The AcroOptics LED lighting company out of Boulder Colorado came out of left field when we first discovered it. After a few months of incubating beyond its official unveiling at ReefStock 2015, the first fixture from AcroOptics called the Reef Slope is finally ready for mass consumption.
Except that the AcroOptics is really not a light for everyone, but an exacting “full intensity” LED lighting machine which is really geared towards complete spectrum and very bright lighting applications. We’re just as tired as everyone at the LED lighting color wars, but the AcroOptics Reef Slope really is raising the bar on LED color diversity, hopefully leading to an incredible color rendition over real live corals.
The Reef Slope LED has no fewer 180 LEDs spread across eleven colors of diodes with each color being specially selected from specific LED manufacturers for peak performance, color rendition, and fidelity. Each 24 inch reef slope contain 6 x SemiLEDs NUV 405nm, 6 x SemiLEDs NUV 415nm, 6 x Custom Hyper Violet 430nm, 36 x Nichia Royal Blue 450nm, 36 x Nichia Blue 465nm, 36 x Nichia Cyan 500nm, 18 x Nichia Cool White, 18 x Nichia Warm White, 6 x Phillips Green 530nm, 6 x Phillips Lime 567.5nm, 6 x Phillips Deep Red 660nm.
Any real LED reef aquarium lighting fanatic should be drooling over the substantial representation of blue light in both the blue, royal blue and the cyan parts of the spectrum, with an incredible representation of UV, near UV and indigo spectrum. All of the blue overdose is thoughtfully balanced out with a healthy dose of warm white, green, lime green and deep red spectrum. Seriously though, we cannot wait to see what this light looks like over some real live coral reef tanks.
Of course all that fruitylicious LED color will look terrible if its not blending perfectly well, so the linchpin of the AcroOptics Reef Slope will have to be its very specially designed optics. The clusters of 10 individual lenses on each board of LED colors will have to do an impeccable job not only of directing all the light downwards for maximum light intensity, but also to evenly blend the light to avoid any kind of potential disco ball effect that happens when multicolor LED lights are sometimes passed through rippling water surfaces.
The final piece that will really bring home the value and performance of the AcroOptics Reef Slope LED will be the controllability. The Reef Slope has an onboard controller that can be accessed through nice mechanical switches, and there’s also a program to plug into the LED light which should unlock of bevy of pie-in-the-sky features, going way beyong doing custom color programming to near perfectly replicating the lighting spectrum and photoperiod of tropical locations all around the world.
Again, the AcroOptics Reef Slope looks like an unbelievably exciting light on paper, but now that it’s officially launched, we have to see how it performs in real world use. The first model of the Reef Slope to be available will be a 24 inch model sporting 180 LEDs for a maximum of 325 watts and selling for $1515 direct from AcroOptics.
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