| I really like the look of the new Salvo LEDs but until I see one in the water I'm going to have to say stick with HiD.
Salvo's tech data on the LED lights demonstrate that they put out less light (lumens) than the HiDs, at a cooler colour temp (kelvin), that it is a fixed focus beam (6 degree - less focused than you could get a variable focus light) and uses more energy than the HiD (i.e less burn time off of the same battery).
LEDs are getting better and Salvo's single LED emitter design is a major step forward but I still think HiD is where it's at today. Salvo HiDs are *very* rugged and can easily take the abuse that divers throw at them.
LED emitters may quote long MTBF figures and can generally take even more abuse than the Brightstar HiD bulbs but that doesn't tell the whole story in relation to LEDs. For a start the emitters are coated in order to achieve the beam colour and I'm fairly sure the coating won't last as long as the quoted lifetime figures. Current top end LED emitters are less energy efficient than HiD. They produce more heat which has design implications and requires more electronics to deal with so suddenly there's more to go wrong.
These new Salvo ones have a very compact head and I like the look of that but as most of my diving is scootering around in low visibility trying to hold a team together I really need the most powerful light I can get my mitts on. Right now that's the Salvo 50W HiD but in the absence of that the 21W's do the job nicely. |