To research the feasibility, advantages and disadvantages of using white LED in collimation measurement, the comparison was conducted between collimated beams from a white LED and a LD, through comparative experiments of stability in intensity and positioning during a long-term work and the stability influenced by different air disturbance. The study found that the LD needs to preheat before working, and its intensity is unstable due to raising temperature inner the laser when working for long time, while the white LED beam can keep unchanged for long time without preheating. As a cool source, the white LED introduces less drift caused by deformation of mechanical structure resulting from heating. In research on influence of air disturbance, it shows that the white LED perfects not good as the LD. According to theoretical analysis on uniform temperature gradient field in air, and calculation results of beam drift with different wavelengths in white beam under the same disturbance, a beam with longer wavelength is less affected by disturbance. Thus the influence on the white beam is a weighted average of beams with different wavelengths and intensity, which is bigger than the influence on LD. Finally, the measurements of straightness errors of a linear guide using two collimated beams were conducted, which shows intensity distribution of the white LED beam keeps stable in propagation. Over all, the white LED has low cost, more stable intensity and less heating, and can be applied for collimation measurement.