I'm no LED expert, in fact I'm basically a beginner. And I was not trying to make you feel bad about your purchase. I was more pointed out that these are way over hyped by people on threads like Rollitup, and people are buying into the $5 vs $29 thing without thinking it through.
These are priced at $11.69, but for the 4000k one only, as far as I could find the 3000 and 3500 are $19 so quite a bit more than yours.
In looking at the data sheets for both these products, the luminous efficiency of the LM301b is 203 lm/w in typical current and 226 in max. The others ones are 137 typical and 165 max. That is almost a 50% increase in efficiency, which is significant. And when you consider that the $11.96 ones are 1120 mm long, and the $4.92 ones are 559 mm. Both have double rows of diodes so I'm assuming the $11.69 ones have twice the number of diodes, might be wrong about that though. Which would make them a pretty good deal compared to the $4.92.
What I'm curious about though is why do you say that running them at a lower wattage increases the efficiency?
Yeah those strips are about 1/2 the power - comparable to the BL Gen3 - and when you add the tariff - not such a good deal - the GEn3 Bridgelux stand as king at Future Elect. shipped 10$ ea ...idk why I am so silly ...but it was just a "learning" moment for me I guess... The strips I bought have double the diodes - but not nearly as good -
