Io LED pendant from PacificSun gets unboxed, hands-on treatment and teardown

Today, on June 24th 2010, the Io LED pendant officially landed in the reefing community and some other tech gadget became available; the rest of the world can have their iPhone 4 launch cause we got out own new tech product business to tend to. The Io LED pendant is the first controllable light from PacificSun LED that we’ve gotten our fins on and after writing about this company’s lights for the last year or so, it’s nice to finally put a fixture to a name. The housing of the Io LED is reminiscent of Custom Sealife lights but with a heavier grade metal and a much more heavily anodized external finish. the Io’s fixture has a very simplistic appearance with only one power cord, button, one vent on top and on each end and then the backlit two-line LCD display. The LCD displays date, tiem, temperature and current power level of the white and blue LEDs or the moonlight module if that’s on. The Io uses two of Pacific Sun’s X-Plore LED modules each with 36 watts of Cree XP series white and blue LEDs and a cute moonlight module with just two Cree XPE LEDs. The Io has a built in controller that is only accessible via another bluetooth enabled windows computer of Windows Mobile phone (we understand that Microsoft is still king in Europe but PacSun needs to give Mac users some love real soon). We fired up the ole Win XP laptop to get access to the Io’s internal controller and after some typical Windows annoyances, the Io was a pleasure to manipulate with the provided software which looks more or less identical to the Windows Mobile app. The Io is now shipping from Pacific Sun USA for an intro price of $899 and there is a ton of info on their Io LED webpage. See this previous post on the Io LED for what we already knew about the light and continue reading for a closer look of the newest high power LED light to hit the reef aquarium hobby.

Give us a few days and we’ll get PAR values and some pictures over a tank very soon. In the meantime, enjoy this very close up look at the Io LED pendant.

Io LED pendant with bluetooth — Does that say waterproof LED driver?

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Jake Adams

Jake Adams has been an avid marine aquarist since the mid 90s and has worked in the retail side of the marine aquarium trade for more than ten years. He has a bachelor’s degree in Marine Science and has been the managing editor of ReefBuilders.com since 2008. Jake is interested in every facet of the marine aquarium hobby from the concepts to the technology, rare fish to exotic corals, and his interests are well documented through a very prolific career of speaking to reef clubs and marine aquarium events, and writing articles for aquarium publications across the globe. His primary interest is in corals which Jake pursues in the aquarium hobby as well as diving the coral reefs of the world.