[PICTURES IN MULTIPLE POSTS DUE TO PIC PER POST LIMITS!]
I posted this in the Mastercraft forum but I lurk in the other company forums too and thought this information would be useful for any brand of boat.
I decided to tackle underwater leds for my 2013 Mastercraft X-25 this year. After looking all over the forums for info on the brightest lights, I found there wasn’t a lot of information to get a true comparison of all the newest lights from some of the top companies. I wanted to see these lights for myself before drilling 16 holes in my transom (plan to do 4 surface mount lights). I obtained a pair of lights from each of these companies and built a testing setup to truly compare these lights with all equal variables with my own eyes.
I wanted to film and take pictures so that everyone else can see the comparison first hand without having to rely on people’s opinions that may not have seen all the different lights.
I’ll give my opinions and my final choice and why, but mostly I want the pictures and videos out there for people to see the differences for themselves.
I used both an iphone X and gopro hero 6 to do this comparison. I locked the exposure for each set of pictures as well as the color temperature on the gopro to give all lights completely equal variables for visual comparison purposes. Im not a photographer by any means and these pictures don’t look pretty but they serve their purpose for comparing.
I AM NOT BEING PAID BY ANY OF THESE COMPANIES OR DOING THIS FOR ANYONE BUT MYSELF AND THE READERS OF THE FORUMS. I am completely unbiased and just trying to decide which lights to put on my boat permanently.
This is a visual comparison only. I am not measuring any lumen values. These lighting companies each have testing facilities to obtain those lumen numbers, and I am not concerned with them for this comparison.
I wanted an RGB setup so the lights I chose to compare are all RGB versions. The lights being tested are:
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Liquid Lumen RGBW
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Abyss Medium starfish multicolor
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Lumishore SMX153 (SMX93 is identical in performance but controlled with toggle switching instead of their lumi-link system that is required for the SMX153)
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Shadow-Caster SCR-24 Color Changing
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Lumitec SeablazeX2 spectrum
These are all the most current lights from each company. I know the Liquid Lumens light has been around for about 4 years now vs some of these others were released much more recently. The Lumitec Seablazex2 spectrum and the shadowcaster scr24cc are pretty new if I recall.
Initially I was only trying to compare brightness and not controller features. After installing and using 5 separate RGB light systems, I realized how important it is to have a good way to control the lights. I figured what’s the point of having multi color without being able to easily control it.
This was done on Kentucky Lake in Gilbertsville, KY. KY lake has a muddy bottom. The water is very murky. Keep that in mind with these images and videos. This is more of a test to compare all the lights with equal variables than it is showing off the raw performance of these lights. I have no doubt they would look much better in clearer water but this is where I boat and I am sure many other lakes are similar to this as well.
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Comparison Video Link! (see pics below as well)
[video=youtube;XvlQG5X23DM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvlQG5X23DM[/video]
THE TESTING SETUP
I have 7 XS power XP3000 batteries on the boat for a total of an 840 aH battery bank. There is more than enough power here to keep each light operating at optimal performance. I ran knukonceptz 4 gauge OFC wire to two bus bars mounted on a board in the storage compartment as pictured. All lights and/or their controllers were wired directly to these bus bars so each light has equal electrical setup. This looks like absolute chaos but everything worked well. 5 of the batteries are pictured here and 2 more are hidden in front of the drivers helm.
All light pairs were mounted to a test board. Each light in a pair was 21 inches apart. The liquid lumens light was removed when illuminating the other lights since they are so thick and could potential hinder light spread from the adjacent lights. The board was submerged underwater under the platform of my X25 with a weight to hold it steady from floating up. The lights were all submerged in about 12 inches of water.
BRIGHTNESS, COLOR, AND SPREAD
If I learned anything doing all this it’s that nighttime photography with pitch darkness and very bright lights is very difficult. Below are the pictures that seemed to best represent what the eye saw. Some colors were better depicted with the iphone than the gopro and vice versa.
This video is from my iphone with exposure and focus locked throughout the entire video. (I tried to embed it but could not figure it out.) I feel it gives a very accurate overall perception of the lights compared against each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvlQG5X23DM
Brightness in white
To me Liquid Lumens seemed the most intense bright white but it was a very narrowed beam and actually did not project much further than the other two brightest whites which were lumitec and lumishore. They both spread light much much better as well. The projection distance would probably be different in crystal clear water but in KY lake water Liquid Lumens did not project noticeably further than competitors. Lumitec may be slightly brighter than lumishore but to my eye it was pretty close.
Next would be Shadow Caster. They still sent light about the same distance it just didn’t feel as intense. Then Abyss for the white brightness. These two lights use a combination of red green and blue to produce a “warmer” white. They do not have white LEDs whereas Liquid Lumens, Lumitec, and Lumishore do.
Colors (see pics bellow and in following posts)
Blue
Abyss and Lumishore have a very deep blue color that I thought looked absolutely awesome as well as good brightness. Liquid lumens blue seemed a small bit lighter in comparison and about the same brightness. Shadow Caster’s blue was more of a light blue or baby blue than the Lumishore and Abyss.. Lumitec has a bright blue but it seems like they mixed in white led’s with it so it doesn’t have near the appeal the Abyss and Lumishore blues do. I’ll touch on this in a minute but it was also hard to stop exactly on the perfect blue with the Lumitec since there is not a controller available for it yet so I got the closest I could and white led’s may partially stay on for their blue color or I didn’t get stopped on blue perfectly.
Red and Green
Lumishore and Abyss had similar very deep colored green and red. Liquid Lumen was a slightly lighter hue of each. Lumitec again was hard to stop on a perfect green and red but they seemed just as bright as Lumishore and Abyss with not quite the deepness in color. Shadow Casters green and red both had a lighter hue than the others.
Light Spread
Shadow caster seemed to have the widest spread of all the lights tested. Lumitec Lumishore and Abyss had about the same spread.
Liquid Lumens has the least spread of the 5 lights compared. As mentioned earlier this is by design in this particular model (RGB only comes in one lens) to concentrate light for better projection. I did not appreciate significantly further projection but I think that has to do with murky waters.
Controllers
Lumishore takes the cake hands down here with their LumiLink control system and is a large reason why I have chosen Lumishore for my permanent installation. This requires the SMX153 light. The SMX93 would operate very similar to the seablazex2 which I’ll touch on below. The lumilink control system allows for complete control through their EOS STV 2204-i display. Which requires a 83mm x 83mm mounting location. It can also be mounted in a hidden location and controlled completely through smart devices. (iphone android etc). It puts out a wifi signal and allows for browser control of the entire system with any web-enabled device. No app required. I used an iPhone for testing and it worked very well as it mirrors exactly what the screen on the controller shows. I’ll get more into that below but here are some pictures.
Second in controls would be Shadow Casters zone controller kit. 4 separate zones can be set. They work with rgb wiring so you could potential incorporate any brand rgb lighting (speaker rings, led strips, etc) into the underwater lights all using the same controller separated by zones. The SCr24cc can be controlled through toggle switch only but the zone controller makes it quick and simple. No display readout but it illuminates the zone number with the color it is set to.
Threaded Mode