Differences between RGB and RGBW LED strip

RGB LED light strip has three color channels. In comparison, RGBW LED strip has four color channels that include white.

The RGB LED strip lights can mix three primary colors to produce light of any color, including white light. It is just that the white light may contain traces of other colors. In other words, the white is not pure white. Hence the white light has poor CRI, which is the ability to rendering colors of other objects. The poor quality white is not friendly to human eyes, not good for long time usage.

Besides colored light, high quality white is also important in certain applications. Therefore, a white light-emitting chip is added to the three color RGB chips. This is how the RGBW LED strip was born. Here, the white chips can be cool white, neutral white, or warm white.

In addition to producing any color, the RGBW LED strips can mix colored light with white light, and the four-in-one mixture makes the color bolder and richer, creating more brilliant and more vibrant colors.

RGBW LED strip light can choose to emit pure white light only, so it has the function of monochromatic white light. This is why RGBW LED strip lights are used in a wider range of applications than RGB LED strip lights.

That RGB colored chips plus two different types of white chips (warm white and cool white) makes a 5-in-1 LED node, which is commonly used for RGB + CCT LED light strip. In addition to all the characteristics of the RGB and RGBW LED strip lights, the RGB + CCT LED light strip also has the features of tunable white light strips, which can produce white light of variable CCT, such as 1800K, 2400K, 2700K, 6500K, or any color temperatures in between.