LED light review
I received the LED lights yesterday, so here's a little review. It took 2 weeks to get them from China. I opened the package and took them out. This is everything that came:
Just the two lights in a box inside a padded envelope. On the box it says "100% water proof", so that's good I guess. There was no paperwork or install instructions at all. The light housings are aluminum, and appear to be of good quality. The lenses are glass, and also look very good. There appear to be 2 LED's in each light. There are no distinguishing markings on the lights themselves, but there is a number on the box. (Remember, these are supposed to be the 9 watt versions, and there are other versions like 3 watt for sale as well.) So I am not sure how you could distinguish between the different versions, by looking at the lights. The red and black wires are quite thin, but are encased in a tough black wire jacket for protection. The wires are about 2 feet long.
On to the good stuff. So I opened the hood of the truck and taped the black wire to the negative battery post, and the red wire to the positive battery post. The light immediately lit up the garage even though I already had the overhead flourescent work light on. Do not look directly into the light, or you will see spots for the next couple of minutes (don't ask me how I know). It was completely dark outside, so I turned off all the lights in the garage to see how much light this thing really had. One light lit up my 24' x 24' garage nicely. I was very impressed. I tried to take a pic of the light output. The wall with the shelving unit is about 20' away.
I usually suck at taking pictures, and this time was no different. The pic doesn't really show the light output very well at all. It was actually much brighter than the picture shows. It lit up the whole wall.
Here's another pic of the garage door at about 4' away:
That pic turned out a little bit better, and you can see my hand holding the light in the foreground.
Then I opened the garage door to see how far the light would shine. It lit up the back of my house quite well, which was about 30' away. That was about as far as any usable light went. I tried taking pics of that, but they didn't turn out at all, so I didn't bother posting them. Sorry. Then I left the light on for about 15 minutes to see how warm it got, but it was barely even warm to the touch. So no issue there either.
Overall I was very impressed by the light output for something that is so small (and cheap - less than $10 for the pair). I think they will be just perfect for mounting to the roof rack, to light up off to the side of the truck for camping, etc. Eventually I might get a few more pairs to mount under the hood and on the inside of the tailgate. And maybe even for some rock lights under the vehicle.
I am definitely going to order more pairs of these to put on the sides of my roof rack. There will be 6 lights mounted at about 45 degrees downward and outward away from the sides of the truck. And another light on the back corner of the roof rack pointed outward and backward at a 45 degree angle. All wires will be run inside the roof rack tubing for a clean look. I'm thinking it will look something like this: (This is looking at the driver side of the roof rack from the back corner.)
