LED Showdown Final — You decide the champ: AI Vega vs. Kessil A350

By on Jan 28, 2013

Fight Poster

We’ve whittled down the field of 32 to the final pairing in the 2012 LED Showdown with the AquaIllumination Vega going up against the Kessil A350. Both lights are worthy contenders and we’re excited to see two innovative US companies going head-to-head to decide who get’s to wear the crown as the 2012 LED Showdown champion. The AI Vega and Kessil A350 easily won their Final Four brackets with a score of 67% and 64% respectively.


led showdown 2012 rd5
Hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area, Kessil Lighting was the brainchild of three UC Berkeley graduates that was started in 2009 as a separate division supported by DiCon Fiberoptics. They captivated the indoor growing industry and ventured into the aquarium side in 2011 with its A150 spotlight. We were excited by the company’s sophomore effort with the release of the A350/A350W Tuna Blue LED Aquarium Light in 2012.

AquaIllumination is based in America’s Heartland in Des Moines, Iowa. Since the company was founded in 2007, AquaIllumination has stayed on top of the LED game. While others were working feverishly to stay the status quo, AI took a position driving innovation and creating quality products. We highly anticipated the AI Vega Color and Vega Blue being released in 2012 and were more than pleased with the final product.

So it comes down to the final two, but there can be only one winner. You decide which light you feel is your favorite. We will keep the polls open until 11;59 p.m. PT on Thursday, January 31 and will announce the winner Friday morning.

Round 5: Kessil A350/A350W vs. AquaIllumination Vega Color/Vega Blue

The Kessil A350 and Kessil A350W are powerful spotlight pendants with multiple LED colors, two channels of manual control, inaudible active cooling and a great price. The AquaIllumination Vega Color and Vega Blue lights each have 20 channels of control independently of the others with wireless control.

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Related posts:

  1. LED Showdown Semifinals: down to the Final Four
  2. The Kessil A350 wins the 2012 Reef Builders LED showdown
  3. LED Showdown Round Three — Elite Eight
  4. Kessil A350 LED Tuna Blue LED spotlight images leaked by clueless netizen
  5. AI Vega Blue and Vega Color final specs outed by Aqua Illumination
  6. Kessil A350 review, just about the best stand alone LED spotlight for aquarium corals
  7. Tuna Blue A350 LED light teased on the Kessil website
 
  • Warren

    I’ve been a big fan of the AI Sol fixture, and have been eyeing the Kessil’s. I like that Kessil fixtures pack such a punch, but have such a small footprint.
    And I like the AI Vega for the same reason, but I can also get a controller that is designed to work with the AI Vega. I’s pretty close, but for now I’m leaning toward the AI Vega.

  • keirinrcr

    Voting VEGA, because 1) I Own one and have been extremely satisfied with the unit and AI’s customer service, and 2) For AI’s consideration to future expandability, when that should happen (Powerpucks and AI Director).

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jason-Frick/100001223981671 Jason Frick

    Really it comes down to; do you like heated seats and GPS navigation (AI) or the performance engine (Kessil)? (I was using car metaphor, please don’t call the guys up at AI and ask how to turn on the heated seats.)

  • http://twitter.com/AMDPhenomX4 Jared Kaczynski

    The AI Vega should’ve been out against most of the LED fixtures here when you look at even the basic specs of it. It’s embarrassing that they sell such a product for so much.

    If you first of all look at the AI Sol, the LED bin used for the royal blue is literally the lowest XP-E bin in the datasheets, which is about the same output as a chinese Bridgelux emitter. It’s 5 year old technology that they’ve stuck with.

    The Vega still uses XP-E royal blues but no binning is listed for the Vega and the Nano only lists the generic model number. Even if they use the top bin of XP-E it is till 30% less powerful than an XT-E at the same current. The XT-E was out for almost a year before the Vega release and there was no reason to not use it in the fixture. It puts out more light and uses less power.

    Even the more modern XM-L isn’t very efficient compared to say, the Luxeon M which was out spring 2012. It is over 100 lumens per watt throughout its current ratings even at 80+ CRI while the XM-L is only 84 at 3000mA at a similar color and temperature. The Luxeon M is about 1 dollar more than the XM-L at many retailers as well. When the profit margin is over 100% it’s insulting to not use something slightly more expensive for a little bit more cost. It’s fine for a fixture which NEEDS to be driven at 3000mA, but when you can use an emitter for a similar cost that outputs 30% more light at the same power draw, it’s ridiculous to use anything else.

    I did some math out with some modern day emitters and the same output of the Sol could be achieved with just over half the power draw using Luxeon M emitters or similar multichips from Cree. The fact they haven’t updated the royals in the Vega and Nano is a joke.

    AI needs to make a Sol G2 with updated diodes and turn the Gen 1 into a niche product for existing customers. Of course this won’t happen though, as if they gave the Sol new diodes with similar power draw, it would be more powerful than the Vega.

    Feel free to find flaw with what I am saying, but this is the truth. The Vega is nothing but a Sol with some more power use for color. The white LED is actually LESS efficient than those in the Sol.

  • Mike

    Lets see on one hand I love the concept of the Kessil, the whole “multi-emitter” “cannon” style is very awesome… however with either an “off or on” function kind of makes it a downer because that’s what metal halides could do.

    The AI Vega Color fixture there is nothing I like about it at all other than maybe the level of control, and that’s overkill for what it does, reds and greens? BLEH. The Vega Blue is the direction they should have gone, but still they went from a 24 LED fixture (Sol) to a 20 LED fixture (Vega) and charge more for it.

  • CaliReefer

    Let’s see, a light that had a ton of R&D behind it from the company, or a light that is just slapped together with off the shelf parts anyone can make.. easy choice for me.

  • JR Renzo

    The Razor should be in the finals, best bang for the buck and out preforms both of the finalists.

  • http://www.facebook.com/shane.holtzclaw.75 Shane Holtzclaw

    Razor = better than both of these, Vega has lots of controllability but their spectrum is not impressive, the Kessil is the same, just without the controllability.

    But then there’s DIY.
    So announcing the 2012 LED champion… DIY!

  • thatfoilguy

    What the Razor lost? Boooooo

  • thatfoilguy

    So what were the results of the final four? How many votes did each led get?

  • thatfoilguy

    Everybody Vote Kessil

  • brett
  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Frode-Numan/659084887 Frode Numan

    Next LED-show-down I suggest more like a Poll. Let the readers ‘vote’ for the lights they actually own/use. And then ask if they think the lights are good for growing lps/sps, coloring sps/lps and how many units are needed per gallon, square feet… you name it.

  • JakeAdams

    It’s nice to see a constructive analogy in the comments

  • DrB

    I don’t know how the GHL Mitras didn’t win. If you want the best value, it’s the Razor. If you want the best overall, it’s the Mitras. The Mitras might be more expensive than the AI Vega, but it has significantly better light spread. It would take at least 2 AI Vegas to get the spread of one Mitras. The fact that the Mitras lost in the first round shows how biased this is. I don’t see how anyone would choose any unit over the Mitras.

  • CaliReefer

    We each have our own reasons for picking the light we did. For me, it was ‘who has done the most in producing a unique light in house from the ground up’, which to me is Kessil. Since I am a DIYer I obviously wouldn’t buy any of the lights as I feel I can make them better and cheaper, even the GHL, but the one light I can’t make (at least not for the same price) is the Kessil, so I give credit where I feel it is due. Others have different reasons for picking and their reasons are no more or less valid than mine or yours. At the end of the day this poll means nothing in the grand scheme of things anyway, it is just fun and games. I doubt many people pick their light of choice by the ‘award’ stickers on the box.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=15706172 Austin Scaccia

    Mitras did not win because it does not have a lot of press and we all know about the Kessil and the AI. Radion. In the end it is all about name recognition and not about the product. Gen 2 was released DEC 2012 and I am still waiting for a response to why it was omitted.