Does this Light bar manufactur sound like marketing hype,or is it an honest statement

I'm looking at a12v 10" light bar ,upgraded with 5w leds for a total of 100w.
The specs say 100w @ 4.1 amps,I'm not a 12v or LED wiz but I would have thought It was 8.3 amps.
So I email the maker and ask how this works out to 4.1 amp for 100w and 4a for 60w
Heres the reply,,,

Normally your math would be correct however LEDs run a little differently than conventional lights.
LEDs run cooler than most lights and do not need to run at full capacity to put out a maximum amount of light.


The 100w is achieved by a mathematical equation taking the # of LEDs by the maximum wattage for each. The 10" Double Row Series light will actually be running at about 58w while still generating 11,000 lumens (14.1v x 4.1a).

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I dont know,,,Is this a legit answer??

"LEDs run cooler than most lights"
True.

"and do not need to run at full capacity to put out a maximum amount of light."
Also can be true, sortof.

But them running cooler than "most lights" doesn't make them use less electricity. Sounds like some handwaving going on.

This looks more like a job for the people who really work on the electronics side of things. I'm moving this to where someone with the electronics expertise can help.

Alaric Darconville said:

"LEDs run cooler than most lights"
True.

"and do not need to run at full capacity to put out a maximum amount of light."
Also can be true, sortof.

But them running cooler than "most lights" doesn't make them use less electricity. Sounds like some handwaving going on.

This looks more like a job for the people who really work on the electronics side of things. I'm moving this to where someone with the electronics expertise can help.

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Thank You, I didn't know where to post it.

Total BS from them. Running an LED at 100 watts will be brighter than running the same LED at 58 watts (assuming the LED is rated for that kind of power in the first place). If they are advertising a 100 watt LED and it is only drawing 4.1 amps then it is a 58 watt LED. I see no claim of say 100 halogen equivalent with only X watts. Just 100 watt LED running at 58.

I think it's quite possible. First off the wattage is secondary, why get hung up on that; lumens is how you measure light. 20 LEDS producing 11,000 lumens is 550lumens per led 550lm/5W is 110lm/W . All very reasonable, even conservative. It's likely the LEDS in the one bar are not as efficient as those in the other, but looks to me like this is just a very average light-bar, even after one accounts for losses in the conversions of all the power from AC to DC. I won't rant about 3W vs. 5W LED nonsense.

StandardBattery said:

I think it's quite possible. First off the wattage is secondary, why get hung up on that; lumens is how you measure light. 20 LEDS producing 11,000 lumens is 550lumens per led 550lm/5W is 110lm/W . All very reasonable, even conservative. It's likely the LEDS in the one bar are not as efficient as those in the other, but looks to me like this is just a very average light-bar, even after one accounts for losses in the conversions of all the power from AC to DC. I won't rant about 3W vs. 5W LED nonsense.

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OK sorry i see what your saying, if they are really driving each led with 5W of electrical power then they don't have enough input power at 12V @ 4.1A. This is true. I dont think the 5W rating they are listing for the led is the actual eletrical power bing used as i eluded to in the first message these types of ratings for leds rarely mean anything, less than the ratings for incandecent bulbs reflect their lumen output.

So i think the question is given roughly 1/2 the input power is it likely that they could reach 11K lumens from 20 LEDs. Seems a bit of a stretch, but given measurement tollerences, they could come pretty close.

StandardBattery said:

OK sorry i see what your saying, if they are really driving each led with 5W of electrical power then they don't have enough input power at 12V @ 4.1A. This is true. I dont think the 5W rating they are listing for the led is the actual eletrical power bing used as i eluded to in the first message these types of ratings for leds rarely mean anything, less than the ratings for incandecent bulbs reflect their lumen output.

So i think the question is given roughly 1/2 the input power is it likely that they could reach 11K lumens from 20 LEDs. Seems a bit of a stretch, but given measurement tollerences, they could come pretty close.

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Doesnt matter if they could reach 11k lumens using 58 watts, they are claiming to be using 100 watts so if they really did run it at full power you would get more than 11k. They even claim that the 100w number is meaningless, it's buying the 100wmrunning it at half power giving numbers for half power but then using the full power for marketing purposes even though the full power of the led is never realized. It is decitful.

Fact they are selling a 58 watt light bar outputting 11k lumens. The 100 watt rating has no bearing on the performance of the product at all. And to be honest if they are willing to use this 100 watt "max led rating" I wouldn't trust their other numbers anyways given their wilingness to lie in other areas.

This sounds like the conversation I had with the manufacturer of a solar security lamp we have at home. I like it; it does what seems to be a fairly rare thing where instead of turning all the way off when it detects no motion, it drops down to what in torch terms would be a moonlight mode, which means the area it's lighting isn't ever all the way dark. Very nice.

However, it doesn't seem as bright as they claimed, and there were some other parts of the spec that didn't add up in terms of the output of the solar panel, etc. I called them on it, and got a bunch of hand-wavy B.S. including this one gem; the current drawn by the lamp isn't as high for a given brightness as their "proprietary" PWM scheme makes its brighter than it would be otherwise.

Yes, they honestly had the audacity to claim that by turning the LEDs off for a certain percentage of the time, the lamp is somehow brighter...