Cheap LED bars vs Rigid Industries

[mjr350]

Ive just purchased an Ebay 33" 180w bar for $130 and they dont look too shabby after looking at a few reviews. It seems that those who do the positive reviews dont have the coin to compare with the industry leader and it makes sense. I dont regret my purchase because I can buy 10 cheap bars for the price of a Rigid and the cheap ebay knock off still throws alright light but get a load of this video. The comparison is a few minutes in.

http://youtu.be/1vShTn7bWes

[BigRAWesty]

Buy an arura bar. Paul at led light co is a vendor here.
I got the genuine 20" bar and love it.
Get a good 150+ meters of light but it's lighting reflectors up well over 1k away.
And slim to.
Check em out. He always does good deals for forum members to

[georges80]

Beyond light output is also EMI/RFI from the electronics. I design LED drivers for a living and recently spent some time quietening an existing design I had which involved a bunch of test equipment (spectrum analyser and other 'bits).

Anyhow, I had a Rigid LED unit that was provided by one of my customers as a reference. I opened it up (of course) to see what Rigid had implemented to limit EMI/RFI and it looked like they had made a bit of an effort to provide some filtering at the power input, but on testing I was quite surprised (disappointed) to see that it still generated considerable noise. What I measured bore out in the real world testing my customer had performed - the noise would desense the FM receiver on the vehicle and weak signals would be wiped out.

The design I had implemented was considerably quieter (many dBm) and it was possible to wrap the power lead to the driver/LED assembly around the vehicle antenna without wiping out weak FM stations.

So, in summary, many folk care about how much light comes out, but there are other issues in a good product versus a cheap unit. EMI/RFI will wipe out your radio comms at longer distances (HF especially). Just something to consider when choosing a LED light. Cheap HIDs have even worse issues...

This is all above and beyond the quality of the LEDs that are used, the optics and the thermal path and thermal protection (driver electronics).

cheers,
george.

[coop]

Hi guys, I purchased a 31inch 180w twin row lightbar off ebay for $105 and it has done nothing but impress me, it would be up there as one of the better lights ive used, certainly better usable light than my HID driving lights plus it came with a 5 year warranty, cheers Tony.

[mjr350]

Hi guys, I purchased a 31inch 180w twin row lightbar off ebay for $105 and it has done nothing but impress me, it would be up there as one of the better lights ive used, certainly better usable light than my HID driving lights plus it came with a 5 year warranty, cheers Tony.

Geez. I can't wait to get mine on Monday (if aus post comes through). My 7" hid's are 1000% better than any incandescent spotlights I've ever owned so I'm looking forward to the new light bar.
Noise isn't really an issue as I don't even have an antenna hooked up to the headunit.
Might do a little review with the SLR so I can control exposure to give a true indication.