# LED Light Comparison



## Kubota 8540 (Sep 25, 2009)

Having exhausted my stash supply of Halogen Implement lighting, I am nearing replacement of the Halogen Implement lights I use as back up, flood, and all around general purpose. As I have looked at many different Led lights, confusion abounds. What do I use as a comparison? What will give me the best and brightest Led lighting? Price? Lumens? Number of Leds? Type/size of Leds?


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## dieselss (Jan 3, 2008)

Rigid......expensive but totally worth it


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## R&R Yard Design (Dec 6, 2004)

Lifetimeleds.com. only ones you will ever need


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## ratherbfishin (Aug 1, 2011)

X2 on the rigids if you can afford em! Had marine ones on my boat...bright and well built in USA!


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## Kubota 8540 (Sep 25, 2009)

dieselss;1958833 said:


> Rigid......expensive but totally worth it


Well if I am using PRICE as a comparison, Rigid is the winner! But my question is what makes a great led great? Number of leds? Watts of leds? Lumens produced?

When I bought Halogen, I would look for largest number of watts. 55 watts and flood type gave me a decent light. Not great but decent. Some of these led lights have many leds, some have a few. How/what is the best features to look for.


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## Kubota 8540 (Sep 25, 2009)

ratherbfishin;1958848 said:


> X2 on the rigids if you can afford em! Had marine ones on my boat...bright and well built in USA!


Definitely like the Made in USA part.


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## dieselss (Jan 3, 2008)

Start by looking at the lumins. That's the main point. Then you'd go to watts


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## JimMarshall (Jan 25, 2013)

Start with lumens. That will indicate brightness.

Im running the 116 mm ZX series lights from DDMTuning.com. Bright and affordable.

http://www.ddmtuning.com/Products/ZX-SERIES-OFF-ROAD-LED-LIGHTS


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## Kubota 8540 (Sep 25, 2009)

No I didn't use the whole stash on 1 truck. 

Yes the heat from the lights adds to the melting process. 

No I don't get tailgaters. 

But I would like more light, less fixtures and less wiring.

This is why I am comparing LED lights.


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## dieselss (Jan 3, 2008)

I can count at least 6. Man, That's ummmm.....yea. need to see an eye doctor soon


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## blazer2plower (Nov 19, 2011)

I don't know about rigid led's 
But I have a set of pro comp S4 led floods and I like them. They are waterproof, dustproof and shockproof. And with a 50, 000 hour led life. And 4 three watt cree lights. They put out 1820 something lums. They are small to they are like 3"×3" or just a tad smaller. They ran me $160.00 from 4wheelparts.com 


Ratherbefishing what are the lums on the rigid's that you have?


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## Mark13 (Dec 3, 2006)

My F550 has Rigid Dually D2 HD's under the flatbed. They're supposedly 3070 lumens. They're bright, blinding bright if you're behind the truck.

On my 2500HD I have 2 DDM tuning leds on the bumper (1350 lumens each) and a set of StrobesNMore leds under the bumper (2520 lumen) and they're bright but I think the Rigids are still a more useable light as far as output goes. The SNM Cree led lights are pretty good for the price though. I'd think 2 of them would be enough to replace all 6 of the current lights on your truck. 

If you want the most light output in the smallest housing available then the Rigids are pretty hard to beat. My rigids are 1/3 the size of the SNM lights and much brighter.


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## ultimate plow (Jul 2, 2002)

Kubota 8540;1958851 said:


> Well if I am using PRICE as a comparison, Rigid is the winner! But my question is what makes a great led great? Number of leds? Watts of leds? Lumens produced?
> 
> When I bought Halogen, I would look for largest number of watts. 55 watts and flood type gave me a decent light. Not great but decent. Some of these led lights have many leds, some have a few. How/what is the best features to look for.


construction and internal components. Also don't let lumens fool you. 90% of the led flood lighting you see now on ebay strobesnmore etc. is china made. It may say 1500 lumens but its not. Rigid industires, whelen vision X etc. are all top notch


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## ultimate plow (Jul 2, 2002)

R&R Yard Design;1958835 said:


> Lifetimeleds.com. only ones you will ever need


I bought a 10" flood bar thinking it would be good. I was beyond disapointed with the output.


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## ultimate plow (Jul 2, 2002)

Kubota 8540;1958889 said:


> View attachment 142978
> 
> 
> No I didn't use the whole stash on 1 truck.
> ...


Amazon.com $160 free shipping. Get yourself a pair of rigid industries dually or dually D2 set. They come with everything you need. They will outlast everything on your truck and you can keep them forever. Do it right once


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## 04trd (Sep 21, 2013)

Another vote for rigid. There stuff is top of the line. I've got a few pictures of my set up I'll throw on here. This is just a set of dully d2s in their difused pattern. Witch means it's meant to throw the light to all sides of the truck with no distance.


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## 04trd (Sep 21, 2013)

And here is a picture of my rigid Q2s. It's basically 4 of those Dually d2s in one light. These are stupid bright and the pictures don't do any justice. The house is 300 feet away and that trailer you may be able to see on the side of the house is around 500 feet away so they are crazy bright.


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## 04trd (Sep 21, 2013)

Ahh what the hell. Here is one with all 4 lights on


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## scottr (Oct 10, 2013)

If your looking for some more nitty-gritty details, here's some more to consider. 3 Watt and 10 watt LEDs will produce the best flood, let me rephrase that, they are only good at producing flood light, despite the different lens and reflectors used to try and make them into a spot beam. The 5 watt LEDs will produce the best long range spot beams, as mentioned above, some reputable names that make the chips themselfs are Cree, Osram, etc. I have installed many, many,LED and HID lights on every kind of rig and get to see how they perform. There is currently a flood of overseas Lights on the market now, most toss a fair amount of light out there and most claim to meet all the water tightness and shock specs. Same as the made in the US lights. I've installed and tested the cheep ones from Alibaba, and the next level up in my opinion are Ridgid, there OK but nothing special, and I've installed Vision X LEDs, they are hands down the best light I have found, built way better that all others mentioned and produce the correct usable light and put it where you need it. Everyone installs a new light bar or work floods and feel it's great light because it better than the old ones they had. Unless you can compare them on the road ( not in a show room ) you don't get a good idea of what's what.
My work truck and daily driver that I use running the dark roads of northern Alaska at high speed, get top quality lighting, my plow truck that I'm more concerned with good flood lighting, get the less expensive 4" round or 20" light bar kind as it does great for the short area I need to light up. Something else to consider is marketing, many outfits use lumans as the selling point, do some research on raw lumens vs effective lumans. 
Just my 2 cents.


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## Kubota 8540 (Sep 25, 2009)

dieselss;1958897 said:


> I can count at least 6. Man, That's ummmm.....yea. need to see an eye doctor soon


True, I was just hoping the Led lighting would be less expensive.


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## Kubota 8540 (Sep 25, 2009)

ultimate plow;1958961 said:


> construction and internal components. Also don't let lumens fool you. 90% of the led flood lighting you see now on ebay strobesnmore etc. is china made. It may say 1500 lumens but its not. Rigid industires, whelen vision X etc. are all top notch


Yes, unfortunately I know this is true. I bought some Amber/Clear strobes and they tossed in a pair of grille strobes. They should have tossed all of them somewhere else. What I am aiming at now is the NOT buy to try approach. This "buy to try" is getting old fast.


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## WilliamOak (Feb 11, 2008)

Another vote for the rigids, common gripe with led's is not producing heat enough to melt snow/ice build up. I've had zero problems with any kind of build up with them on my spinner housing. Best $ I've spent on work lights ever.


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## blazer2plower (Nov 19, 2011)

Hell forget the led's and get your self a set of KCdaylighters. And be done with it. 150.000 candle watts of light. And they come with a lifetime warranty.


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## ultimate plow (Jul 2, 2002)

blazer2plower;1959155 said:


> Hell forget the led's and get your self a set of KCdaylighters. And be done with it. 150.000 candle watts of light. And they come with a lifetime warranty.


lol this aint the 90s


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## Ray (May 29, 2000)

Rigid Industries was just bought by Truck-Lite.


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## blazer2plower (Nov 19, 2011)

ultimate plow;1959169 said:


> lol this aint the 90s


They make an led one's now.


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## Too Stroked (Jan 1, 2010)

blazer2plower;1959155 said:


> Hell forget the led's and get your self a set of KCdaylighters. And be done with it. 150.000 candle watts of light. And they come with a lifetime warranty.


OK, I give up. What's a "candle watt?"


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## Kubota 8540 (Sep 25, 2009)

:laughing:candlepower
One candlepower is the radiating power of a light with the intensity of one candle. This unit is considered obsolete as it was replaced by the candela in 1948, though it is still in common use. 1 candlepower is equal to about 0.981 candela. *

candela
The standard unit for measuring the intensity of light. The candela is defined to be the luminous intensity of a light source producing single-frequency light at a frequency of 540 terahertz (THz) with a power of 1/683 watt per steradian, or 18.3988 milliwatts over a complete sphere centered at the light source. *

lumen
The standard unit for measuring the flux of a light being produced by a light source. One lumen represents the total flux of light emitted, equal to the intensity in candelas multiplied by the solid angle in steradians (1/(4·pi) of a sphere) into which the light is emitted. *



Back in the day........1 million candle power was HUGE.........


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## Too Stroked (Jan 1, 2010)

Great description of what "candlepower" is, but I still wanna know what a "candle watt" is.


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## dieselss (Jan 3, 2008)

Too Stroked;1959412 said:


> Great description of what "candlepower" is, but I still wanna know what a "candle watt" is.


Where did you get that term from?


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## Too Stroked (Jan 1, 2010)

dieselss;1959469 said:


> Where did you get that term from?


_
"And be done with it. 150.000 candle watts of light."_ Post #23.

Still laughing at what I hope is a typo.


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## blazer2plower (Nov 19, 2011)

blazer2plower;1959155 said:


> Hell forget the led's and get your self a set of KCdaylighters. And be done with it. 150.000 candle watts of light. And they come with a lifetime warranty.


I said it and i typed the wrong word


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## Brian Young (Aug 13, 2005)

I vote for Ridgid as well but very pricy. I had a pair of DDM Tunning 4" round 1350 lumen ea. lights on one of my trucks and it did ok but nothing great. I recently purchased 2 pair of LED lights from Amazon of all places and Im not sure of the manufacture but they are roughly 3.5" round, 64 watt 2150 lumen each and best of all they were 76.00 for a pair. These seem to be well built because they are about 2" deep and all encased in an aluminum housing with cooling fins, very heavy duty wiring with thicker commercial wire cover running into the light and sealed up. All in all I mounted 4 of these to another truck and holy crap is it bright! They light up roughly 10ft off either side and about 12-15ft behind it very well. LED's worst enemy is heat! I just went to a outdoor lighting seminar for landscaping and it was very interesting to find out LED lights are actually grown, well the internals themselves, I did not know this.


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