LED Light comparison

LIGHT ProLight-200 Lights Alive PAR-30 Lights Alive A19 Lights Alive OUTPUT FIELD OF VIEW COLOR TEMP WARRANTY COMPATIBILITY GUARANTEED? TYPICAL COST COMMENTS
Designed and manufactured specifically for lightning simulation. Widest dynamic range. Brightest by far.

2250 lumen

130

5700K

5-Year

YES

$239

600 lumen

38

5000K

2-year

YES

$54

Narrow flood, good for uplighting trees or highlighting specific objects. Okay for standalone, but excellent to supplement ProLight

450 lumen

200

5000K

2-year

YES

$24

Great for close quarters, such as a porch. Also good for use in pole lamps or clip-on lights. Superb for recessed light cans.

PAR-38 Brand-X

*650 lumen

14-22

8000K

2-year

NO

$52.90

Not compatible with FireFly or other similar lighting controllers without the addition of a resistive load. Beam too narrow (hot spots) and color temperature too blue.

*This bulb's manufacturer claims 650 lumens. However, in our own testing, we have found our PAR-30 to be significantly brighter.

While we cannot endorse Brand-X bulbs for lightning simulation due to their inability to properly dim as well as their narrow dynamic range, we do acknowledge that there are a lot of them out there, so we have found a somewhat suitable workaround to help protect the investment of owners of these lights. All LEDs are dimmable. The issue is with a very basic power supply in the bulb that converts AC line voltage to the low voltage DC required by the LEDs. In this case, the inexpensive power supply in Brand-X's PAR 38 bulb uses a capacitor for voltage drop. While this is a perfectly acceptable practice for lights that remain on at full intensity, a phenomenon known as capacitive reactance occurs when you flicker, flash or dim this type of light. This results in lights being on when they shouldn't be, lack of dimming, flickering or flashing when the shouldn't and other bizarre behaviors. FireFly units have a built-in resistive load and other features to minimize these problems, but Brand-X bulbs are particularly vulnerable. Even when connected to an ordinary household dimmer, they cannot be turned off and rotating the dimmer knob and rotating that knob does not affect the intensity until it is nearly fully clockwise, then the light pops on at full brightness. They behave much better with FireFly than with an ordinary dimmer, but still fall far short of being suitable for lightning simulation. We have discovered a quasi-fix, though. By adding a larger resistive load parallel to the Brand-X bulbs, the capacitive reactance is controlled and the bulbs therefore produce a respectable result. This may easily be accomplished by simply adding a common incandescent bulb (15-25 watt) to the circuit. This is not required for any lights sold by Lights Alive, but we highly recommend doing this for Brand-X or other third-party LED bulbs or fixtures that don't behave as expected. Only one incandescent bulb is required for an FF-101. The FF-201 and FF-501 both require two incandescent bulbs... one on each side. When searching for other brands of LED bulbs or fixtures for use with FireFly units, remember to avoid the following: Never use bulbs with universal power supplies (i.e., wide range of input voltages, such as 80-230vac) Lights with constant current or constant voltage drivers , which will defeat the dimming created by FireFly. Never use non-dimmable bulbs. At best, the effect will be bad. Worst case... the bulbs will fail prematurely. Soft start (delayed start) bulbs are not recommended as their response time is too slow.

This information has been prepared by Lights Alive with information obtained from internal testing as well as information supplied by the manufacturers. We believe this information to be complete and accurate as of 7/24/2012. If errors are found, please immediately email info@Lights-Alive.com