Mal-illumination plagues us all, and the folks behind SOLshine want to help solve that. Let’s look at their offerings in-depth to see what we’re getting.
The Overview
The Photovites lamp and bioBulb use SunLike diodes to provide high-quality, flicker-free, full-spectrum light that supports circadian health and mood, along with healthy infrared light for added sunlight-like benefits. Though pricey, they’re among the few 2-in-1 products available, making SOL a top choice for this category.
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What is SOLshine?
The SOLshine founders worked with the late original pioneer of light, John Ott, and have now come full circle to provide some truly excellent full-spectrum light products to help solve some of the issues with current offerings.
This is a very small company run by folks who really believe in what they’re doing, which is always a plus.
These lights utilize genuine SunLike diodes (my favorite) and many infrared LEDs to complement them, so let’s dive deeper into this!
Why Infrared?
It’s believed that shorter wavelength blue light should be properly balanced with infrared as it is in natural Sunlight. Which I agree with! This is why I include halogen lights in my office setup!
However, the products from SOLshine offer a more elegant all-in-one solution. And they do contain a whole bunch of infrared!
Infrared can help with:
- Eye health
- Blood flow
- Nutrient simulation
- Libido
- and more!
So it’s nice that these lights include this crucial part of the light spectrum.
The SOL PhotoVites Lamp
This is SOLshine’s premier lamp, which offers a very bright SAD lamp experience coupled with five wavelengths of infrared light.
SOLshine recommends using the FSL (full spectrum light) mode for 15 minutes first thing in the morning, followed by 15 minutes on the NIR (near infrared) mode.
Using the Photovites lamp is very simple, with an on-off and mode buttons that switches between VIS+NIR or just NIR.
The all-metal build feels good, and a built-in fan on the back helps to assure me that this will last a long time!
Testing the PhotoVites Lamp Output
Using our lab-grade spectrometers, we can see exactly what the spectral output is here and how bright it is.
The first thing I want to look at is the visible spectrum, which is fantastic as it uses SunLike diodes, the world’s best full-spectrum diodes.
Here are the average lux measurements I got over the 15-minute run time:
- 1 ft: 20,700 lux
- 2 ft: 11,500 lux
SOL claims 13,470 lux at 2 feet, so we have different values here, but it’s close. And regardless, achieving over 10,000 lux at 2 feet is phenomically bright; many lamps struggle to achieve this at even 1 foot.
Testing the Infrared Range
The PhotoVites lamp also outputs a bunch of infrared, so I was curious to see what kind and how much. You can barely see it in that visible spectral graph above, but here’s the whole picture:
As you can see, there’s a ton of infrared light here! It even rivals the visible light output, which is pretty impressive. My meter only measures up to 950nm, but it appears there’s one more peak at around 950nm.
Testing Flicker
Next, I checked flicker with our flicker meter.
It turns out this is very flicker-free! I love to see this. Below, you’ll see the completely flat waveform, meaning this flickers about as much as the Sun.
The SOLshine bioBulb
The bioBulb from SOLshine is a pretty interesting idea. They’ve essentially packed the lamp into a much smaller form factor, which is VERY bright.
The basic bioBulb comes with a clip socket that allows you to attach it to anything you want.
Here it is attached to my lovely fake tree!
You can see that this is almost like a flashlight. You won’t want to look right at it! Position this above you at the edges of your vision and point it towards your face.
Checking Out the Floor Stand Add-on
There’s also a very handy telescoping floor stand that lets you use this anywhere if you can’t find a place to clip it.
Now, here’s how it looks extended: it gets pretty tall!
Here are a couple of photos from SOL’s website to give you an idea of use cases for this:
But let’s see how this compares to the lamp…
Testing the bioBulb Lamp Output
Once again, we placed the bioBulb in front of our spectrometer.
This emits a very similar spectrum as the Photovites lamp:
Here are the lux measurements:
- 1 ft: 31,300 lux
- 2 ft: 10,700 lux
It’s interesting that at 1 foot, this is much brighter than the lamp; however, actually becomes slightly less bright at 2 feet. Still, this is a very bright, full-spectrum light bulb capable of significantly impacting your circadian rhythm, among other things.
Flicker
Of course, flicker was also tested on the bioBulb, which also doesn’t disappoint!
Below, you’ll see that there’s a slight waveform ripple here, but it’s something I’d still consider flicker-free!
Nothing to worry about here.
Conclusions and Thoughts
Utilizing some wonderful SunLike diodes, the Photovites lamp and bioBulb emit a very high-quality, flicker-free, full-spectrum visible light that’s perfect for enhancing your circadian rhythm and improving your mood.
But they also emit a broad range of healthy infrared light! Bringing them that much closer to providing you with the full benefits of Sunlight indoors.
While these are certainly expensive, they’re some of the only products of their kind on the market. And if you’re looking for a 2-in-1 product like this, SOL is a great company to go with.
SOL Photovites Full-Spectrum Infrared SAD Lamp
Pros
Cons
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SOLshine bioBulb
Pros
Cons
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Hi, how does infrared range of this lamp compare to the blockbluelight model? They both have spikes in that range, but it appears that solshine covers it better?
It definitely does appear to be better on the SOL device. MY measurements area bit different than theirs, so I’m not sure if maybe there’s just more variation in the IR diodes, but yeah that’s my take.The SOL also uses cooler VIS diodes so it’s a more effective SAD lamp as well.
Dang, I already bought the blockbluelight version and then just saw this review lol. Saved $100 with coupons tho so can’t complain I guess.
Haha! They’re pretty similar so I wouldn’t be too mad.