Rigid Industries VS. Vision X?

[HUMMER INVESTMENTS]

:agree: Tims one helluva guy!:thumbs:

 

[Portager]

Comparisons are interesting but they become out of date very quickly. There is a new and improved LED coming out about every 6 months. One of the best reviews I have found was :link: but it is from April 2011 so it is over a year old now. A lot changes in a year in LED lights.

In addition it is difficult if not impossible to tell much of anything about light output from pictures and video because the camera is doing everything it can to compensate for the ambient light levels. In fact most, but not all, of the hot spots that you see in pictures don’t even exist with direct viewing. However, the hot spots that do exist cause eye strain in off road racers who are looking at them for hours at a time.

Comparing LED light specifications it can be very confusing, even for an engineer. Almost all claim; to use CREE LED’s, be sealed to IP68, to use pulse width modulation (PWM) for thermal management, ... So what are the main differentiators between them? The main difference is in how much waste heat they produce and how well they get rid of that waste heat.

Reflector efficiency is the light that is reflected in the desired direction divided by the total amount of light that is produced. Vision X (VX) claims >90% reflector efficiency and Rigid Industries (RI) claims >93%. So if an RI and VX light produced the same amount of light the RI light would provide 3.33% more useful light output (i.e. 93%/90% = 103.33%). Not a big deal right? However, what happens to the remaining 10% for VX and 7% for RI. Well almost all of the wasted light ends us as waste heat which must be dissipated to keep the light from overheating. So VX has to dissipate 43% more waste heat than RI.

Electronics efficiency is the ratio of power that goes into the LED to the total power used by the light. RI claims 96% electronics efficiency, but I can’t find any claims for VX electronics efficiency. The electrical engineers that I work with say that typical efficiency for this type of low cost electronics will be in the 90% to 95% range and it takes additional cost and effort to get to 96%. So, if VX is in the 90% to 95% range that means that they need to dissipate 5% to 10% of their power versus 4% for RI. This equates to 25% to 150% more power to dissipate.

Combining the reflector efficiency and electronics efficiency we find that VX has to dissipate somewhere between 68% and 193% more heat than RI.

So how do these lights dissipate their waste heat? They all use an extruded aluminum heat sink with fins to increase the surface area. How these heat sinks are designed is critical to their performance. If you go to :link: at the bottom of the page you’ll see pictures of “Rigid Industries Extrusion” and “Competitors Import Extrusion”. Trust me the RI extrusion design is much better than the import.

Where you will see a difference due to waste heat rejection capability is in the light output in high temperature conditions and in the life of the unit. When the light reaches its upper temperature limit, they all use PWM to limit the temperature by reducing the duration of the pulses, which reduces the light output. Also, the light that produces more waste heat and/or has poorer heat removal will spend a higher percentage of the operating time at the upper temperature limit. The life of LED’s is defined as the point where the light output drops below 70% of the output when the light was new. This is generally quoted as 50,000 hours, which sounds like a huge number that we will never reach, however the 50,000 hours life is at ambient operating conditions, typically 25C (77F) and it decreases rapidly at higher temperature. So, if the light is always operating at the upper temperature limit, it may actually have a life of 1,000 to 5,000 hours.

RI builds their lights in the USA and provides a limited lifetime warranty, which they define at covering manufacturer defects and normal wear-out but not abuse. They said they have never had to replace a light due to reaching the end of the LED life.

Vision X lights are made in South Korea and they also provide a limited lifetime warranty, which they define as “Valid for as long as you own the product. The warranty covers against manufacturing defects and does not cover consumables.” :link:

Anzo lights are made in China and are backed by a 1-year warranty. There is litterally no comparison between RI Vision X and Anzo.

 

[HUMMER INVESTMENTS]

I can udnerstand your point Portager. But I heard somewhere that someone would do a comparison within the next few months. I forget the 4x4 companies name:huh:

 

[SolidusJ]

I was able to get a good look at a 50" Rigid lights on a JK and hole $hit that thing is sexy!!!!! I can't wait to get 4 of the 4" LED's bolted to my light bar to replace the wimpy lights!!! 2 folds on the outer and 2 spots inner.

 

[cgalpha08]

Im thinkin about getting the d2 floods.for the rear of my gobi. Hopefully they fit?

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

 

[HUMMER INVESTMENTS]

I saw the Rigid on JR3T's rig, and they where bright!

 

[Timgco]

"You can get a good look at a T Bone by shoving your head up a cow's ass, but wouldn't you rather take the butcher's word for it?" lol.

 

[HUMMER INVESTMENTS]

:giggle:

 

[Timgco]

:wink: well put imho! Some great facts/ opinions in that post. Real world/ useable light for "your" application vs price is what it comes down to.

RI is expensive, no if's, and's, or Jeeps about it. I have seen pleanty of lights since I met up with GOBI back in the day. I ahve researched a ton of specs, have talked with 100's of people that have bought GOBi racks with light packages, and have had the opportunity to talk with them after usage/ abuse/ years of using them. In working dirrect with a few manufacts of both cheap to high end lights, I can tell you what I learned on them.

"Standard" lighting that offers high quality has been with PIAA and LightForce. I have only a couple of issues with both manufacts and customer service has been good. ..better with PIAA. PIAA 520, the old 1500's, 2100's, and 004XT's are what I have the most experience with. Great lights, different beam patterns available, replacement parts available. you can get a couple models in HID too.

HID lighting is a little more expensive, more amp draw to start them up, but than draws less to keep running. I have dealt with Starr headlight, PIAA HID, Hella HID, LightForce HID. The Starr headlights were bright. I had them on one HUMMER for 6 months, and sold the Hummer. So long term test is N/A from me. Customer using the HID's in all 3 brands listed above were good as well. I onloy had one return that I can remember. The customer had issues with wiring though, so I cannot confirm if the hella lights were bad or not. I sent them back to the distributor and never heard back. Light patterns/ light color were all great. ...at least until I saw LED's lit up. lol.

LED's I have experience with since 08. When at GOBI I sold a couple sets of Vision X. They leaked. Ken G was the owner. Not sure if the East Coaster is on here or not. Great guy and "used the hell" out of everything he had on his truck. lol. So he tested them pretty well. This was when both VX and Rigid started making headway into the offroad industry. VX had some great marketing, Rigid was slow at first, but picked up speed and blew VX out of the water on customer service, product quality, and available options. I used Rigid for a few projects while at GOBI. Every project was followed up on and customers were happy. The oldest lightbar that I know of is a 20" and has been put on 2 UTV's, and 2 trucks to date. It's still going strong since 08!!! And that thing has been smacked on branches, weeds in fields at 40+ mph, wheeling, desert conditions, Mountain below zero conditions, etc. The only thing that needed to be replaced was the lense. And that was because it was marked up from all the use. He did that himself. Another recent customer just had his swapped out (I think I mentioned that in my other post here).

The custom cut RI bar I had in the lower grille, the 20" I had, the 50" I had were all great! The only reason I sold them was to start on my next project(s).
I'll have my 40" combo bar on late this week mounted into the GOBI on the JK. I'm also going to get a 20" and D2's into this build at some point. Need my bumpers on first. The 20" may end up on kira's truck with an optional difuser cover in Amber. Those works perfect in snow/ fog. ..something to consider if you are going to keep the LED's and bumper level. Up on the rack at or above the winchshield you will get glare back at you in anything but clear conditions. That's why I only use clear/ white light up top and have alternate lighting down lower front and rear.

I just got the first set of SMR LED's in from Rigid. they are super compact. for their size, they are very bright also.

As Portager pointed out, the camera does not really represent realy world light output. I have not mastered taking night pics of that yet. There are some good 20" light pics recently in the EH thread.

...hope that helps adds a little more.

Comparisons are interesting but they become out of date very quickly. There is a new and improved LED coming out about every 6 months. One of the best reviews I have found was :link: but it is from April 2011 so it is over a year old now. A lot changes in a year in LED lights.

In addition it is difficult if not impossible to tell much of anything about light output from pictures and video because the camera is doing everything it can to compensate for the ambient light levels. In fact most, but not all, of the hot spots that you see in pictures don’t even exist with direct viewing. However, the hot spots that do exist cause eye strain in off road racers who are looking at them for hours at a time.

Comparing LED light specifications it can be very confusing, even for an engineer. Almost all claim; to use CREE LED’s, be sealed to IP68, to use pulse width modulation (PWM) for thermal management, ... So what are the main differentiators between them? The main difference is in how much waste heat they produce and how well they get rid of that waste heat.

Reflector efficiency is the light that is reflected in the desired direction divided by the total amount of light that is produced. Vision X (VX) claims >90% reflector efficiency and Rigid Industries (RI) claims >93%. So if an RI and VX light produced the same amount of light the RI light would provide 3.33% more useful light output (i.e. 93%/90% = 103.33%). Not a big deal right? However, what happens to the remaining 10% for VX and 7% for RI. Well almost all of the wasted light ends us as waste heat which must be dissipated to keep the light from overheating. So VX has to dissipate 43% more waste heat than RI.

Electronics efficiency is the ratio of power that goes into the LED to the total power used by the light. RI claims 96% electronics efficiency, but I can’t find any claims for VX electronics efficiency. The electrical engineers that I work with say that typical efficiency for this type of low cost electronics will be in the 90% to 95% range and it takes additional cost and effort to get to 96%. So, if VX is in the 90% to 95% range that means that they need to dissipate 5% to 10% of their power versus 4% for RI. This equates to 25% to 150% more power to dissipate.

Combining the reflector efficiency and electronics efficiency we find that VX has to dissipate somewhere between 68% and 193% more heat than RI.

So how do these lights dissipate their waste heat? They all use an extruded aluminum heat sink with fins to increase the surface area. How these heat sinks are designed is critical to their performance. If you go to :link: at the bottom of the page you’ll see pictures of “Rigid Industries Extrusion” and “Competitors Import Extrusion”. Trust me the RI extrusion design is much better than the import.

Where you will see a difference due to waste heat rejection capability is in the light output in high temperature conditions and in the life of the unit. When the light reaches its upper temperature limit, they all use PWM to limit the temperature by reducing the duration of the pulses, which reduces the light output. Also, the light that produces more waste heat and/or has poorer heat removal will spend a higher percentage of the operating time at the upper temperature limit. The life of LED’s is defined as the point where the light output drops below 70% of the output when the light was new. This is generally quoted as 50,000 hours, which sounds like a huge number that we will never reach, however the 50,000 hours life is at ambient operating conditions, typically 25C (77F) and it decreases rapidly at higher temperature. So, if the light is always operating at the upper temperature limit, it may actually have a life of 1,000 to 5,000 hours.

RI builds their lights in the USA and provides a limited lifetime warranty, which they define at covering manufacturer defects and normal wear-out but not abuse. They said they have never had to replace a light due to reaching the end of the LED life.

Vision X lights are made in South Korea and they also provide a limited lifetime warranty, which they define as “Valid for as long as you own the product. The warranty covers against manufacturing defects and does not cover consumables.” :link:

Anzo lights are made in China and are backed by a 1-year warranty. There is litterally no comparison between RI Vision X and Anzo.

 

[Portager]

I found the specs for the Anzo Rugged Vision lights.

The 10" RI E-series :link: produces 3950 lumens compared to the Anzo 10" which produces 1000 lumens. Four Anzo lights provide the same light level as one RI, but four Anzo 10" lights cost more than one RI 10" lights.

 

[MaxPF]

Baja Designs is another manufacturer of LED lights. They are also made in the US, not overseas :thumbs: They also have HID and halogen lighting.

 

[Kurt]

If the only argument is "that's expensive" for Rigids then I don't really see that as an issue. If I was making a quality made, US made item with better technical support than the other guys, why should I try to catch a falling knife by competing with asian imports?

I've pretty much settled on Rigids right now, I'll start out getting 1-2 sets of D2's ordered soon.

 

[06 H3]

That's my only problem with rigid, price. Remember though, if they are dragging a light bar down a street and shooting it with guns they can do whatever they want! No one elses stuff will last that abuse

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[alrock]

A few pics from last night. I took these with a 0.8 second exposure, vs. leaving the camera in Auto mode, to minimize the camera adjusting for the amount of light so these should be pretty close to accurate for exposure.

It's nighttime

Silverstar headlights (no fog lights)

10" Rigid E series light bar - driving lens

2 D2 Duallys, fog (wide) lens

10" and D2s

From the same position, but with lens zoomed in
10" E Series

D2s

 

[3Hummers]

So Rigid's it is.

 

[alrock]

I noticed that the D2s appear significantly brighter on a per bulb basis than the E series light bar as you can see in this pic. Not that I wouldn't buy a 10"-50" light bar but you can see how bright the D2s really are.

 

[HUMMER INVESTMENTS]

Rigid it be!

 

[Portager]

I noticed that the D2s appear significantly brighter on a per bulb basis than the E series light bar as you can see in this pic. Not that I wouldn't buy a 10"-50" light bar but you can see how bright the D2s really are.

I think the apparent brightness is a function of if you're in the beam pattern of the light. You're 10" bar has a very narrow driving pattern, about 10 degrees I think, where as the D2's have a wide beam. The fact that the 10" bar appears dimmer when you're standing to the side indicates that the bar is very effective at directing most of the light in a narrow beam. I think if you stood directly in front so you were inside the 10 degree beam the bar would be much brighter than the D2's.

 

[BW_Hummer H3]

I saved some of JR3T's light comparison on another account, but something is wrong with the connection. I wll see if I can get them.

 

[is350]

by reading this thread i think its pretty obvious that Rigid light are better then vision x, but i think a better comparison might be between a RIGID INDUSTRIES and BAJA DESIGNS. Both are american made, both are in approximately the same price range, and from what I've read baja actually have a little better light output. They both are also extremely high quality lights. Here is an article that looks pretty non bias toward lights and they give pretty good opinions on the lights, I'm not sure how old the article is so the rigid in this might be the older version of the E-series
http://www.lightforce.net.au/images/pages/4WD%20161%20LR2.pdf
View attachment 5032

 

[HUMMER INVESTMENTS]

by reading this thread i think its pretty obvious that Rigid light are better then vision x, but i think a better comparison might be between a RIGID INDUSTRIES and BAJA DESIGNS. Both are american made, both are in approximately the same price range, and from what I've read baja actually have a little better light output. They both are also extremely high quality lights. Here is an article that looks pretty non bias toward lights and they give pretty good opinions on the lights, I'm not sure how old the article is so the rigid in this might be the older version of the E-series
http://www.lightforce.net.au/images/pages/4WD%20161%20LR2.pdf
View attachment 5032

Thats an interesting obersvation. I do want to buy some lightforce 240's eventually, and have both combinations. But an HID to LED is not a very fair comparison?

 

[is350]

ya in the article i was mostly looking at the rigid vs baja but ya the rest of the article was fairy interesting

 

[MaxPF]

I like Baja Design's stuff a lot.

 

[is350]

i think it'll fit better on the top of the gobi then the rigid will too , and the factory store being only 20 mins away doesn't hurt either :wink: I'm curious to see if its as durable as the rigid , even tho i will probably never use it as a sword or target to shoot at:giggle:

 

[Portager]

I compared the performance specs of the Baja Designs (BD) Stealth 20” to the Rigid Industries (RI) E-series 20” and the SR-20. First, I noticed that BD doesn’t provide their optical efficiency or their electrical efficiency. Therefore, I assume that BD efficiency is lower than RI and it will be more sensitive to high operation temperatures. I also notice that BD does not provide any light spread graph (lux vs. range and distance off axis), beam angles, specify IP rating, specify the operating temperature. One nice thing that BD does is their spread optics are produced by a user interchangeable diffuser so you can customize the spread pattern to your needs. On the other hand RI used separate optics that are optimized for the desired bead spread which is more efficient causing less waste heat. BD also provides selectable medium intensity and strobe modes. RI is working on an external dimmer but it won’t be available until the end of 2012. They both claim 50,000 hour LED life.

Where is a comparison of the BD Stealth 20” to the RI E-series 20” light bars;
________________________ BD Stealth 20”_________ RI E-series 20”__________Difference = 100*((RI-BD)/BD)
List price___________________$579___________________$700_______________+21%
Raw output (Lumens___)_____7,000___________________7,900______________+13%
Power consumption (W)________84___________________85_________________+1.2%
Lumens/Watt (ln/W)___________84.3_________________93
Weight (lbs)__________________3.5___________________6.15_______________+76%
Input voltage (V)_____________9 to 30________________9 to 36
Height (in)__________________1.5___________________3.25
Width (in)__________________21.5___________________22.875
Depth (in)__________________3.0____________________3.25

Where is a comparison of the BD Stealth 20” to the RI SR-20” light bars;
________________________ BD Stealth 20”___________ RI SR 20”__________Difference = 100*((RI-BD)/BD)
List price___________________$579___________________$530_______________-8.4%
Raw output (Lumens)________7,000___________________6,400_______________-8.6%
Power consumption (W)________84____________________70__________________-16.7%
Lumens/Watt (ln/W)___________84.3__________________91
Weight (lbs)__________________3.5___________________3.65________________+4.3%
Input voltage (V)_____________9 to 30________________9 to 36
Height (in)__________________1.5___________________1.625
Width (in)__________________21.5___________________22.875
Depth (in)__________________3.0____________________3.0

My conclusions:

1_RI is more efficient than BD which can be seen in the lumens/watt calculation.
2_RI E-series has the highest light output
3_RI SR-20 is the best for low cost and low power consumption
4_BD Stealth is the best for weight and frontal area (although the RI SR is a very close second).

One thing that concerns me is the BD Stealth has the power consumption of the E-series light bar but the form factor and weight closer to the SR light bar. I think the BD Stealth is going to be much harder to keep cool than the RI light bars.

I’d go with Rigid Industries and select between the E-series or the SR based on my application and needs.