Are these actually Bridgelux LEDs or a fake?

[redfishsc]

OK, these look identical to every Satistronics and Ebay chinese 3-watter I've ever seen and owned (I own about 15 of them).

 

But Aquastyle claims they are Bridgelux.

 

Is this the case, or are they just using that name because they are safely out of lawsuit range of Bridgelux???

 

 

http://www.aquastyleonline.com/categories/...D-Lighting/LED/

[blasterman]

Bridgelux has a lot more of their components made in Asia than Cree, so they're more exposed to factory>factory copying.

 

Not sure why it matters. We use Bridgelux because they offer a lot of light density for the dollar in big arrays. Not because they are cost effective to use in single emitter packages. Some of the emitters they were advertising on your link have 30% better specs than on Bridgelux advertises on their own site, so that tells you something.

 

Chinese fixtures really need to be evaluated as a whole package. Not on the basis of the emitters they are using.

[doctaq]

also the die could be bridgelux but the package sureley isnt

 

ive experimented with those little chinese leds a bit, ive found that the underside is neutral so you can bend the legs up a bit and glue/epoxy directly to your heatsink, saves you a little money sometimes as well as better thermal performance

[pwreef]

I e-mailed the Bridgelux sales guy for North America. Here's his response:

 

"A few clarifications on Bridgelux first.

- we produce and sell LED die (or chips) which we sell (mostly in Asia) to component companies which use our chips to create all kinds of lighting products, including packaged LED emitters (single chip and multichip), multichip LED arrays, light bulbs, and many other LED components.

- we also use our chips to produce our own line of multichip LED arrays in various package styles that generate 250-8000 lumens of white light.

- all our products can be seen at www.bridgelux.com go to products, then to either die or arrays.

- we only make blue die / chips

- our arrays are only white (warm, neutral, cool).

- we don’t sell the chips thru Digikey or Newark , only the arrays.

 

It is quite possible that AquaStyle is using our chips as we sell 100’s of millions of chip to Asia every year. However, most of our chips are sold thru distributors and without knowing the actual manufacturing company (I doubt they buy under the Aqua-Style company name) it would be hard to prove they are actually using Bridgelux."

I bought these from Aquastyle as the price is very low and I wanted to see how LED stuff looks on my tank. So far after about 1.5 months I am pretty happy with them, except the colors. I wish there was more red. I imagine any CW/RB combo will be the same. I only have a few LPS/zoas and my tank is new, so I cannot comment on high-end SPS. Have not got a gold of a PAR meter either yet.