kien's Ecoxotic Panorama 36 LED Retrofit review

[kien]

Okay, so I recently got one of these fancy schmancy new LED retrofit kits to play around with. Mostly I was curious because I'm quite new to this whole LED scene. I was surprised that to find that there weren't too many reviews on these units. Well, here's my completely unscientific review.

The Box:

Ya, not very exciting. It is a brown box.



In The Box:

It does get a little bit more exciting once you open up the box and if you get one, I highly recommend that you do open the box. Inside you'll find a power unit and the LED retrofit itself.



The LED fixture measures roughly 8" by 9" and is attached to a heat sink. The LEDs are covered with a plastic to help protect it and to help diffuse the light.





As far as build quiality, this thing is pretty solid. No loose parts. It is sealed quite well to prevent moisture from getting in.











But how does it look on the tank??

Right, so the unit is sexy, no doubt about that. Time to throw this bad boy over the tank and see what we get. For comparison sake, here is a full tank shot of my tank with just my centre metal halide on. It is a 250watt Phoenix 14K driven by a Galaxy ballast.

Halide:


LED:


You can immediately see from the photos that it isn't quite as bright as the halide fixture. Both are mounted at exactly the same height, which is roughly 1 foot above the water surface. But what about PAR you ask? Good question!

What About PAR?

Using this handy dandy quantum meter that I borrowed from a very generous canreefer I was able to take some PAR readings.



Again, for comparison sake I took PAR readings with my one halide to compare it with. Below is the breakdown. The tank is 20" tall by the way.


Halide:

Above Water: 301
Just Below Water: 230
Mid Level: 200
Bottom of tank: 163



LED:
Above Water: 173
Just Below Water: 120
Mid Level: 66
Bottom of Tank: 28

Conclusion

As you can clearly see, this unit doesn't quite compare to a 250 watt metal halide. I can't honestly say how it would compare to a 150 or 175 watt halide as I have never run them before but I would hazard a guess that the 150 would perform similar to the LED, maybe? I did lower the unit to about 6" above the water's surface and the PAR did go up a bit. It still didn't come close to the 250watt halide but there was a slight improvement in PAR. Also of note is the fact that the light got much narrower (ie, less spread) once the unit was lowered. To match a 250 halide you would likely need a few of these guys stacked together. It may also be worth mentioning that both the MH and the LED units are roughly the same size, length and width.

I just wanted to mention also that when I first plugged this unit in it looked VERY bright. I think that this is a case of where your eyes can fool you. When I first looked at the LED lit tank I swore that it was throwing out as much light as the Halide. However, once I started taking par readings and compared the pictures it was obvious that my eyes adjusted themselves to viewing both lights equally. The camera on the other hand did no such thing. It was set on manual mode with a fixed aperture, shutter speed and ISO so what the camera's sensor sees is what you're getting out of the light fixture.

Solid fixture. By itself I think it throws out quite a bit of light, especially for its low watt draw. I would not hesitate to stack a few of these together to light a FOWLR, softy or shallow frag tank. For an SPS tank I would be hesitant unless I had A LOT of them.

DISCLAIMER: This was NOT a scientific test! This was a guy with an LED fixture and a PAR meter monkeying around.

[Youngster Dan]

Great post, pretty interesting. Also, that picture with just the center halide on is rad.

[reefwars]

good job man its nice when people step up and prove points when they are not trying to sell stuff or brand names. great job indeed and those two pics are worth a thousand words

[Coleus]

Love your post, very clear picture and detail. Thinking of getting this led fixture for my RSM 130 but now i am not so sure :-(

[mseepman]

Thanks for the review. Decent looking retrofit light.

I'm planning on a a DIY LED build over my next tank and have been purchasing parts for it already. LED's have a lot factors tied to them and their success over a tank, specifically the quality of the LED's used and the optics used. In looking at the Ecoxotic site, I didn't see any indication of the brand of light being used. The difference in lumin output from brand to brand is staggering. They also appear to be roughly 1W LED's and most LED's now being used are 3W.
Interestingly, regarding the PAR output, there have been a lot of comments made on forums, especially RC and NR that suggest PAR meters haven't been giving them results that made sense. People with tanks and multiple 400W lights have found that LED fixtures have overwhelmed their corals, even though the PAR meter gave fixtures similar numbers.

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Coleus

Love your post, very clear picture and detail. Thinking of getting this led fixture for my RSM 130 but now i am not so sure :-(

yeah 20" isnt a very high tank and i would be skeptacle about keeping high light corals. i did get a price on these the other day its not horrible but you could easily find a mh/t5 combo for the same price from thebuy/ sell ads considering were only talking about 1 single halide....in my case i would need four and my tank is 20" so for the price of four i can get halides for cheaper.(fishneedit pendants are in the 200-300 range each i belive??)

[shrimpchips]

Originally Posted by mseepman

Interestingly, regarding the PAR output, there have been a lot of comments made on forums, especially RC and NR that suggest PAR meters haven't been giving them results that made sense. People with tanks and multiple 400W lights have found that LED fixtures have overwhelmed their corals, even though the PAR meter gave fixtures similar numbers.

It's probably because PAR meters don't perform as well in the wavelengths of light that are commonly thrown over marine tanks - the closer to the blue end of the spectrum you get, the poorer the PAR meters tend to perform. That probably accounts for some of the differences seen despite what the PAR meter says.

Kien, nice review on the LED light. So where is this unit going to go on your system now? I can't imagine you'll be replacing your central halide for it. Maybe an expensive refugium light?

[kien]

Originally Posted by shrimpchips

It's probably because PAR meters don't perform as well in the wavelengths of light that are commonly thrown over marine tanks - the closer to the blue end of the spectrum you get, the poorer the PAR meters tend to perform. That probably accounts for some of the differences seen despite what the PAR meter says.

Kien, nice review on the LED light. So where is this unit going to go on your system now? I can't imagine you'll be replacing your central halide for it. Maybe an expensive refugium light?

I don't plan on putting it anywhere on my system at the moment and I don't have a refugium I could see it going over maybe a softy tank or FOWLR in the future.

[the marine apprentice]

kein whats the price on one of these fixtrures? pm me with details please

[StirCrazy]

the prismatic plastic lenze is what is dropping the par so much. it is being used to difuse the light for a bigger spread instead of focusing it.

Steve