The reef scene is currently being graced by the best, brightest, and most sophisticated aquarium LED lights that we’ve ever seen. Leading the pack of this advanced lighting future is the rich family of LED lights from Aqua Illumination, with the Hydra 52 LED as the flagship light and the AI Director as the cornerstone of the whole AI ecosystem.
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In addition to being excellent engineers of LED aquarium lights, Aqua Illumnation has absolutely killed it when it comes to integrating their long term vision for an LED lit aquarium across multiple generations of their LED lighting products. The product that is currently cinching up the whole herd of AI LED lights is the new AI Director, your portal to the world of MyAI, a cloud based controlling platform which enables even the most novice users to fully take advantage of the advanced features of AI lights.
Before you ever position an AI light over your tank, the deep integration between hardware and software is evident throughout all of the AI Director and Hydra52’s packaging. We felt a profound user experience while unboxing the Director and Hydra52 in tandem even before any power was applied, the beginning of a strong union between the Director and the light that carries all the way through setting up.
Just as great is how informative all the packaging of LED lights has become, with all the pertinent information regarding colors, number of diodes, power and PAR values distributed across a specific area. All these technical specifications can appears as geek-speak to the uninitiated, and they are still quite technical, but all the info is presented in an easy to digest fashion, educating the buyer of what he or she is actually getting.
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From the AI Sol, to the AI Vega, to the Hydra and now the Hydra 52, it’s amazing the level of refinement that can happen through so many generations of building and designing LEDs. The Hydra 52 is the distillation of multiple incarnations that AI has gone through, and the result shines in the light and the entire box.
Of all the unboxings we’ve done of various products over the years, unwrapping both the Hydra 52 and the Director was an absolute pleasure. Not only was all the parts and pieces immediately accessible, the “Quick Start” instructions were already printed inside the box, so no tiny 6pt font user manual to flip through in order to get started.
You might be thinking to yourself why we keep mentioning the stupid packaging of a product when it doesn’t matter at all once the product or device comes out. On the contrary, the presentation of the entire product is a reflection on how much a company cares about what they make, and how people will interact with it. We’re already loving the human quality of Aqua Illumination’s product presentation and after playing and experimenting with the Hydra52 and the AI Director we can assure you that the level of attention to detail carries all the way through the product performance and experience.
