can orient the panel in portrait, not just landscape. The light comes with a white silicon softening diffuser around it, so the concentrated 112 LEDs—already behind a frosted lens—won't appear as harsh when reflected in your eyeballs.

This is one of the few video lights with a battery in it, so you can really take it on the road. It's supposedly ready to run for up to 16 hours. Adjustments to the brightness and the color temp (3,200 to 5,600 K) are all done with a button and dial on the side. You can read the settings, including battery life, on a small LCD on the back. You plug it in via an included USB-C-to-USB-A cable; there's also a 6-inch USB-C-to-USB-A female adapter if you want to power this from a USB-C port on your PC. If you don't care about going on the road, just leave it plugged in all the time.

Best for Inexpensively Lighting Up a Call

Logitech's $60 light is no ring, and not really much of a panel because it's a square. Litra Glow is a fill light that gives you visage a little more oomph when on a video call. It seems pricey for what comes out of the box—a small 3.5-by-3.5-inch light that mounts on top of a monitor to face you, plus a 5-foot power cable (USB-C-to-USB-A). The 7-inch-long clip seems ridiculous at first, but it offsets the weight of the light to extend it upward. Optionally, take it off the clip and thread it onto a tripod.

For the money, you get some decent control, with color temperatures from 2,700 K to 6,500 K and a brightness of 250 lumens. You can control the whole thing analog-style with the rocker buttons on the back, but the Logitech G Hub software for Windows or Mac will also control it from your desktop if the Litra Glow is plugged directly into the computer, not a power block. With the software, you can make presets to instantly jump between the best light settings.

The Litra Glow is a flexible, economical, easily adjustable fill light that can only help you look better on your webcam during video meetings. Serious gaming streamers will want one of the previously mentioned panels for maximum wattage, but this is the only light around that works this well right next to a webcam.

Read our full review of the Litra Glow.

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