What are LED Light Bars?

An LED light bar is an auxiliary light that can be used for off-road, motor-cycle, truck, and ATV lighting. Pitted against some traditional forms of lighting like LED driving lights, light bars have a double or single row of LED lights and can accommodate anywhere between one to 48 LEDs. You can mount an LED light bar above the windscreen, on the bull bar, or anywhere else with a mounting bracket.

Why Are LED Light Bars Better?

1. New rectangular shape - new light bars have a rectangular shape compared to the older HID and halogen lights that use one globe in a round casing. This means that a single light can only do one thing properly, be it flood or spot lighting. Light bars, which use numerous small LEDs offer engineers more options during designing. It is possible to make a light bar that functions as a spotlight and flood light, which means fewer dark spots in the driver's field of vision.

2. Compactness -LED light bars are far more compact than their round counterparts, which means that they can fit into more spaces. For instance, you can install a light bar on the roof lines without altering the height of your vehicle in a significant way.

3. Durability - LED light bars are longer lasting than HID or halogen lights which use tungsten electrodes or glass bulbs. LEDs are resistant to shock and vibration, making them ideal for your off-roading experience.

Why You Need a High Quality LED Light Bar

A cheap light bar is vastly different from a high quality one. If you are looking at light bars, you should take the following into account:

1. Quality of materials - high quality light bars will have higher quality materials than their cheaper counterparts. Using high quality materials such as stainless steel screws and aluminum housing has numerous advantages: the bar will have high resistance to vibration and impact, it will also be pressure resistant and waterproof.

2. Genuine LED manufacturers - high quality light bar is made by genuine LED manufacturers who ensure a longer lifespan in addition to maximum light output. Cheaper light bars, on the other hand, use low quality LEDs, meaning you pay more in the end.

3. Reflectors are high quality light bars have good reflectors, which result in extended travel and even distribution of light. However, knockoff light bars are of inferior quality they have a shorter lifespan and poor beam pattern.

Light is important for your safety because it promotes road visibility. In bad weather or dim lighting, lights show approaching obstacles and indicate your location. When choosing off-roading lights, you need to consider the type of off-roading that you will be doing.

As you might know, the lights for moderate speed off-roading in the forest are quite different from lights for high-speed desert driving. Here are some things to consider when it comes to speed:

• Low speeds (0 to 15 MPH) – If you prefer rock crawling and other challenging trails, you need to invest in short-range lights that illuminate the peripheral areas fully.
• High speeds (50-plus MPH) – For people who prefer high- speed off-roading such as desert off-roading, lights that shine on far away objects distance are ideal. Opt for lights that illuminate objects in short, mid, and long range distances.
• Moderate speeds in between – Do you fall between the two categories above? You are in the group of people that prefer overlanding and Forest Service trails. If you are in this group of off-roaders, you need lighting that falls between short and mid-range.

Should I Get LED, Halogen, or HID Lights?

If you are wondering which of the three lights to choose, here are the pros and cons of each:

Halogen

Pros:

1. Can de-ice themselves in colder temperatures.
2. Highly affordable.
3. Gives you the best value for money.
4. Offers warm color temperature, which means better visibility in most rainy, snowy, and foggy weather.

Cons:

1. It is an old technology.
2. Offers low power efficiency because most energy goes to heating rather than lighting.

LED

Pros:

1. No warm-up time needed.
2. Offer a good balance between power efficiency, cost, and light output.
3. Great power efficiency that results in bright lights.
4. Durable and long-lasting.

Cons:

1. Cannot de-ice themselves in cold temperatures.
2. As the color temperatures go up, it leads to lower visibility in fog, rain, and snow.
3. Produces heat, which means that the light needs a thermal management system.

High Intensity Discharge (HID)

Pros:

1. Can de-ice themselves in colder areas.
2. Most balanced between power, technology, cost, and output.
3. Offers the best light output in all off-road lights, especially long distances.

Cons:

1. Require ballasts to multiply the voltage required to run the lights – this can give off EMI if the manufacturer of the light did not plan for it.
2. Needs a short warm-up time.

Off-Roading, Mudding, Trail Riding, And Rock Crawling: What’s The Difference, And Why Does It Matter?

Getting The Most From Your Off-Road Vehicle
You know what a Jeep isn’t meant for? Sitting in a garage. Jeeps are meant for mudding, trail riding, rock crawling, and off-roading. Jeeps aren’t the only vehicles made for such diverse adventures, either. But there is a distinction, and some vehicles are better for such adventures than others. Following we’ll briefly look into such distinctions.

Off-Roading
Off-roading is just what it sounds like: traveling on paths that aren’t designed for traditional vehicles. In terms of Jeeps, Hummers, Trucks, and other heavy-duty vehicles, off-roading is part of their design. However, there are some off-roading applications that won’t be feasible for some vehicles. A Chevy pickup truck isn’t designed for deep-water mudding specifically.

Mudding
Mudding requires special tires—ten ply, in all likelihood, or higher. A lot of beach rigs like dune buggies have massive tires like this so the vehicle has some grab even when the terrain isn’t conducive to it. You’ve got to have specific tires for mudding, and you want headlights like the LEDs through Rhino LED Lights to cut through the miasma such tires kick up.

All vehicles designed for mudding are designed for off-road driving; but not all off-road vehicles can “mud” very well. Tires, axles, and transmissions could be more or less appropriate here. Also, you’ll want a “snorkel”--that’s an air intake that sits high rather than low so water doesn’t flood the engine.

Trail Riding
You can drive the right vehicle from Alaska to the tip of Chile in South America, but you want a vehicle that has off-road capability. For Jeeps specifically, there are a variety of off-road trails designed for adventure. This is generally what “trail riding” refers to.

Rock Crawling
Again, Jeeps are specifically configured to “climb rocks”, though they’re not the only vehicle that can. This is what rock-crawling looks like: crawling over big rocks at steep angles with your vehicle. Certain vehicles are designed for this. Your four-door two-ton pickup might be able to, but you’re taking a risk. Meanwhile, your Jeep wants to crawl over any and all rocks.

Maximizing Vehicular Enjoyment.
Off-roading, mudding, trail-riding, or rock-crawling, there are a variety of activities beyond the traditional ken of vehicular use. These can be fun, but you want to have the right parts for the right activity. Provided you know what your vehicle can do, and you’re prepared in advance, you can have a lot of fun here.

Expanding Trends In Off-Roading Right Now

The World Is Your Playground
If you’re paying attention to advances in vehicular engineering, you know there’s opportunity to have more fun than perhaps you’ve ever had off-roading. Mudding, trail riding, rock climbing, and general exploration represent tangible activities for owners of Jeeps and other similarly configured cars in the modern world.

Whether you’re rock-climbing in Moab, Utah, crossing one of America’s off-road trails in your new Jeep, or mudding through the bayous of Louisiana, there are vehicles specifically engineered for your adventure. Here we’ll briefly explore a few of the most popular off-roading activities.

Snorkel Through
An intake snorkel can make it so your vehicle can go through water sometimes as high as the chin of the person behind the wheel. Basically, you attach this to your engine and it sticks up like a little stovetop chimney on whichever side of the vehicle represents the best intake thoroughfare. It looks much like a snorkel, and opens up the road for you.

Over-Landing
Over-landing is basically extreme off-roading in a 4X4. Imagine just driving south through a field from Colorado to the tip of South America—that would require a lot of over-landing. We’re talking a five month excursion here, and not a lot of people used to have the ability to do this. But this is something trending now—check out this article to learn more.

Light Things Up!
It makes a lot of sense to ensure you’ve got your vehicle totally prepared for the off-roading journey. This will mean you need to have the right kind of lighting—lots of dust, mud, and other things can be kicked up.

You want lights that are durable, bright, light-weight, and cool. A lot of 4X4 enthusiasts put LED racks on the top and sides of their vehicle. It’s about more than headlights these days. Rhino LED’s are sensible for your needs in all these categories.

These aren’t the only sorts of lights available presently, but they are an industry leader in terms of vehicular LEDs, and configured specifically for the sort of off-road activities that are trending across the world presently.

Exploring Off-Road Trends That Fit Your Adventurous Tastes
Whether you’re mudding or over-landing in the night, snorkeling through a river, climbing rocks, or blazing a trail through one of America’s great off-road thoroughfares, there’s a lot of exploration to be done with modern vehicles in the modern world.

Plan in advance and prepare your vehicle in terms of lighting, snorkels, or whatever else is applicable, and you’ll have a fine experience in a world that is now your playground.

Whip lights are a good option as unique decor for your Jeep or UTV. Color-changing LED whip lights produce colorful, bright RGB lights in the dark, making it easier for other riders to spot your vehicle. You can also easily control the light color using a remote.

Unlike the traditional light strips, these lights are called whips due to their flexible housing. They easily bend as the vehicle increases and decreases speed or while taking corners. At night, whip lights create a beautiful lighting trajectory.

One of the best features of Whip lights is that they are energy-saving, so they will not drain your vehicle's battery quickly. Further, you can use options that come with an antenna to boost radio FM or AM signal, especially in weak radio signal reception areas.

When looking to purchase whip lights, make sure you select the right length according to your vehicle's size. Five- or six-foot whips are suitable for Jeeps and monster trucks, while shorter lengths are ideal for side-by-side vehicles like RZR, ATV and UTV. A whip that's too long increases the chances of getting hit by the flexible tube during acceleration and rapid turn arounds, so select the right length for added safety.

An important feature to consider when choosing a whip light is the color-changing function. Modern technology now makes it easy to change the colors automatically after you've picked the right mode on a remote controller. Some of the remote controls include hundreds of color patterns. A Bluetooth controller allows the colors and patterns to respond to the music playing on your paired device.

A straight LED whip has a simple structure, but if you want a more stimulating and sophisticated lighting effect, choose spiral shape whip lights. Many spiral shape models have a flexible, twisted light strip in a tube that adds a spiral lighting effect to your vehicle.

The best whip lights feature a quick connect system with a single wire for attaching the units. This means that you don't need to unplug and plug in anytime you need to use the whips. Bluetooth-enabled whips also now feature various functions that are easy to control via an app. In addition to lighting up your vehicle, whip lights can also act as bright turn signals, reverse lights and braking lights.

Outdoor whip lights have a sealed design that helps prevent snow, rainwater and mud from entering the bar light. Some whips allow attaching a flag so that you can show off your patriotism to audiences on the racing track. 

Shop Rhino LED Whip Lights Now

Understanding the different pod light optics is the first step in creating the optimal lighting configuration for your application. While there is an extensive variety of optics on the market, the one you choose comes down to your personal preferences and application. Below are some of the most common.

Spot

The precise and focused light beam from this optic provides a 10-degree angle, which allows light to illuminate objects far away without sacrificing side illumination. These pod lights are ideal for mounting on vehicles used mainly on straight country roads and slow-moving trails. Roof-mounting enables the beam to reach further away.

Flood

The flood beam is emitted from a pod light at a wide 60-degree angle, illuminating trail sides so objects are easy to spot and increase your safety. This pod light is best used on curvy backcountry trails and fast-moving roads. It’s advisable to mount flood pod lights on a vehicle’s front bumper to accomplish uniform luminosity of the road ahead.

Diffused

This optic provides you with a soft light that also gives the illusion that light is surrounding the object. Other beams, however, tend to shine the light directly on the object which may increase the chances of creating a glare. The diffused optic beam creates a 100-degree wide pattern that has no clearly defined edges, which makes it great for use as reverse lighting or as fog lights.

Diffused pod lights are excellent choices for use as your vehicle’s LED reverse lights, where they can be mounted on the bumper or roof. You can also transform them into LED fog lights using customized mounting for your factory fog light location.

Scene

This optic beam pattern offers a bright light with a 120-degree width that is wider than the flood pattern. The effect is achieved using a specialized housing around the light source and has visible sharp edges that create a rectangular or square pattern, depending on the housing’s shape.

The scene optic is a great choice for use in vehicles in farming, construction and landscaping applications that require lots of light but within a specific range to reduce the chances of blinding other people around you. Beam pod lights are also ideal for use as side or ditch lights, so you can navigate around narrow trails in the dark.

When mounting scene pod lights, it’s critical to ensure that there are no protruding components or obstructions near them to achieve the full effect of the 120-degree beam pattern. Roof mounting and side mounting (when used as ditch lights) are the best positions.

LEDs are an appropriate light media in plenty of applications due to their ability to produce lots of light in a small form factor while maintaining efficiency. There is a variety of LEDs available for different applications, but the trick is knowing how to use them appropriately. To understand whether amp draw or lumen output is the right way to increase brightness, you would need a little background.

What is an LED?

LED is a diode that transforms electrical energy into light. LEDs are popular for their colors and their brightness compared to other light sources. At times, it can be difficult to measure an LED’s brightness as it is measured in Lumens.

A Lumen is a unit of the visible light from light sources. The Lumens of an LED depends on the amount of current supplied, which is measures in amps (A) or milliamps (mA).

Does increasing amps increase brightness?

As current flows through the diode in a forward direction, some electrical energy is converted into a specific color depending on the material the semiconductor is made from. Increasing the current that flows through the LED increases the brightness. And this is what cheaper LED brands do to increase the brightness of their 3W LEDs.

Unfortunately, adding amps to an LED affects negatively affects the quality of lighting by:

• Significantly reducing the lifetime of an LED
• Increasing chances of the LED failing catastrophically

The 5W Creed chip benefits

This chip on board (COB) technology provides several advantages over the standard 3W LED options. The COB LEDs are nine or more LED chips that are bonded to a subtract, creating a single module.

The chips are easy to mount and take up less space while helping you achieve the highest potential from LED chips. Once energized a 5W Creed LED package appears like a single lighting panel instead of several individual lights.

The technology offers plenty of benefits, including:

• A single wire construction
• A low forward voltage and current demand
• Exceptionally thin for several applications
• You never need to worry about excessive heat been generated by Cree LED light bars
• Achieve the maximum life expectancy of 50,000 hours (five years and eight months of continuous lighting) before reaching 30 percent brightness
• The COBs are quakeproof, dustproof, shockproof and waterproof, so if you are looking to light up extreme environments, light bars with 5W Creed LED are your best bet

If you are like many other drivers out there, you find yourself wishing your vehicle had more lighting than the factory-installed ones. Cheap LED light bars have over the past couple of years flooded the market, costing only a couple of dollars.

So, is the ‘cheap’ light bar right for you? Below is a simple way of calculating the real cost of installing such a light bar.

Are you ready to sacrifice?

When lighting is critical for you, you should buy the best LED light bar your wallet can manage. However, not all light bars are made the same; and the cheaper it is, the more you will sacrifice. After all, this is just how the business world works.

You must choose between sacrificing performance and longevity and saving a couple of dollars.

Manufacturing

An expensive light bar is usually manufactured in America and has undergone thorough quality control processes and testing before it hits the market. Conversely, the cheap light bar is made in some other country and there is no guarantee whether it has been tested for consistent performance.

What about warranty claims?

Many cheap light bars have some form of warranties, but remember that you are dealing with an overseas company when it comes to making a claim. At the very least, you will be paying for your replacement when something goes wrong.

Being in another country doesn’t offer you much of a base in case of litigation, and the manufacturer knows this. So, don’t be surprised when your complaints are ignored.

Type of LED

Cheap light bars are fitted with low-quality LEDs that emit more of a blue light that does not project well when you need them. You are better off purchasing a higher-quality, more expensive light bar outfitted with Cree LEDs.

The beam pattern

You have three beam pattern options on the market; flood, spot and combined. Flood pattern covers a wide area in front of you, while a spot beam pattern is like your high beams on steroids. Many quality LED light bars offer you a combo of beam LEDs on either end and spots in the middle.

Lumens you are getting

This is a critical factor for expensive light bars as the number indicates how bright the device is. Cheap light bar manufacturers will usually lie about the number, so watch out for extreme numbers on either side.

Now, considering that you would be sacrificing build quality, warranty claims, high-quality LEDs, proper beam patterns and Lumens for a price, would you still opt for a ‘cheap’ LED light bar for your vehicle?