RGB/RGBW LED Light strips are typically less bright than white LED strips due to several technical and design-related reasons. Here are the main reasons:

Luminous Flux Distribution:

• White LED Light Strip: In white LED strips, all the LED chips are dedicated to producing white light. This means that all the light output is solely concentrated in the white spectrum, maximizing brightness and efficiency.Generally, white LEDs are more efficient than the combined RGB LEDs when producing white light.
• RGB/RGBW LED Light Strips: the Digital RGB/RGBW LED Strips distributed among red, green, blue, and white LED chips. It need to balance between color variety and brightness. When white light is emitting, although the white LED chips can directly provide white light, the brightness is spread out across different color chips to create various colors and mixing effects, which sacrisfy the overall brightness.

Power Distribution:

• White Color LED Light Strips: All the power is used for the white LED chips, converting all electrical energy into white light, resulting in higher efficiency and providing higher brightness.
• RGB/RGBW LED Light Strips: The electrical power is distributed among red, green, blue, and white LED chips. This means that each color chip receives relatively less power, which reduces the overall brightness.

Mixing Efficiency:

• White LED Light Strips: They directly produce white Color without the need for color mixing, which results in higher light efficiency.
• RGB/RGBW LED Light Strips: Digital RGB Strips creat certain colors by mixing red, green, and blue colors. The mixing process involves some efficiency loss, especially when displaying non-pure white colors, resulting in overall efficiency.

Heat Management:

• white LED Light strips: single color usually have simpler heat management, maintaining higher efficiency.
• RGB /RGBW LED Light strips: it contain more LED chips, which can generate more heat and lead to heat management issues. Excessive heat can reduce the efficiency and brightness of the LEDs.

Conclusion

In summary, the lower brightness of RGBW LED strips compared to white COB LED strips is due to the distribution of luminous flux, power allocation, mixing efficiency, and heat management, drivers. RGBW LED strips are designed to provide a wide range of colors and dynamic effects, balancing between color variety and brightness to meet different application needs. White Color LED strips, on the other hand, focus on delivering high brightness white light, suitable for applications that require high luminosity.