Harlowe Sol 5 Spectra Creator Kit review: a stylish, portable and colourful LED

I always look forward to testing a new light from Harlowe (formerly Hobolite) because each LED in the Harlowe range looks stylish, is sturdily constructed, and delivers excellent performance, achieving a perfect combination of form and function. It’s not surprising that Harlowe lists multiple design awards on their site.

Harlowe lights vary in cost, style, and size, from the portable palm-sized 5W Iris to the mighty studio-friendly 100W Avant. They also sell a couple of light wands - Harlowe Blades. Regardless of their size, shape, and price, every Harlowe light shares distinctive properties such as silver metal bodies adorned with faux brown leather panelling that is reminiscent of a 1960s-era camera. Many of them evoke the design of a vintage Hasselblad camera, in my opinion - take a look at the Harlowe Avant Max for an example.

The Sol 5 Spectra is an updated version of the older Sol 5, a MagSafe light that will stick to a MagSafe-compatible smartphone and illuminate your selfies or rear-facing camera subjects. The old Sol 5 is a bi-colour light, so you can adjust the colour temperature to complement different available light sources. As its name suggests, the new Sol 5 Spectra is an RGBCW light, so it offers a spectrum of 36,000 colours (as well as the standard bi-colour range in degrees Kelvin).

The Sol 5 Spectra Creator Kit also ships with a collection of accessories to modify its output still further, so if you’re a mobile content creator, this will be an essential addition to your content-creating toolset.

Harlowe Sol 5 Spectra: Specifications

Harlowe Sol 5 Spectra: Price

Due to its innovative design and sturdy construction, any Harlowe LED could be considered a luxury item, and the price for the Sol 5 Spectra reflects that status. At $179, the Standard Kit Sol 5 Spectra costs $100 more than the older Sol 5, but you do get the ability to emit 36,000 colours when using the higher-spec Spectra.

To get the most from the Sol 5 Spectra, you really need to invest in the more expensive Creator Kit, which includes important accessories such as a branded mini-tripod. The tripod enables you to light your subject from an angle rather than capturing the flat-lit look you’d get when sticking the Sol 5 Spectra to your smartphone via its MagSafe connector. The Sol 5 Spectra’s Creator Kit also boasts modifiers such as magnetically attachable Magic Lenses that add textures to the light emitted by the LED.

Harlowe Sol 5 Spectra: Design & Handling

I’ve already extolled the award-winning, innovative design of the Harlowe range, and the Sol 5 Spectra slots into that line-up with its design credentials present and correct. As well as being constructed from the same silver material as its peers, the Sol 5 Spectra is the size and shape of a small camera lens, but Harlowe has still managed to squeeze a small patch of brown faux leather panelling onto its rear to ensure continuity of branding. The faux leather is also visible on the legs of the mini tripod that ships with the Creator Kit.

Despite fitting into the palm of your hand, the Sol 5 Spectra feels surprisingly heavy, which indicates a quality build. The similarly sized and specced JOBY Beamo Reel Colour LED feels like a child’s plastic toy in comparison to the Harlowe Sol 5 Spectra’s more solid construction.

One of the Sol 5 Spectra’s key design features is its MagSafe-compatible magnetic mount. It’ll clamp securely to the rear of your MagSafe-compatible smartphone. You can then rotate the light on a hinge so that it’s pointing at your face to illuminate a selfie via your smartphone’s front-facing camera. To shine a light on subjects being filmed by your smartphone’s rear-facing cameras, simply swivel the light through 180º via its other hinge. The Sol 5 Spectra also clips magnetically to the Creator Kit’s supplied mini tripod, which, like the LED, is heavier than it looks and solidly built despite being small.

The Creator Kit comes in a black card box with inlays to store the dome-shaped Magic Lenses. The box isn’t particularly robust, but it contains a black faux leather carry case (again branded with the brown leather patches and a matching strap). The strap is very thin, and the gold clasps that attach it to the case evoke the look of a lady’s handbag. The case is quite small too, so you can carry the Sol 5 Spectra and the tripod in it, but the two Magic Lenses and their Magnetic Mount will have to travel separately, which isn’t ideal. The case does have a side pocket to contain the 5 Magic Plates that ship with the Creator Kit, though you need the Magic Lens Magnetic Mount to use these modifiers, and that won’t fit in the case. ‘We’re going to need a bigger bag!’

Harlowe Sol 5 Spectra: Performance

To test the Harlowe Sol 5 Spectra Creator Kit, I rendezvoused with my regular model, Maddy (Insta: @runwayvoguish), at the Barbican Centre. Maddy was instantly impressed with the handbag-style carry case that contained most of the Creator Kit, and she enjoyed carrying it over her shoulder en route to the darker corridors of the location’s Brutalist architecture, as you’ll see in our supporting video.

I lent Maddy my iPhone 16 Plus, and she clamped the Sol 5 Spectra to the back of the iPhone and swivelled it round to light her face while composing some selfies via the front-facing camera. As a 5W LED, the Sol 5 Spectra only produces 220 lm (but that’s the equivalent of the light produced by 220 candles, which was more than enough to illuminate a selfie in such a gloomy location). When the LED was set to bi-colour mode, Maddy was able to swipe the circular touch-sensitive panel on the rear of the unit to dial in a warmer colour temperature of 2700K, which complemented her skin tone and bright red jacket.

By pressing the top intensity dial (which also doubles up as a button), Maddy switched to RGB mode and could then stroke the back of the LED to scroll through a rainbow range of creative colours. These added atmosphere and drama to her selfies as she walked through the location’s sci-fi style corridors. I was impressed that Maddy was able to interact with the touch-sensitive panel despite the fashionable length of her nails!

I then asked Maddy to shoot some selfies with the superior back-facing cameras on the iPhone 16 Plus. She was easily able to swivel the magnetically attached LED’s head through 180º, but she could no longer refer to the iPhone’s display to compose her selfie. Fortunately, the Sol 5 Spectra’s magnetic mount has a built-in mirror (like a make-up compact case), so Maddy could still check that she was in shot.

The next stage of our test involved a more conventional model shoot. I magnetically clamped the Sol 5 Spectra onto its tabletop tripod. When the tripod is at its shortest length, the 0.34lbs LED is a little top-heavy, so I was worried that the tripod-mounted Spectra could topple over. However, by extending its legs to a height of 10.5”, the light was very stable on the tripod. I was then able to pop the tripod-mounted Spectra on a concrete rail and illuminate Maddy from an angle to create a mix of ‘modelling’ light and shade that emphasised the contours of her face.

On a previous shoot in the Barbican, I was using two long and bright tripod-mounted Viltrox K90 tube lights. These conspicuous LEDs soon drew the attention of a security person who asked us to move on. Sometimes tripods act as 'red rags to a bull’ to security personnel when I’m shooting on location, but the diminutive size of the Sol 5 Spectra and its tabletop tripod meant that my test shoot was uninterrupted. If you need to ‘run and gun’ in low-light locations, then the Harlowe Sol 5 Spectra will suit your needs.

Finally, I popped the Magic Mount adaptor onto the Sol 5 Spectra and magnetically clamped one of the Magic Lenses onto it. I’ve encountered Harlowe’s Magic Lenses before when testing the Harlowe Iris. The Magic Lens is a multi-faceted dome that breaks up the light into patterned textures. These can be further modified when using the Harlowe Sol 5 Spectra by sliding in one of the five Magic plates. Magic Lens textures can give your portraits a more creative look. However, as the Sol 5 Spectra is only able to emit 220 lm (or 440 lm in a 30-second Boost Mode), the patterns that it produced on my test shoot were barely discernible in my test location. The much more powerful 5W Iris can kick out 2820 lm, hence it has more noticeable textured patterns.

Harlowe Sol 5 Spectra: Verdict

Like all Harlowe LEDs, the Sol 5 Spectra looks and feels like a quality product. You do pay more for premium products, but this price is reflected in the Spectra’s sturdy build, with its aircraft-grade silver aluminium body and the brown faux-leather adorning the rear of the light and its tripod legs. Many of the LEDs that I’ve tested are constructed of plastic - such as the boxy plastic lights in the SmallRig RM01 kit, and as a result feel cheap and are relatively fragile. With the Sol 5 Spectra you’re paying for an LED that is there to ‘show off’ to your model and to the audience of your YouTube channel. It’s designed to be seen and admired as well as providing illumination.

When it comes to illumination, this is a relatively low-powered LED so it’s most suited to lighting a subject in close proximity. You can boost it to 5.5W, but only in 30-second bursts, so that’s not particularly useful when shooting video. As it’s designed to clamp to your smartphone, the Spectra’s low wattage shouldn’t be a problem when you’re filming yourself at arm’s length. It also worked well in our low-light test location. In low light, footage from an iPhone can look very grainy and even pixelated, but as you’ll see in our test footage, the Sol 5 Spectra helped us capture high-quality video.

Alternatives

If you need a cheaper but compact LED to illuminate your mobile photography, then the JOBY Beamo will meet your needs. It’s not as pretty as the Harlowe Sol 5 Spectra, and you need to mount it via a cold shoe connection rather than magnetically, but it can kick out a much stronger light source than the Spectra (1500 lm versus the Spectra’s 220).

Read the full JOBY Beamo review

If you’re a solo shooter, then this beautifully designed and lightweight LED deserves a place in your kit bag (and it will draw lots of attention to your social media channel). With accessories such as The Magic Lens, you’ll also enjoy getting experimental with clips and stills. At 2820 lm, it also boasts a much stronger illumination than the 220 lm emitted by the Harlowe Sol 5 Spectra.

Read the full Hobolite Iris review