LED light bars???

VortecJeep said:
Wow, until now I've always thought those LED light bars were hundreds of dollars. This is reasonable. Might have to give this a try for backup lights on my truck.
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LEDs and their driver circuitry are electronics. Like all electronics, you get what you pay for in terms of design, performance, reliability, and lifespan.
 
Pretty much all the Chinese stuff is worth what you pay for it, you could buy 5 of them before you pay for 1 rigid. I've had a cheapo off amazon for over a year with no issues.. I chopped the shitty wiring harness off and made my own.
 
chrishundley138 said:
Pretty much all the Chinese stuff is worth what you pay for it, you could buy 5 of them before you pay for 1 rigid.
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That's true, if that's part of the decision. Sometimes the cheapest option isn't worth it though if it doesn't perform like it should.

There really isn't much difference in price of the circuit boards or the LED driver circuitry, or the enclosure, brackets, etc., so most of what you're paying for is quality grade of the LEDs themselves, which is the main reason that there is such a huge price range. A Chinese light with 40 LEDs for $49 is probably a max of 10 cents per LED (which is really cheap for a 3 watt LED), whereas a good light will be a few dollars (or more) per LED. That's a giant range of LED quality, and the most important part of the product. That will affect light output, light quality, as well as whether or not the LEDs fail after 10 hours instead of 10,000 or 100,000 hours.

It's really a matter of "that really works well" versus "that works okay for $50, I guess"...

I'm at the point in my life where I realize that the cheapest option is rarely ever worth the money. I'm also at the point in my life where I have lots of opinions. :p
 
LED is overated. Fluorescent is where it's at.
funny jeep light bar picture.jpg
 
There are some differences in the Chinese stuff.

The better stuff I have found is from either Bosen mfg, or harbor led.

Almost direct rigid copies. In fact I almost believe that make some parts for rigid, as the radius bars were available before the rigids were available.

I refer to them as flimsy industries.

I have some rigid d2s, and some china copies. Only difference is rigid reflectors line up with the chips marginally better.

Both have Cree XML's.

I'll run the china stuff until baja designs or someone sponsors me like bj Baldwin and I can put 96 cubes on one truck....

Harbor led is on Instagram and bosen mfg is easily found on alibaba.
 
I got my cree from lifetime led. Good warranty and it's been going strong for 20mos now.
 
The OSRAM will be WAY brighter then the CREE ! You can get a 20" bar OSRAM of eBay for $100 and it is IP67 and will last a long time!! The CREE 20" is around 8k lums, the 20" OSRAM is around 21k lums!
 
I sell 22 different brand light bars. You any criteria to nail down something specific. Rigid, Hella, Warn, Delta Lighting, Anzo, PIAA, Pro comp, Trail Fx, even KC has a line. Let me know if I can help.
 
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small array of emergency bars, light strips etc. And that console is built heavier than most mall crawlers.
 
I have two of the Amazon light bars similar to what Blackbear posted. They have worked great for me. If I was racing 75mph across the desert in pitch black, I'd probably be disappointed but for night trail riding they are more than sufficient. As far as toughness goes, I flopped my Jeep in Johnson Valley this year right onto one of the lights. It bent both 3/16" mounting tabs but no damage to the light itself other than some scuff marks on the housing.
 
For the cost of a pair of cheap 12" LEDs off of eBay, I could break and replace 4 times before I even broke even if I bought a high $ brand.

Given that I only used 1 of the lights, I have a backup handy when the first one goes out or if I break it.

Chances are, I'll break it before it fails. So, let's break the cheapo one and toss and put a new one on. Break, remove, repeate.

I have to go through 8 lights before I would have broken even. That's a tough sale to me to justify the $400 price of a name brand light.
 
rockcity said:
For the cost of a pair of cheap 12" LEDs off of eBay, I could break and replace 4 times before I even broke even if I bought a high $ brand.

Given that I only used 1 of the lights, I have a backup handy when the first one goes out or if I break it.

Chances are, I'll break it before it fails. So, let's break the cheapo one and toss and put a new one on. Break, remove, repeate.

I have to go through 8 lights before I would have broken even. That's a tough sale to me to justify the $400 price of a name brand light.
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I have to agree....
In this sport, usually only wheeling on the weekends and not ever weekend at that. The cheap Amazon lights make more sense.
 
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