Lasfit 3" 36W Pods:
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- The pods can have a amber, yellow, or clear lens. I chose yellow, as I wanted to see the output difference against my amber Squadron Pros.
- Power options: 18W or 36W. I was a little confused about the power offerings. I suppose offering a lower power output satisfies a wider price market, but unless you're looking at ditch lights for tight cornering, spring for the 36s
- The package options include adding vehicle-specific mounts, wiring harness or extra lenses. PRO TIP: buy an extra wiring harness! This is a great price for a harness that includes a switch, relay, and a TON of length.
- Zip ties
Tools needed:
- Needle nose pliers
- Wire cutter
- Wire stripper
- Wire crimper
- 18/22 gauge butt end connectors (I prefer heat shrink)
- 10mm/ 12mm wrenches or sockets
- 4mm allen wrench
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Unboxing/ Build Comparison:
LasFit wants you to buy their products. The boxing was beautiful, matte black and extremely tight fitting. They really packaged up nicely. Frankly, it was almost TOO much (ha!). I had to take the foam out WITH the lights, and push the lights out from the back. The package included a pig tail harness to attach to other wiring systems, the brackets and hardware.
The mounts and wiring came in a second, non-descript cardboard package, but included everything: wiring harness, hood mounts, and extra hardware (not sure what for, actually!).
The pods are HEAVY. Super heavy. I would hope this translates to heartiness, however, I have to admit, I'm not exactly sure how beefy you need your pods to be. Are they hitting branches at full speed? I would suspect the extra metal is used for heat dissipation, and we'll explore that further.
When deconstructed, you really get to see a lot of the time spent on R&D. The casing is cut perfectly. There are case screws that mount from the front and back, allowing for cross-pressure on the seals. Everything lines up. I dropped the light directly on to the cement ground of my garage and nothing came loose, rattled or shook.
However, the front piece and back piece are held together using a gasket-less design. I'm all for ditching gaskets, but there needs to be a better design implementation than a tongue-and-groove metal-to-metal connection. And the diode board/connections look a little sloppy compared to the Baja Designs setup. Glue is slapped on the backing, the LEDS aren't all straight. For a product that is simply a light, it almost looks as though the light was an afterthought.
The lens differ, too. BD simply uses a conical design to focus the light out, where Lasfit seems to have used a crystallizing affect to spread the beam evenly. Should be interesting to see!
Road test/Comparison
On the road, it was obvious the Squadrons had a longer throw, but as floodlights, it was hard to deny the even coverage the Lasfits threw. There weren't any dead spots, hot spots, or defined limits of coverage. The beam slowly fades out, unlike the Squadrons, which have a very defined spot.
There was an impressive amount of output. The mounts did their job, although I may add a spacer to push them further off the hood. The lost light wasted on the hood was an area just by my wheels that I'd really like to see.
The LasFits did however put off a ton of heat. As it is, I live in Sacramento, and we constantly are bombarded with heat day in and day out. It'll be interesting to see if this cuts the lifetime short.
There are many brands out in the market trying to get their share of the offroad community's growing population. Lasfit is no different. They have a great price point for their higher output ditch lights: just a bit cheaper than Diode Dynamics, hundreds cheaper than Baja Designs. It's a great plug and play solution. They're great for a starting point, and frankly, I don't see why I would upgrade to anyone else.
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