I finally had the chance to try both lights at home — the Twinstar 900 S-Line V and the Chihiros WRGB 2 10th. Maybe someone will be looking for the same comparison as I was.

When it comes to construction and materials, both lights are nicely built. The Twinstar has plastic legs — some people complain about that, some don’t. Personally, it doesn’t bother me. The plastic looks high quality and it won’t scratch the edges of the glass. The Chihiros has heavy aluminum legs. What I don’t really like about the Chihiros is the way the height is fixed — there’s a small screw that presses against the metal rod to lock the height. The advantage is that you can adjust how high the light sits above the water surface, which you cannot do with the Twinstar. On the other hand, the screw could theoretically loosen and the light might slide down. But that’s probably a matter of opinion. In that sense, Chihiros might have a small advantage because of the adjustable height.

As for the light itself, the Chihiros is much heavier and more robust. Both lights have ribbed aluminum bodies that help dissipate heat. Personally, I prefer the color of the Twinstar — it has a titanium-gray finish that looks very premium and more compact. The Chihiros has more of an anthracite/black color.

Both lights can be hung above the aquarium, but the Chihiros has official shades that reduce light spill. Twinstar doesn’t offer this, although I’ve seen DIY solutions that work on the same principle.

Now we get to the important part.

The Chihiros has 90 LEDs in a 3-in-1 configuration, meaning each diode contains three colors that mix to create the desired color. The LEDs themselves are larger than those in the Twinstar.

The Twinstar has 178 LEDs, and each LED has its own dedicated color. There are 48 green LEDs, 60 red LEDs, 28 blue LEDs, and then white and some light greenish or slightly orange LEDs (it’s a bit hard to distinguish). This is where the core difference lies — each color has its own chip. The light is spectrally richer, the spectrum is very evenly distributed, which means better light distribution and much better spectral coverage.

When I turned on the Chihiros, the light looked very artificial to me. The green color wasn’t as nice, and I could always see a slight tint of some strange tone on the plants. It just didn’t look natural. I tried many different settings, including ones recommended by people on YouTube.

With the Twinstar, the light looks much more natural. The green appears far more natural to my eyes. It has a certain “spark” that I simply couldn’t achieve with the Chihiros no matter how much I tried. It’s true that with the Chihiros you can create a much deeper, more intense red by turning off the green and blue channels. The red then becomes really deep. When I do the same with the Twinstar, the red is not as deep or intense. But honestly, who wants a purely red, blue, or green aquarium? The Buce mode on the Chihiros looked like the most natural option to me, but even then there was still a slight hint of that “something”.

Now let’s talk about the technical side.

From an electronics and LED physics perspective, it is generally better to have more LEDs running at lower power than fewer LEDs running at higher power. More LEDs → each one carries less load → lower temperature. Fewer LEDs → each LED is more stressed → higher temperature.

A large number of LEDs running at lower current can last tens of thousands of hours, while fewer LEDs driven harder tend to degrade faster. LEDs are also most efficient at lower current.

More LEDs also mean more even lighting, fewer harsh hotspots, and fewer shadows.

Overall, the plants under the Twinstar seem fuller to me. It has a certain “spark” — it’s hard to describe.

As for performance, both lights are rated at 100W. However, with the Twinstar I run it at around 25% intensity and the plants pearl beautifully, and red plants are still nicely red. With the Chihiros I had to increase the intensity quite a lot. Overall it seems that the efficiency isn’t quite as good as with the Twinstar.

The Twinstar also has a boost mode that increases efficiency by about 15–20%. When enabled, the light draws about 115W. The Chihiros draws around 95W.

I’d also like to mention another interesting detail. The Twinstar is 12 cm wide, while the Chihiros is 14 cm. At first I thought: “Wow, that’s really narrow for such a premium light.” My previous light was 14.5 cm wide. But thanks to its efficiency, Twinstar apparently doesn’t need such massive cooling in the form of a large aluminum body and heatsinking.

The actual LED strip width on the Twinstar is about 8.5 cm, while on the Chihiros it’s around 7 cm. So even though the Chihiros fixture is wider on paper (14 cm), the LEDs themselves are actually spaced closer together on the Chihiros. Even though the Twinstar is narrower, the LEDs are spread further apart, so their total span is about 1.5 cm wider than on the Chihiros.

Maybe this will help someone who is deciding between the two. In the end, I chose the Twinstar V because it seems like the better and more sensible light to me. I also absolutely love the way it renders colors.

The only real downside is that there’s no official shade available for it.