The LED SAE J583 Fog Pod & Fog Light Review

Me trying to figure out how everyone is naming their lights:

 

There are three kinds of people in this world. Those that can count, and those that cannot. That's all I'll say.

 

Thanks a lot for the comparison. This truly helps a lot! Thank you for the work!

 

https://youtu.be/s04cZYHkubQ



The 4banger "wins" over the SS3 Max fog (I'm putting money that this occurs because the pattern is less than half the width).

Actually , the tiny heatsinks on these (coupled with the fact that the SS3 sport spot is brighter than the HX boost equipped 4banger spot) tells you everything you need to know.

 

I saw this one too, haven’t had time to fully review them yet.

https://youtu.be/x8jA2kiniY8
From my understanding, the 4banger has higher peak intensity at the center of the pattern, but it isn’t consistently higher through the pattern. Recall the 4banger and Max are using the same emitters, but the Max has 4 vs the 4bangers 3. The 4banger is also not an SAE compliant fog light.

 

Why are you not in my driveway?!

 

wow, memario is taking over your thread =/

he's da captain now

 

I'm not sold after watching the "headlight revolution" video. I know they "said" they tasted the DD MAX, but it's not adding up. If I recall your testing is at about 18', theirs is at 25'. I doubt the MAX would drop from 697 lux (in crash's test) to 490 lux (in HR's test) in a matter of 7 feet. I know both environmental settings are different, but it doesn't seem like they would be that far off. I just don't see how the 4Banger with 1 less LED and using the same LEDs how it would be brighter or even equal. The only thing I can think of is if the 4Banger was tested right after it was turned on and not allowed to run long enough to stabilize like many Baja Designs lights drop hard after just 5 min. If they do come out equal or brighter I will be VERY surprised! I'm not trying to call out Morimoto over claiming specs, it just really doesn't add up. Plus, the 4Banger isn't even SAE qualified to my knowledge.

 

My guess was that the wide pattern is much narrower than the DD fog lights, or like Crash said there may be a central hotspot and then a hard taper in intensity off to the sides. There's no way they're driving 3 boost chips harder than 4, especially with those tiny heatsinks.

Edit: if these are still at 25 feet, they are very narrow indeed.

 

Good point. I can see more of a center based hotspot in those pictures that seems to fade towards the further it goes outside of the center. I'm curious to see your pictures when you get a chance to play with them!!

 

Hope they're ready to accept warranty calls for water ingress issues.

 

The purpose of a fog is to illuminate the ditch/shoulder for better slow speed navigation in poor weather, which requires a wide pattern. The 4banger isn’t nearly as wide as the Max, which isn’t as wide as the SS3 Pros. Though the 4banger isn’t technically a fog and not street legal. Looking forward to getting my hands on them!

Hope you had gloves for handling those Maxes after 15 minutes! Those things will seat your skin off.

 

Finally some pics/numbers for the fourbanger [insert: confused_woman_trig_geometry_equations.jpg].

Very interesting product. Their numbers seem inflated compared to Crash's. Their testing has been called out before, for using a lux meter meant for halogen lightsources, not HID/LED spectrum resulting in inflated LED readings... Their comparison wall seemed a bit better suited to comparing the beam patterns, especially showing the difference in width between the DD SS3 and 4banger pods.

Was also nice to see some comparison to other pods type lights. Crash's 2nd gen and 3rd gen headlamp testing comes into play here, in a roundabout way- larger optics are going to be more effective no matter the lightsource. If the 4banger offered significantly larger optics than the DD SS3 lenses, then I could see there being a much greater chance of them having higher performance threshold, and the same argument for those Denali tri-led pods. However none of these seem to offer an optic larger than what DD has spec'd.

And it seems that the 4banger combo-beam is much closer to a mashup between the spot optic and their fog lensed one. I have asked DD previously if they ever considered designing a combo Driving/Spot lens, to allow their lights to reach a true middle ground between the pure spot or pure driving lens.

Edit- just wanted to add, the HR video doesn't show/mention lux ratings for either 4banger model in yellow/amber Wide Beam.

 

A few notes.

1) It appears they are actually using an LED calibrated light meter for a change, rather than an incandescent one. (Maybe they got tired of my comments pointing out the repeated blatant oversight). It appears to be a

$93 Triplett LT80 LED Illuminance/Light Meter up to 400000 Lux / 40000 Fc

Triplett LT80 LED light meter, calibrated for white LED light sources only, meaning it cannot measure yellow LED output accurately.

Edit: Hmm. No. Not the right meter.
EDIT #2: WTF! See following post.



2) "Our testing isn't scientific" (random pattern sweeps on the wall). Cringe. If you are not deliberately finding peak beam intensity scientifically, then it is just a crap-shoot where you swept the meter. Comparing two random samples of collection points isn't going to give you a scientific result, it is going to give you a semi-random one. And if the sampling is random, who's to say one pattern didn't get more attention to find peak intensity than the other.

3) The 4banger width on the wall is clearly positioned to maximize the illumination area on camera. You can see on the right it is starting to fade right at the end of the screen. The SS3 products are significantly wider in pattern, but they cut off the right with no signs of fading, somewhat concealing the pattern width difference.

4) Easy to see in the video that the 4banger products have a higher intensity hot spot in the center of the pattern. That isn't how a foglight is supposed to work, you want an even/uniform pattern intensity spread, as the important area for a fog is actually out to the shoulders. But what a hot spot in your 'wide' pattern does provide, is a higher peak lux number for marketing, even though that isn't beneficial for the purpose, nor is the pattern SAE compliant. You want a consistency high intensity pattern especially to the shoulders to actually help in poor weather conditions.

5) "I couldn't get my hands on a Diode Dynamics SS3 Max Spot" [But the SS3 Sport spots are the best we tested]... L.O.F.L... They literally just showed the DD SS3 Max fog, and have the SS3 Sport in Spot. You just swap the lenses, which they are clearly readily aware of, that is a complete fib. What that says is we don't want to show those numbers, because the Max in spot is vastly superior to our product when we can't even match the SS3 Sport.

6) Curious on how they got the yellow output measurements if they lack the proper testing equipment. Their yellow losses of 30% do sound very reasonable though, so I don't think they are attempting to be misleading there.

7) They tout how much smaller the 4banger is in all dimensions, including the heat sinks. Smaller heat sinks means the product runs hotter which equates to lower peak operating output. Would be very interesting to analyze.

8) Best part of the video was the swipes at Auxbeam and RC, people seriously need to check the idea those are serious lighting products.

 

Just wow.

For their highly professional video they are using an AliExpress light meter, that isn't able to measure LED light sources, it is for incandescents only. The meter is garbage and all measurements in the video are entirely inaccurate and not credible in the slightest.



It just continually floors me how these guys are so incompetent.

 

Funny dichotomy. Producing data backed no BS reviews where a self funded independent lighting enthusiast points out all the flaws by major lighting companies that are supposed to be doing this professionally doesn't always go over well. I might not always get the first crack at a product, as usually only the most confident manufactures send their stuff to me first, but even if I am not the first I always follow through, you can see how that played out for Baja Designs.