Rovelight RL-600 Modeling light problem, or as designed?

I noticed this weekend as while photographing the flash tube of my Rovelight RL-600 firing, using an ND400 (10-stop) filter, that the LED modeling light does not have all of its segments lit up. It has a symmetrical pattern of what looks like 15 diodes total, but only 10 are illuminated: a strip of 5 down the center, and then 5 to one side. The 5 segments on the other side don't light up.

My question is: Is this a defect in this particular unit, or is it true of all RL-600's (e.g. possibly intentional for heating or battery life reasons).

Here is what it looks like through the ND400 filter. You have to look at it through a very dark filter (or stack of filters) to see the individual diodes; to the naked eye it just looks like the single bright dot. 10 stops of ND makes for comfortable viewing. In the photo below you can see there are 15 diodes in 5 column, in a pattern of 2-3-5-3-2. Those right-most rows of 3 and 2 are not lighting up.

I haven't heard back from Adorama yet, or from any other RL-600 owners, but I showed this to someone today who specializes in COB LED lighting for green home applications, and he says this is a defective LED and that the part ranges $0.99 to $3 to replace. Apparently, quality control of cheap COB LED chips from China is rather poor, and it's common to have many of the diodes shorted out like this. Because they are so bright, such that you can only see the defect if you look through very dark glass (in my case a 10-stop ND filter), most people won't notice the problem.

If you have an RL-600, and the modeling light seems weak to you, I encourage you to get a stack of ND filter or some welding goggles and take a closer look at it.

Interesting.

I'll have to take a look at mine when I get off work.

Very best,

Here is the LEDs in my 2 RL600's. They are different but there are 15 total illuminated dots within each LED.

Heya,

Ok, here's my modeling light in my Rovelight:

Thanks so much guys! That confirms it beyond any doubt for me, mine has a bum chip in it. It would look just like avg8or's second one and MalVeaux's if was fully functional.

Adorama got back to me on this too. I had emailed Helen, and she forwarded my inquiry to a tech who actually got back to me with a similar photo (below). I have to say, I'm very impressed with Adorama's customer support that they actually repeated my test and confirmed the problem! Kudos for that.