The Kessil A150w LED spotlight is an entirely new beast for the aquarium hobby. In stark contrast to the barrage of Chinese LED panels we’re seeing that are “made to order” by lighting “manufacturers”, Kessil’s LED spotlights are packed with original and unique technology from top to bottom. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the Kessil LED spotlight is the LED itself; at first glance it looks like the Kessil A150 has a multichip but in fact Kessil has designed and developed their own version thereof called a Dense Matrix Array LED.

Rather than being coated with one kind of phosphor and one kind of LED, the Kessil dense matrix array has multiple types of LEDs and a few different voltage channels. The A150w LED spotlights from Kessil use at least four LED colors including blue (470nm), royal blue (450nm), neutral white (6500K) and a violet/UVA LED with a peak of 395 nm. In addition to the physical ratios of the LEDs, Kessil has also fine tuned the appearance of the dense matrix array by manipulating the voltage on the few baked in channels of the DMA LED.

The close proximity of all these differently colored LEDs addresses some of the issues with color mixing. Since Kessil does believe in active cooling, the substantial heatpad of their custom designed metal circuit board is more than sufficient to handle the driving of these 19-21 LEDs (depending on color) at about 1.5 watts each. Finally, since the LEDs are so closely spaced in this dense matrix array they can sport a single lens and reflector, reducing cost and further diminishing the size of the unit. In essence, the dense matrix array LED by Kessil is the first light we’ve seen that uses a common primary optic.

Intuitively one might think that having so much power coming from a near-point source would create a really noticeable hot spot but the highly convex lens coupled with a 104 degree reflector produces a pretty even light field. Stay tuned for more hands on action with the unique Kessil A150w LED spotlight.