Underwater LEDs. What is the best bang for the buck?

[MOA_Chaser]

I've seen the Abyss S1800s available from the group buy, and it's a great savings over retail.

However, I've been doing some research, and there's not a lot of Abyss traffic on the search engines in the past 2 years. Before that, I saw people that were happy with them, and there were at least a few that had lights go dead, LEDs burn out, etc. The S1800s are 1050 lumens, 18 W, in a flood pattern.

Coastal Night Lights are $190 each, and Chris, the owner, is said to give great customer service. I couldn't find any negative reviews, everyone raves about him. The DS/DL lights are 760 lumens each, 12 W.

For a little more than Coastal, I can get the Lumitec SeaBlaze3. 34 W, 1729 lumens for white... but they don't list the blue lumens.

I want something that will project pretty well behind the boat in good conditions.

The Abyss seems to be decent, but I'm afraid there's going to be a good amount of diffusion with a flood vs a spot beam. Also, the spotty record on quality concerns me. They used to have an Amazon store, but it's been taken down as well.

Coastal looks to be the bulletproof, lower cost solution but they're not as high powered as the others.

Thoughts? This is pretty confusing stuff...

 

[Ziess21]

Chris @ Coastal is great and so are his lights. He's got a huge following on THT and tons of reviews.

 

[Charles]

Been Looking as well...
Lumitec SeaBlaze X is on Amazon for $339.

Was at a marine electronics shop today, looking at chartplotters, and they had a ShadowCaster display. Not to self...do not look directly at them.

Here is a neat site, although owned by a LED manufacturer... http://www.underwaterlightcomparison.com/

 

[Bruce]

I have a single http://aqualeds.com AQ-8. I need to shim it up a little as it is currently angled slightly down. This is how it looked in the Bimini water

This was coming home from fireworks on our local lake

 

[Bruce]

@andy07sx230ho likes his Coastal Night Lights LEDs

This is his Bimini Shot

 

[Craig]

I

@andy07sx230ho likes his Coastal Night Lights LEDs

This is his Bimini Shot

I realize the water in Bimini is ultra clear, but those look insanely bright.

 

[MOA_Chaser]

I realize the water in Bimini is ultra clear, but those look insanely bright.

Yeah, that is what has me running in circles.

The lighting system I designed for my band used LED lights. It leads me to believe that a more focused 750 lumen light might appear brighter than a "flood" 1050 lumen light. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to determine this without seeing a side-by-side comparison.

 

[Bruce]

I believe that Andy has a total of 36 watts between his three LEDs.

My single LED is 40 watts.

I looked to check the wattage on my LED and noticed that the new models are $150 for 60 watts and $260 for 90 watts. http://www.aqualeds.com/ourwork.html

 

[Bruce]

The Bimini water is very clear and it was very dark. There is minimal city light and there was no moon during our visit.

 

[MOA_Chaser]

At some point, you'd think you'd get to the point of diminishing returns... a 100W LED array isn't going to project 4 times farther than a 25W LED array.

 

[Bruce]

I think the biggest possible gain for my boat would be to use a shim to tilt the LED slightly upward. Currently it is tilted down. Andy did this well.

 

[Andy S]

@MOA_Chaser when I was deciding which lights to put on my boat I was as confused as you are now. The Abyss sale here was going on and I initially committed to buying 3 but after looking harder at the lights I quickly back out, I did not think they would spread the light out like I wanted, the Abyss looked to focused/spot light effect for me. Another of my decision criteria was price, since I boat at night only a couple of times a year I did not want to spend a great deal of money on lights but I also didn't want to buy junk. After more research on lights I narrowed it down to AquaLeds and Coastal Night Lights. During my finally review I ran across numerous threads on other forums where the owner of AquaLeds was a complete A-Hole in his responses and read a few threads on his poor customer service when it came to resolving issues with his products. As mentioned above, I found not one single bad comment about Chris at Coastal Night Lights. So for me the quality of the people I would have to deal with is what pushed me to Coastal Night Lights and I could not be happier.

@Bruce mentioned shimming the lights is important. I have always felt the to get the full effect of any lights, especially in not perfect water conditions, you need the lights to be pointed as parallel to the water surface as possible.

Good luck on your decision.

 

[Charles]

@andy07sx230ho, any pictures of the Coastal's out of the water? curious to see what they look like mounted...how did you shim them?

 

[Andy S]

@andy07sx230ho, any pictures of the Coastal's out of the water? curious to see what they look like mounted...how did you shim them?

@andy07sx230ho likes his Coastal Night Lights LEDs

Checkout the link in Bruce's post, it takes you to my write up of the install and that thread has pictures of the LED's out of the water and the shims.

 

[Geiger41]

https://jetboaters.net/threads/2-abyss-lights-never-used.3457/

 

[MOA_Chaser]

https://jetboaters.net/threads/2-abyss-lights-never-used.3457/

I know man, your ad is the one that got me thinking about these!

 

[ScarabMike]

I just ran across these lights on Amazon. They have really good reviews with their build and light output. I may test these out.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009B6SJ2K/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=9QUQL8XMBKTX&coliid=I2VLDOL9HVYM2E#customerReviews

 

[Bruce]

I just ran across these lights on Amazon. They have really good reviews with their build and light output. I may test these out.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009B6SJ2K/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=9QUQL8XMBKTX&coliid=I2VLDOL9HVYM2E#customerReviews

How many of these would you install?

I do not see a lumens rating anywhere but there are not a lot of LED manufacturers so the output per watt is pretty similar across most products. These 6 watt units are cost effective units if you want to install several for wide distribution.

I believe that this picture is realistic for six of the 6 watt units in very clear water conditions.

In this picture I can believe that the smaller boat is using several of these units in very clear water but the big boat must be using something else.

The Aqualed AQ-8 on my boat with pictures above is 40 watts. You can see that there is a huge difference in appearance from the clear Bimini water to my home lake. I noticed today that the company name has changed to Offshore Leds and the price is down to $130 for a 3500 lumen model (mine is rated at 4000 lumens). Compared to your link the new Offshore Leds A8 gives more than three times the output for less than half the price.

 

[MOA_Chaser]

In the Q/A for the linked Amazon units, it says 400 lumens. I don't know if that's accurate or not...

 

[BoaterGuy]

Here is the single Abyss in Bimini water for comparison. This is one of the group by ones...

In murky water it's not that bright, but on plane it looks really cool.