The AquaticLife Expert Series (ES) LED fixture arrived on the aquarium lighting scene to a crowded market used to very competitive pricing. The AquaticLife ES LED is packed with great features and components but its initial $750 launch price really put it at a disadvantage against a plethora of entrenched LED lighting makers with lower prices and working on their second, third and greater generation lights.
Beginning about two weeks ago AquaticLife dropped the price of the AquaticLife ES to a much more palatable $599, the value of which becomes stretched, literally, with the announcement of larger fixtures with very flattering price multipliers. The AquaticLife ES LED will soon be available in a 34″ and a 46″ version which they have begun taking pre-orders for.
The 34 inch AquaticLife ES LED carries an MSRP $949.99, with dimensions of 34 x 12.125 x 2.125 inches and delivers 156 watts of light. That LED power is spread across lots of Cree hardware including 16 white XPG, 16 blue XPE, 12 Royal Blue XPE and 4 Red XPE LED’s and the mounting hardware, remote and software included in cost.
The 46 inch AquaticLife ES LED carries an $1199.99, with dimensions of 46 x 12.125 x 2.125 inches and delivers 234 watts of Light. That LED power is provided by 24 white XPG, 24 blue XPE, 18 Royal Blue XPE and 6 Red XPE LEDs and again the mounting hardware, remote and software is included in the cost.
Whereas the original 14 inch AquaticLife ES LED fixture cost $750 for 78 watts of light, or about $10 per watt, the new price of the small light and especially the larger fixtures makes it a much better value. The $950, 34″ AquaticLife ES is a much better deal at about ~$6 per watt and the 46 incher is even better at around $5.12 per watt. Overall power is a crude metric of how much light an LED fixture puts out but when comparing similar components, cooling and drive current, with the AquaticLife ES LED lights approaching $5 to $6 per watt it is now much more competitive with other LED aquarium lights on the market.
