Auxbeam LED 22" 120w Cree 5D Curved lightbar and 4" Cree 18W Flood beam Review

I picked these up from Auxbeam (Light Bar and Flood Lights) during their Black friday sale to replace my dead fogs and old school KC lights on my now work truck (02' Tundra) as I do long distance traveling and a lot of night driving on back roads with plenty of critters to jump out in front of me.

Figured I would do a bit of a review, I don't have any LED lights to compare these too (and this is also my first time using LED lights) but for the price I'd venture to say these are fairly good for typical night driving use. The build quality to me seems pretty good and from what I have been able to test to so far they put out quite a bit of light!

So far this is my take on the products.




Pros:
-Packaged Well
-Cree LEDs
-Beefy aluminum construction
-18awg wire on the Flood beams
-16awg wire on Lightbar? (Hard to say due to built in plug)
-Large cooling fin/heat sink surface area
-Flood Beams have wide mounting angle and side to side adjustment
-Lightbar has two mounting points you can utilize and the brackets can be reversed to accomodate shorter distance mounting holes
-Claim to be water tight
-Light bar color 6500K
-Flood beam color 6000k
-Customer service seems to respond quickly

Cons:
-Poor quality on the light bar mounting tabs (the raised area that keeps them from swiveling once tightened)
-Wire harness's are cheap feeling/looking
-Included On/Off push button style switch feels flimsy and probably will eventually quit working
-Faceplate screws from factory do not have loctite and are easy to unscrew
-Bolt/nut hardware are A2-70 Stainless but seem to be of a cheaper quality
-No wiring diagram included
-Lightbar factory plug broken straight out of the box :/

To elaborate a bit more:
Both wire harness's are 16awg, the Flood beam harness has soldered connections and crimped ring terminals that actually have a bit of beef to them. The light bar harness wire outer jacket is of better quality for sure than the flood beam harness and also is wire loomed already. The flood beam harness does have some thin plastic protective sheathing on some of the wire but no loom at all. The switches are the same on both, feeling flimsy and cheap - I also don't like the "click" they make when pressed.

The factory quick connect plug on the lightbar was broken straight out of the box. Auxbeams simple fix was for me to cut the plug off and hardwire the light with a different style harness they would send me free of charge. Now while that is a nice gesture, why would I want to already be hacking away at the plugs on these? I like the fact that it is quick disconnect and I felt it was kind of cheap of them to offer that as a fix. I would of liked better that they offer a straight exchange of the light bar and while I probably could of gotten that from them I didn't want to bother with it because I wanted these installed before I head back to work this coming hitch.

In house Test:
I used a Zippy 3s Lipo sitting at 11.51v (checked at time of test) to see what these lights could do. I set up a chair in the hallway corner of the living room area, the first picture is with my kitchen lights on. The pictures to follow is every light source in the house turned off, so pitch black, with no other influence besides the light bar and flood beam. Also I would like to note that on the flood beams I only used one light for the test.


Light Bar:

Flood Beams:


Conclusion:
Despite some of the obvious flaws with buying a cheaper product than some of the well known high end LED lights, I feel these weight in at a pretty good price per quality. They seem like they will fit the bill nicely for upgraded lights over what I was previously running and so that in itself is a big plus for me! Whenever I get these installed and give them a bit more testing I will post back with some follow up pictures and comments.

 

Nice write up op

 

These days off I am going to try and finish this review up...I've been pretty busy with work and what not.