SMD vs COB: What is SMD?

SMD, or “Surface Mounted Device” LEDs, are the most common LEDs in the market. The LED chip is permanently fused to a printed circuit board, and it’s highly popular due to its versatility. You can find it in light bulbs and string lights, and even in the notification light on your mobile phone.

The smd led chips come in a variety of sizes. SMD LED can accommodate chips with complicated designs, like the SMD 5050, which is 5mm wide. The SMD 3528, on the other hand, are 3.5mm wide. The SMD chips are small, almost close to the design of the flat, square computer chip.

One of the distinct features of SMD LED chips is the number of contacts and diodes they have.

SMD LED chips can have more than just two contacts (which makes it different from the classic DIP LED). There can be up to 3 diodes on a single chip, with each diode having an individual circuit. Each circuit would have one cathode and one anode, leading to 2, 4 or 6 contacts in a chip.

This configuration is the reason why SMD chips are more versatile (comparing SMD vs COB). The chip can include a red, green, and blue diode. With these three diodes, you can already create virtually any colour simply by adjusting the output level.

SMD chips are also known to be bright. They can produce 50 to 100 lumens per watt.