HUMMER INVESTMENTS
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:agree: Tims one helluva guy!:thumbs:
Comparisons are interesting but they become out of date very quickly.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.
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.
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
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