Cases

The Ulanzi CardLite comes with a felt pouch, so you can store the gels and light without losing them. It doesn’t offer much protection, it is more just a place to keep all of the bits in one place. The Aputure, on the other hand, comes with a nice padded zip case that has room for the light, mounting bracket, gels and even a little room for some extra things.

Mounting

The Aputure AL-M9 light has no built-in mounting points but is supplied with a mounting bracket. The bracket has pros and cons, its another piece to carry around which is annoying, but it does give you the option to mount it horizontally or vertically. An annoyance for me is that once the light is mounted you can’t change the filters or gels without removing it from the mount.

The larger depth of the Ulanzi CardLite allows for a tripod thread to be built into the bottom. Although a small tripod arm or ball head will allow for vertical positioning. Both have options to mount as a cold shoe and a 1/4’’ thread for tripod mounting. The Aputure does come out slightly on top here with the additional option to mount it into thread, so into a cage or similar. Again, this could be easily modified on the Ulanzi light with a cheap adapter.

Reliability

I cannot fully comment on this as I have only owned both lights for less than a year, but both still charge well and never cut out when I am using them. You will likely have a better returns experience with the Apurture light, should it come to that. There are of course times where you will receive a defective unit or it will get damaged in transit. But this will always be covered by the company you purchase through.

Price and where you can buy them

The Aputure M9 can be picked up for around £45 ($50) while the Ulanzi can be found for under £20 ($25). Below is a link to the lights and to some other little accessories you may find helpful when trying to setup your scene