LED light bar. Before I pull the trigger...

Other Types of Lights LED Spotlights
21

AFAIK, all these cheap Chinese light bars suffer from:

  • An extreme gross exaggeration in claimed lumens and drive current.
  • VERY poor heat sinking - the emitters are soldered to a single large MCPCB with a cheap integral driver sharing the same board with minimal contact surface to the cooling fins. :Sp
  • Cheap low luster reflectors and crap lens that kill whatever lumens potential might have been there, probably by as much as 1/3rd… maybe even more. :~
  • Low bin horrible tinted emitters to save in production costs and maximize profits from the unsuspecting/uninformed. :*
  • Many of them leak when wet and steam up their own lenses once heated up! :Sp It all depends on which slave labor child happened to seal it on the production line before he took his cookie break & nap. :_(
  • No thermal protection by throttling the drive current to control heat. Maybe that doesnt matter since they are so cheaply constructed and will probably overheat anyway, thus greatly reducing lumens while killing the life of the emitters. Emitters dim as they heat up while also drawing more current, which also reduces their life span.
  • Very few have high/low selector, only high mode.
  • I have yet to find or read about one that can be taken apart without ruining it. If you find one online taken apart with pics where the owner didnt completely destroy it, please post a link so we can check it out and learn from it. Obvious, Im talking about a real light bar… not some silly little 12 emitter POS driven with XPG, epistars or worse.
  • Has anyone that off-roads with one of these not complained yet about broken mounts during the first evening at play? JUNK!!! :Sp
  • There are probably 15-20 basic models with different name brands, but many are completely identical and sold with false claims that dont match one another. The Chinese already know from great experience that by adding a few thousand falsely advertised lumens above their competitors grossly exaggerated lumens, there will be some ignorant kid out there that will believe the claims and buy it. Confucius say, “a fool and his money are soon parted.” :davie:

IMO, save your money and buy a proven name brand XM-L2 driven monster that you can later disassemble to change the emitters as LED technology advances. I wanted to buy a large Chinese LED light bar to strip and swap for my own electronics and emitters, then reuse the housings and reflectors. This is when I discovered what completely overpriced garbage they are. There is an overwhelming myriad of poor testimony from those that offroad and bought these, all available to read by anyone willing to search.

Im not trying to pop anyone’s bubble here, and Im glad that some people are pleased with their investments. Light bars are fun to think about and would be very cool if they actually delivered as promised. But I think its more important to separate fact from fiction, especially before completely wasting such a large chunk of hard earned cash that you will most likely regret soon after spending. Its to those that think they’ve got something that kicks till they come across someone on the trail with a basic minimal version from a name brand that completely smokes the hell out of the largest Chinese light bars. The difference is (as they say) like night and day. :bigsmile:

22

I really wonder why that sub exists at all. I tried to get some advice on modding my Hella 500s and what Scheinwerfermann and his little sidekick Alaric Darconville kept saying was that the H3 based HID bulbs that would be required could not exist legally because they could be used to make compliant lamps noncompliant. If you step over into the spotlights forum these same bulbs are used all the time for modding halogen spotlights and nobody says a word about legality.

23

Funny. I was just looking at these LED bars again. They’re already down to $50. If they get down to $30. I’ll have to buy one.

24

i bought a small one just to see how it does. I’m not sure Id expect much more than 1/2 the claimed output but even that would be ok for my purposes. Maybe shine it over the side of the boat and see if I can attract some fishes.

Also it is kind of funny that the guy above complains about the other guy and then pretty much takes over your thread. That guy on CPF is ridiculous but, really?

25

Which one did you buy a small one of? Sorry if I missed it.

26

As the use of the MT-G2 gets more common, these are going to be great, not yet though.

27

Im yet to see an LED I trust at 60 miles an hour, the light is too … umm thin for want of a better word. I can only compare it to a thin transparent broth, as opposed to the thicker more dense light of HID which I would say is more stew or thick soup like to keep the comparison. I really dont know whether thats lumens or lux or some other measure, but its light density I guess. Things are lit up, sure, but not with the same intensity that gives me assurance, like a HID or Halogen does. When walking, you have all the time in the world to absorb what the light illuminates and its plenty bright, but when moving quickly as in a car, it becomes apparent to me at least, LED is not quite as intense as say halogen/xenon, let alone proper HID. Most beamshots have slowish settings which gives a false sense of the amount of light potential.

Maybe I have not seen a well driven, or over driven MT-G2 in action. But my guess is it will still be too wishy washy to trust at speed.

28

You need proper combining and projecting reflectors, thats why you can’t transplant an LED into a halogen housing, they are designed for a completely different bulb beam pattern which is what a halogen housing does to halogen light (without the well designed reflector its just as useless if not more so)

29

I wasnt referring to LEDs stuffed into say Hella reflectors. Its not the brightness, LEDs are bright, but they dont seem the same to your eyes at speed. Speed being the essence that matters with cars etc. The way I see it, your eyes dont react the same at speed as they do when walking with a light in hand, and that is demonstrated by current LED tech in vehicle driving light applications. The light just seems like a candle in a pie tin. Multiple LEDs, larger reflectors will make up for some of that if driven hard, but then theres little if any gain over a simple HID.

30

You don’t get a fussier group than Porsche owners, and they are going nuts for these H4 replacements removing HID conversions for them. http://woodypeck.ipage.com/

31

2nd hand Porsche owners?

  • clicks link
  • sees flip up doors
    /link
32

I saw the headlights for sale. I don’t know what cree emitter cranks out that many lumens. I’m out of the loop but 2800 lumen emitters seem like a lot but I’m out of the loop there. Also sometimes I think the rating is for both bulbs. Just guessing there.

33

A small light bar light that, 12 emitters. I’m just curious at this point.

34

We have a few will try anything lambo door types, but if the normal owners “like” a feature as in consensus, then its pretty good. The LED H4 replacements look like the best available type right now.

35

Rating is for high/low beam setting.

36

I saw some with two diodes but some with just one. Is there a high/low with just one diode?

37

Not for road-legal automotive headlights. The beam profile needs to be different in low.

38

I am confused, how does speed change the light from an LED, keep in mind your headlight has a completely different beam pattern from your flashlight, its designed to light up the road in a very specific way, its “projected”, not circular like your flashlight

39

for automotive lighting, I would go to hidplanet. forums.
if you’re serious about auto lighting, a good retrofit is what you want.

40

If your thinking is that someone might be talking about the light itself being changed by speed, you might want to reconsider the options you have considered in that interpretation.

When walking, it takes time to cover 40 metres, you can easily pause and your eyes have heaps of time to react to the information they are receiving, you have time to squint, tap the clicky to change modes, tilt your head if necessary, but none of this is true at speed. Not that you cant do those things, but you have less time in which to do them, and your eyes have less time to make adjustments to interpret the lit data as each metre is wizzing by, ie: seeing a moose/elk/roo/land shark off the side about to bound in front, or the rock/branch/change in direction on a road with no markers etc, you know, driving hazards.

At speed, your eyes have less time to absorb the light being bounced back at them, and what that light reveals. The way your eyes work is by receiving reflected light. The LED is the same brightness stationary as it is at speed, well ignoring any heat related issues that might be mitigated if air flow potential at speed is utilised, but you have less time to make sense of the light (youre moving at X metres/sec), and the images that brings to your receptors etc. That would be why I mentioned that when walking the light is plenty bright enough, your eyes have heaps of time to adjust and react to the images coming in, at speed your eyes have much less time, its less than optimal. IMO.

My 2 brightest lights, A Solarforce s2200 (MT-G2) and a Supbeam X40 (3 x XML?2?), dont quite have the density of light as my HIDs, and they are only 35w each. Dont get me wrong, my torches are plenty bright, could be brighter, but they just dont have the same impact as HIDs. Like I said originally, Id compare them as the torches being translucent broth, compared to a thick dense stew of HID light. HID saturates better.

Sure you could overdrive the hell out of an LED, DBCStim seems to pluck lumens from them just fine, but good luck keeping it cool for hours of run times on end. Reliability has to factor in somewhere too. No good saying we can achieve X lumens, you cant attain that for long run times without substantial efforts not really applicable not possible in an auto light bulb such as H4 type application.

I really dont know how to word it better. Its just my opinion too, maybe my eyeses is getting old.