Review of Off-Road LED Work Light Bar 18W

Overview of niche market off-road LED work lights

This product line is different from other indoor and outdoor LED lighting products.
It became dramatically more popular to install them on vehicles around 2015.
This niche market is smaller and has no global household names like Osram, Philips, GE, etc.

Most of the sellers are brands that are comparatively new, probably less than 10 years.
And don’t have a team with excellent engineers – electricians, quality engineers, etc.

Meanwhile, neither the brands nor their OEM factories have professional instruments for testing their products.

• The investment won’t only require money spent on instruments but also the training, skills, and experience of their people.

For this reason, they are not comparable to those global household names or third-party quality inspection companies.

That means, it is not easy to find good-quality LED work lights and manufacturers.

• Especially, if you own a brand for off-road LED work lights, better to work with a quality inspection company to verify some of the fundamental parameters.

At least, you will be able to know the true parameters of your products.
You will be able to gain better competitiveness by building it on solid quality.

User experience with off-road LED work lights

We have given you an overview of this niche market and you’ve had a foundation for understanding.
Next, we will tell you what we’ve noticed about the user experience on major online retail sites.

If you check some of the best sellers on major online retail sites, quite often you will see something like the screenshots below.
A hot sale LED work light can have thousands of reviews.
Probably 1/3 of them are not completely happy with what they buy.

If you sort those reviews by their topics, you will notice quality is a major issue that users complain about most often.
A typical issue is the LED work lights – which are supposed to work – but don’t work.

Theoretically, a well-made LED light can last for more than a minimum of 10,000 hours.
That already equals more than 5 years if you use the lights based on an average of 4 hours every day.

Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for users to complain theirs last for only weeks, days, and even hours.

What sellers usually tell you

1). Adjectives without numbers

As a common practice, LED work light sellers advertise with some adjectives.

• Typical examples are super bright, long life-span, high performance, etc.
• They don’t use numbers to indicate the critical parameters of the lights.

Ask the sellers for numbers, if possible.
Particularly important, if you are going to work with a manufacturer.

2). Incredible values

Even though some of them show numbers, the numbers are too good to be true.

• For example, they claim the lights have a lifespan of over 50,000 hours.
• That means more than 30 years, based on an average working hour of 4 hours every day.

It is understandable such numbers are theoretical based on a formula to estimate.
But this value is already much more than what some of the best brands usually claim.

Don’t blindly believe those numbers.
Some values are only for marketing purposes.

The marketing people pick a number just to make their claim look reliable.

3). Insufficient critical parameters

Theoretically, the sellers should tell buyers some of the basics.
However, they don’t indicate the core functions of the LED work lights.

• Alternatively, they will tell some other things that are less important.

For example, the shapes of their lights are beautifully designed.
And for example, the lights are compatible with various vehicles.

Remember, you buy these off-road lights to illuminate the roads at night.
What you need is essentially the light itself.

So, you should know the fundamental parameters that define the quality of the light.

If you haven’t had an idea about what the fundamental parameters are to be asked, keep reading.
We will explain them one by one with a sample that we’ve tested.

It is a sample that we buy from an online retail store.
It has some values on its web page.

• Input voltage range, color temperature, number of LEDs, IP rating, wattage, dimension, and weight.

This package box below is what we receive.
There are no parameters on its sales package.
Not a single number is printed on it, and no user manuals either.

But it doesn’t matter.

• The importance is not what values they claim to be.
• But what the values the light actually has.

And we can find them out through our spectrum test with our integrating sphere.