Any Budget HID's under $500 worth considering?

[sledhead]

"Thank you for sharing that. As someone new to HID's, the mindset of "HID's are obsolete" vanished quite quickly once that lamp heated up. I am quite impressed."

DayofReckoning: Welcome to the HID world! :thumbsup:

 

[DayofReckoning]

"Thank you for sharing that. As someone new to HID's, the mindset of "HID's are obsolete" vanished quite quickly once that lamp heated up. I am quite impressed."

DayofReckoning: Welcome to the HID world! :thumbsup:

So happy to be here!

Find of funny how that Acebeam K75 in the background there, which everyone raves about in the LED forum, and easily wins "on paper" pales in comparison to the Lemax

 

[BVH]

HID's, Short Arcs are still my favorites by far. LEDs are fun and I carry and use them daily but just not the same.

 

[Smood]

I realize that HID is now completely outclassed by LEP, and even mostly by plain LED at this point, but I still enjoy the few I have.

The Fire-Foxes, Macs Mini, and JiLlite EZNite HIDs were all (originally) roughly under that budget, though of course all now out-of-production too

It took me a while to find the last of those around here on the MarketPlace.

Good luck, they are fun little torches for sure

Is this really true? Can't high end HID portable lights still out throw even the best LED lights like the BLFgt90 ?

 

[archimedes]

Is this really true? Can't high end HID portable lights still out throw even the best LED lights like the BLFgt90 ?

Depends on the exact criteria and trade-offs you want to consider, as "comparables"

If you are including something like a Maxa Beam, well then that is a little different comparison

 

[Polarion-Sparetech2]

As others have noted, hand-held HID searchlights are still being made and sold. Polarion in particular is still very active in that space. HID outshine LED lights in >600 meter range (all brands). This has to do with LEDs being flat emitters that generate a lot of beam edge dispersion. Polarion lights come up for sale on eBay from time to time and the batteries are still being made. in fact, improvements in capacity are compatible with previous models. One final point: LED are basically monochromatic whereas HIDs are true white lights that can be filtered to different color (Red, green, amber, IR, deep IR etc.) for specialty applications.

 

[XeRay]

Yes, we have the bulbs for EVERY "Lemax" / (XeVision) variant. The ballast controls bulb wattage. Unless your bulb is quite old, like maybe 750 to 1000+ hours on it, you would not see (visually) any improvement of brightness by changing bulbs.
All of the battery versions are 100% interchangeable for use with the standard charger as you would have. We have some of the (Green camo - your photo) Anodized color Batteries. Lemax only offers black anodized today.

In fact we also have the bulbs for the Polarion HID's as well.