Thread: LED Spotlioghts

Has anyone run the 100w HIDs on ebay?
Seem too cheap to be any good.
PAIR 9INCH 100W HID XENON DRIVING LIGHTS spotlight OFFROAD WORK LIGHT UTE SECKIL | eBay
When I have checked locally were still up well over $500.

I've put a set of cheap LED spotties on my work Hilux - they are quite good but no idea how long they will last. They don't have the distance that a good reflector will give you, but the spread is very good and they are heaps better than just the high beams.

They have limitations - in the rain the reflected glare is very bad, but I can live with them for what I paid. For the same money I wouldn't have got anything near as good in HID or Halogen.

I can't point to what brand they are - they came in a white box and I bought them from a mate who had them lying around, but they were Chinese, and they weren't expensive. They draw 6 amps each (measured) - I won't even attempt to try and work out what wattage rating they claimed - as others have said, that's all smoke and mirrors.

Originally Posted by Homestar

.... They draw 6 amps each (measured) - I won't even attempt to try and work out what wattage rating they claimed - as others have said, that's all smoke and mirrors.

The wattage "they" claim is very simple.
LED chips have an operating voltage range.
This could be anything, but many times you'll see that it could be 9-32 volts.

SO ... their claimed "6 million watts" or whatever pie in the sky figure they use to make them look good .. can be real .. but it'll take a bit of work on your part to achieve it too.

The voltage your car's electrics supplies can be regarded as 13.8v.
x 6amps .. = 83w
Fit them to a truck(@24v) and they should still draw 6amps .. so the truck driver gets 166w out of them.

If you had the ability to build your own 12v - 32v voltage inverter that can supply 6amps .. then you'd get maximum watts per dollar spent at 192W.

But if you just keep it simple and leave them be as they are .. then at 13.8v and 6amps, they are so understressed that they should outlast you!

Originally Posted by AK83

The wattage "they" claim is very simple.
LED chips have an operating voltage range.
This could be anything, but many times you'll see that it could be 9-32 volts.

SO ... their claimed "6 million watts" or whatever pie in the sky figure they use to make them look good .. can be real .. but it'll take a bit of work on your part to achieve it too.

The voltage your car's electrics supplies can be regarded as 13.8v.
x 6amps .. = 83w
Fit them to a truck(@24v) and they should still draw 6amps .. so the truck driver gets 166w out of them.

If you had the ability to build your own 12v - 32v voltage inverter that can supply 6amps .. then you'd get maximum watts per dollar spent at 192W.

But if you just keep it simple and leave them be as they are .. then at 13.8v and 6amps, they are so understressed that they should outlast you!

The current supply circuit for LED chips is current limiting so the draw decreases with voltage. It's not perfect so an increase in voltage supplied to the lamp will still increase the power input. For example, the other day I measured one of those little 10W LED work lights. At 12V it drew 0.55A so a power input of 6.6W. Off a Dewalt drill battery at 20V it drew 0.4A so a power input of 8W. And that of course is just the input power, some is wasted in the current controllers. The circuits fitted to LED lights aren't perfect, merely adequate.