The Kessil A80 is the company’s newest and smallest LED light to date, and it is also the first they’ve made without any fans. The solid body Kessil A80 uses a generous amount of aluminum for heat management but still manages to pack in the performance and features that Kessil is famous for.
The A80 from Kessil will come in a Tuna Blue for marine and reef aquariums, and a Tuna Sun for freshwater and planted tanks. The small, slim form factor is ideally suited to smaller and shallow tanks, with the same pedigree of LEDs, color and control that we’ve come to expect from Kessil’s A160 and A360 LED spotlights.
For a light of this size and form factor, Kessil could probably have gone with a static color and limited control, but instead you’ll find the same dials, inputs and controls as its predecessors. True to the Tuna Blue name, the Kessil A80 has a built-in dial for tuning color, another dial for tuning intensity, and there’s a now-standard 0-10v input and output for external control with 3rd party controllers, as well as Kessil’s own Spectral Controller.
There are no surprises under the hood of the Kessil A80 either. The light engine at the heart of this new passively cooled Kessil LED light is a Dense Matrix Array, with the same common lens and reflector as you’d find in the Kessil A160, but the chip is populated with a few less diodes than its big brother.
There are 15 LEDs in the Dense Matrix Array of the Kessil A80 Tuna Blue which cover the light color spectrum from a foundation of white LEDs, several shades of blue, one reddish magenta LED and some UV thrown in for good measure. Naturally the Kessil A80 Tuna Sun for freshwater tanks will have an assortment that includes more warm LED colors, and this light might even be more suitable for growing macroalgae and driving small refugium areas.
Despite being a point source light, Kessil’s trademark combination of a common lens and secondary reflector still manages to generate out a respectably broad light spread. The spread on the Kessil A80 is so broad that you can actually expect coverage up to 18 inches in diameter at a height of 6 inches and up to 24 inches at a distance of 8 inches or more, ideal for super shallow reef tanks.
The Kessil A80 Tuna Blue LED has a maximum power of 15 watts and will carry a suggested retail price of $139. Kessil has also developed a special mini-gooseneck for the A80 LED which will cost $29 and suitable for use on the smaller tanks and aquariums for which the A80 was designed.
Kessil will be showing off their new nano, passively cooled A80 LED at MACNA this weekend where we’ll get to see the light over live corals for the first time, and they will be available in October. It’s interesting to note that Kessil is simultaneously working on their smallest and largest light to date, and we’re looking froward to catching up with them in San Diego this weekend to see the new full lineup of Kessil LED lights.
