Neewer Basics ML01 Macro Photography LED Light review: improve your macro and product photography

The Neewer ML01 is marketed as a macro photography LED, though I think more people find it more useful for product photography. One of my hobbies is toy photography, in which I pose sci-fi figures (mostly from Doctor Who), waft some fog-machine-generated mist around them, then take a snap to share on social media. I approach lighting action figures in much the same way as I shoot real models, using LEDs as key and fill lights to accentuate the 3D form of the subject.

For a long time, my go-to toy photography lighting kit has been the SmallRig RM01. This three-point lighting kit comes with three mini tripods that are perfectly scaled for photographing action figures. However, adding a splash of creative colour involves fiddling around with sheets of coloured gel that need to be attached to each LED.

The Neewer ML01 LED is a strong contender to replace my SmallRig RM01 kit, as it promises to make my toy photography – and your product photography – quicker and easier to light. For starters, there are no coloured gels to clip onto the Neewer LED. Instead, you can toggle through five different colours at the tap of a button. The LED sits at the end of a bendable stalk, so you can position it with more control than you’d get from a mini tripod.

The ML01 also ships with a collection of metal stencils, or gobos, that can cast textured shapes onto your subject or background. They’re a great way to add creative patterns to a backdrop, though you’ll need to purchase a second ML01 if you also want a dedicated key light for your foreground subject. As you’ll see from the Price section, however, doing so shouldn’t blow your budget.

Specifications

Price

That puts a single ML01 at around the same price as one SmallRig RM01 Mini Cube LED, which I previously used for my toy photography (see this review’s introduction). However, you can buy a three-pack of the SmallRig LEDs. The SmallRig kit gives you a complete three-point lighting setup, whereas the same budget will only stretch to two Neewer ML01 lights.

Saying that, I really value the flexibility (pun intended) of the ML01’s bendy stalk compared with the more limited mini tripods supplied with the SmallRig kit. The ML01 can also change colour at the tap of a button, whereas the SmallRig cubes require you to fiddle around with coloured gels and a plastic mount.

Design and handling

On first unboxing the LED, it felt like a solidly built product, partly due to its 157g weight. The LED is stored in a coiled position, but you can uncoil and straighten it to its full length of 53cm. The silicone-covered stalk can be bent into almost any position, and the aluminium LED head at the end stays firmly in whatever pose you choose. The base of the unit is also made from aluminium, so the whole thing feels much more solid than the mostly plastic cubes that ship with the SmallRig kit I mentioned in the introduction.

The base of the light has a grooved section that makes it easier to grip, plus a rubber seal that protects the USB-C socket used to charge the LED’s built-in battery. Also on the base, you’ll find two silicone buttons. Press the On button to activate the LED, and the icons on both buttons illuminate in green. Tapping the On button cycles through five levels of brightness, while tapping the C (Colour) button toggles between five colours – Cold, Warm, Red, Green and Blue. I did notice that these two silicone buttons are very easy to pry off, so there could be a danger of losing them if you were doing a macro shoot on location. This would render the LED unusable.

Talking of location shoots, the base of the unit has a 1/4-inch thread into which you can screw a sturdy, sharp aluminium spike. This is designed to penetrate the ground and support the LED when shooting macro subjects outdoors. More on that in the Performance section. You can also use the thread to attach a supplied clamp if you need to attach the ML01 to your desktop for some product photography.

Other accessories include 11 metal gobo stencils and a plastic mount that enables you to position a stencil over the LED to project a creative lighting pattern. Some of these gobos are a bit cheesy – one projects ‘Happy Birthday’, for example. Others I found more abstract and therefore more useful for adding creative textures to backgrounds, as you’ll see in the Performance section and in this review’s supporting video.

Performance

I performed two tests with the Neewer ML01. The first involved a trip into my local forest to try my hand at on-location macro photography. I screwed the supplied aluminium spike into the base of the ML01. It’s a very sharp spike indeed, so it might raise an eyebrow if you were transporting the kit through airport security, for example.

Although it was a sunny day, the interior of the forest was a mixture of sunlight and shade. I was easily able to drive the spike into the forest floor and cast a strong but focused key light onto a range of subjects, including tree bark, moss and flowers. The extra illumination provided by the ML01 enabled me to use a faster shutter speed and capture sharper macro shots, while colours also looked more vibrant. The 53cm-long stalk meant that I could easily position the LED to illuminate various flowers from the side, which also enabled me to light insects as they pollinated the flowers.

My handheld macro video footage looked a bit wobbly at normal speed, so I switched my iPhone 17 to Slo-mo mode. Shooting at 240fps and playing the footage back in slow motion made the movement look much smoother and gave me a clearer view of insects in flight. Shooting at such a high frame rate also requires plenty of light, making the ML01 particularly useful when capturing macro video footage close to the shaded forest floor. You can see the results for yourself in this section’s supporting video.

I then popped into my home studio for my second test of the ML01 – a product shot. I swapped the metal spike for the supplied aluminium desk clamp. Neewer had lent me two ML01 kits, so I used one as a key light for my toy photography subject. I attached the supplied barn doors to the head of the key light to limit the spread of light to the action figure. I found that one of the barn door flaps was prone to dropping off when I took it out of the box, but it easily snapped back on and stayed securely in place.

I set the second ML01 up on the opposite side of the action figure and pointed it at the scene’s backdrop – a sheet of blue card from my local stationers. I attached the gobo mount to this background light and slid in one of the 11 metal gobos to project an abstract texture behind my subject. I then enjoyed tapping the C (Colour) buttons on both LEDs to find suitably contrasting colours for my sci-fi-themed toy photo.

A quick burst from my Ulanzi Filmog Ace smoke machine added a cinematic layer of dry ice-style fog, which helped diffuse and break up the light from the two LEDs. Check out our smoke machine buying guide for more on these useful gadgets for adding atmosphere to product photography and model shoots.

Verdict

The Neewer ML01 is a versatile little LED that proved equally useful for lighting macro subjects outdoors and small products in the studio. Its bendable 53cm stalk gives you far more freedom to position the light than a conventional mini tripod, while the supplied spike and desk clamp make it easy to use in very different environments.

I particularly enjoyed being able to switch between five colours at the tap of a button, rather than having to fiddle around with coloured gels. The supplied gobos are also a fun way to add texture to backgrounds, although some are more useful than others. Build quality is generally impressive, despite a couple of small niggles such as the easily removable silicone buttons and a barn door flap that occasionally popped off.

A single ML01 costs about as much as one SmallRig RM01 cube, so it isn’t the cheapest route to a complete multi-light setup. However, its flexible stalk, built-in colour options and useful collection of accessories make it a much more creative and adaptable lighting tool. For macro, toy and small-scale product photography, it’s an LED that I can see myself reaching for regularly.

Alternatives

SmallRig RM01

The SmallRig RM01 kit ships with three mini cube-shaped LEDs, so you can enjoy using classic three-point lighting setups in your product photo shoots. It’s just a bit of a fiddle to swap gels for different coloured outputs.

Neewer Basics FL20 20W RGB Portable Photography Flashlight

This Neewer LED works in a similar way to the ML01 in that you can toggle between different colours and add gobos to the light to add creative creative patterns. However, it’s more suitable for full-sized models rather than macro or product shots.