Barrina LED UV Light, T10 Vertical Standing Table Blacklight Fixture, 14W, 385-400nm, 40cm Desktop LED Black Light with Stand and On/Off Switch, Perfect for Halloween Fluorescent Poster Glow Party

Good lamp

Happy with this, looks bigger than it actually is in the photo but that's my bad for missing the size.

Super just the job

As others have said, it gives off a decent amount of 'blue' light, and anything white or fluorescent really jumps out at you, especially in a dark environment of course. But beyond the special lighting effects and apparently, the ability to show up organic stains, I'm really not sure what the point is of this light. My husband thought it might look good lighting up the screen he uses with his games console. Unfortunately, having recently had a cataract and astigmatism correction op, he found it difficult to cope with, particularly in conjunction with his other eye, which he had not had corrected at the same time. Having said it was giving him headaches and blurry vision, we removed it. I've since read something about certain strengths of UV light being used to kill off living organisms like bacteria and to sterilise areas. I've also heard how damaging it might be to use around humans and animals long term. And whilst I'm sure this light is harmless, I wouldn't want to take the risk. Sadly, its no good for our requirements.

This arrives in a plain but very sturdy box to protect the light bar, with the base plate in its own cardboard sleeve to stop it bashing about. A really nice design feature of this light is the mounting base arrangement. You see that little bolt sticking up out of the base plate? That's a standard quarter-inch tripod thread. This means that if you can mount a camera to it, you can mount this light to it. Tripods, flexigrips, suction mounts, CCTV camera brackets, it'll mount to them all. The light has 0.5 metres of 0.5mm² three-core cable to an on-off switch, then a further 0.9m to a mains plug. You will definitely need to replace the fuse in the plug though, as it comes with a 13 amp fuse and should be replaced with a 3 amp one. It passes a Portable Appliance Test, although the earth continuity test needs to allow for the fact that the cable is only 0.5mm². With the light on you'll see that there's a heavy, blue component to the light, making it difficult to photograph accurately. An iPhone 7 shows it as pink, a Panasonic DMC-LX2 can't focus on it. The shot of the illuminated LEDs was taken with a Panasonic HC-X900M camcorder. Testing the output with a reusable UV test strip (also available from Amazon) shows that it's putting out UVA and not UVC. This is good, as UVC causes eye irritation (it's why you shouldn't watch someone using a welder) and is used in germicidal applications. You don't want UVC on display! Interestingly it has very little effect on banknotes. One review photo shows banknotes under a fluorescent blacklight tube, compared with the same notes under the Barrina LED light. The Bank of England recommends UV at 365nm to highlight its security features. The Barrina uses 395nm UV LEDs instead of 365nm so is less effective. This is also likely to affect UV fluorescent paint, which is also optimised for 365nm blacklights. If you're looking for a UV light to make white items fluoresce, look no further. If you're looking for a UV light for counterfeit note detection or use with blacklight-reactive paint, look for a 365nm model instead.