HID Headlights Vs OPT7 LED Boat Lights

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Last updated on August 25th, 2018 at 04:49 pm

HID Headlights Vs LED Boat LightsThis past summer, we have been doing a lot more research and fishing in Lake Michigan at night. While we don’t recommend night fishing on Lake Michigan for beginner anglers, experienced muskie fishermen with a properly equipped boat should be OK.  By properly equipped, one of the things that we are referring to is your boat’s lighting. We have recently been comparing HID headlights vs. OPT7 LED boat lights for use on our boat. At this point, we tend to be leaning more towards some of the LED boat lights for sale.

Our good friend Willie over at Red-Corvettes.com recently upgraded his Corvette with some OPT7 LED headlights, and he highly recommended the OPT7 brand.

LED Boat Lights

A fair amount of interest in LED boat lights has been generated within nearly every aspect of the sport boating community, from casual fishing boat skipper to the commercial fishing fleet captains. There are a lot of solid reasons for this, although possibly the most important of those reasons is the efficiency of LED boat lights. While any homeowner willing to try new energy efficient lighting solutions which will likely save them some money, boaters like us have an even greater need for energy efficient lighting, such as LED boat lights.

Out on a boat, unlike your office or home, electrical power is not as readily available. As most of you know, the electrical power on board of a boat needs to be generated by burning gas and supplied by battery banks. Sure, some electricity can be harnessed by alternative means such as wind and solar, these alternatives are not yet to the point of being capable of fully meeting a boat’s entire electrical demands.

Battery technology has come a long way in recent years, but they too need to be closely watched when operating electrical devices out on the lake. Most boats have multiple items running off of their spare batteries, such as radios, fish finders, and trolling motors. With all of these things draining power from the batters, there is very little juice left for marine lighting.

Improvements in OPT7 LED Boat Lights

LED boat lights offer significant efficiency improvements thanks to their ability to emit a good deal of light while using very little power. Traditional incandescent light bulbs can at most produce about 18 lumens of light per wattage, good quality OPT7 LED boat lights can generate in excess of 65-85 lumens per wattage, and some LED boat lights now even exceed 95 and 110 lumens per wattage. Clearly, this is a significant improvement over traditional incandescent boat lights, and this allows boaters to generate more light while using only a tiny fraction of the power.

It used to be that a modest 30 foot boat might have had 8 halogen deck lights burning up 800 watts to produce 6200 lumens. Today, three LED boat lights using only 245 watts can generate over 16,000 lumens! It’s pretty clear why LED boat lights have become so popular with boaters.

LED boat lights have made significant advancements in the past five years. When LED boat lights first came onto the market, people complained about the color of the light that LEDs produce and their overall lack of brightness. Today, however, LED boat lights easily beat the quality of light which is produced by fluorescent lights, and definitely out shine incandescent bulbs by every measure. A key characteristics of today’s OPT7 LED boat lights is that they produce well focused, high intensity light.

Some of the more interesting LED boat lights are being produced by HydroGlow.

HID Headlights For Boats

If looking at pure light power, few sources are able to rival HID headlights for boats. High Intensity Discharge, or HID, bulbs use a set of contacts which are in a glass, gas filled tube to generate an arc which ignites a chemical reaction with the gas and then produces a plasma reaction. Once started, this reaction is easily maintained with low voltage electrical current and emits an intense flood of light. A combination of specially designed housing and reflectors, HID headlights are great for use in a large variety of applications where an efficient and intense source of light is required. Available in nearly most all configurations imaginable, HID headlights are used in industrial, automotive, agricultural, and marine applications on an ever increasing basis.

Perhaps the top benefit of HID headlights for boats is their energy efficient nature. HID headlights emit a good deal more lumens per wattage than their traditional incandescent cousins, thus enabling them to generate more light with much less power. While they do require a high initial amp drawing at startup, as soon as the arc has been started, HID headlights for boats require very little power to maintain them. This is a huge benefit in applications that have limited power, such as with smaller boats. Rather than needing an entire series of halogen spotlights connected together and using a heavy amperage load simply to make adequate light, one set of HID headlights can be mounted and will generate that same light with far less power consumption and a better quality of light to boot.

HID Headlights Vs LED Boat Lights: Our Conclusion

Our conclusion is that when it come to HID headlights vs LED boat lights, the LED’s are the winner in most applications.  LED boat lights are smaller and more efficient than HID headlights. And, the cost of OPT7 LED boat lights has really come down in recent years. There are also a large variety of led boat lights for both interior and exterior applications. There are even underwater LED boat lights available. How cool is that?