I've been going through this thread and admiring everyone's collections and decided I wanted better lighting for my curio that houses some of my collection. The top down LED light was just not doing what I wanted as I put more collectibles on the shelves. Lots of shadows. I decided I want to do some LED lighting, but many of the pictures I saw had bright LED spots and I wanted more of an even light. I noticed some people used diffusers, but the LEDs are so spread apart that you can still see the LED diodes as dots.
I recently went to Lowe's to pick up some other supplies and spent time looking at the LED strips they had. One caught my attention. The top one looks like it has two types of LEDs (W - White? and CW - Cool White?) and the bottom black one has one type of LED but spaced farther apart. The middle one caught my attention because it looks like a solid piece of LED. If you look closely, there are actually several LEDs under the yellow strip, but they are compacted really closely together. The yellow covering seems to be some sort of built in diffuser. It's not cheap ($59.99), but it comes with power adapter, dimmer, 2 wire connectors (~2 inch wires), and 2 straight connectors. The light emits 4000k at 50W total if using the entire 16.4ft.
I bought 1 and installed it last night. It looks amazing and bright, but I'm still fiddling with my collection to get good placement and pictures.
A little research on the internet shows the product I bought is COB (Chip on Board) vs SMD (Surface Mounted Device) and is fairly new to the market. Anyone else here looking into LED lighting and know more about this COB type LED light strip?