# West Marine LED SuperSpot 9W LED Spotlight



## Richie086 (Jan 23, 2011)

Hi folks,



It's been a while since I've been able to post about a pretty cool LED spotlight that hasn't been discussed before. I will tell you up front, however, I've had reservations about posting this simply due to the very high price since the West Marine Superspot is marketed as a marine light and anything marine is 3x the price. I purchased it before Christmas while it was on sale for $99.00 (yep, you read that right) and with my Gold membership reward points offered from West Marine, I was able to walk out the door with it for $50.00. As far as I know, it's now back up to about $119.99, which is the regular price. 



At that price, it makes the Stanley 5w LED spotlight much easier to swallow, but there are some interesting things about the Superspot I think you'll like. So if the price hasn't scared you away, please read on. 



As it was explained to me, West Marine was looking to add a small and light weight LED spotlight to their product line. So West Marine teamed up with doctorled.com, the manufacturer of this light. The Superspot is the same as the version doctorled.com sells, except their version is a different color and labeled as the Star Phaser, but exactly the same otherwise.













The Superspot is equipped with 3-3 watt Cree LED's and is manufacturer rated at 500 lumens on high, and 270 lumens on low. It also incorporates a red laser pointer, which is activated by the black round button on the left side of the handle. Lastly, for those times of distress on the water, it features a pretty powerful strobe effect to help signal another vessel.



















It features a modular replaceable battery pack (Ni-MH 6xAA, 2100mAh 7.2V) Also comes with 110v home and 12v auto chargers.





















Here's a slight disassembly photo which also shows the easy to access

top battery compartment. The spotlight is rated to be water-tight for 

15 minutes so it'll float for that amount of time. 










A shot of the bezel removed. It sports an anodized aluminum heatsink,

but I was unable to view it due to the backside appearing to have been

glue together.










A size comparison to the Stanley 5W.










How it looks in the hand. It should also be noted the Superspot has a full size 

handle on it, which makes it much easier to hold than my Stanley. The Superspot is also a bit longer in length, but the extra length is simply a lot of

air space. I would imagine it was designed this way to help it float.



Below are some beam shots comparing it to the Stanley 5w, Dorcy 220 Lumen,

Romisen RC-T5, and a modified Ultrafire WF-500 w/5 Cree 1200 lumen drop-in.

The last photo is an indoor white wall shot.



Sorry about the bad outdoor beam shots. Even using my tripod, I had a hard 

time getting a stable platform due to the 20 degree temperature and 8 of snow

on my patio. The camera was set to 4 sec, f2.8. The distance was 60 feet to my shrubs.














Left Superspot, right Stanley 5w












Left Superspot, Right Dorcy 220 Lumen.












Left Superspot, Right Romisen RC-T5












Left Superspot, Right Ultrafire WF-500 w/1200 lumen drop in.












Indoor white wall shot. Left Superspot, Right Stanley 5w.

1/100, f2.8







Additional power packs are available through the manufacturer for $20.00 delivered. However, I decided to attempt putting

together my own AA pack using my new TruCell Ni-Mh batteries I recently purchased. I also had some 6xAA Battery holder cases to make some 7.2v battery packs. 

As it turned out, the holder filled with batteries fit the Superspot perfectly as seen in the photos below. I didn't want to replace the existing connector inside the flashlight or on the stock battery pack, and found that a 3-pin computer fan connector was a perfect fit to the stock connector if the snap clip on the fan connector was removed. Now I'm able to use my own high end rechargeable batteries in this light and couldn't be happier.























The original battery pack is good, but it does require at least 5 full charges and discharges to reach peak performance. On low power, I was able to achieve 3 hours 45 minutes and about 90 minutes on the high setting. With my Trucell battery pack, I only checked the low power setting and was able to get just over 4 hours use.





Testing the Superspot indoors was a bit of a problem. Due to the design of this light (needing to remain light weight to float), and using it indoors and on the high setting, the LED tends to get very hot. I'd say it's due to the watertight feature not allowing the heatsink to properly keep the thing cool, but there is some type of circuitry inside it that senses the high temperature and throttles the power setting down to low, enabling the LED's to cool down. I'd say it's a nice feature which may add to the longevity of it. Once it cools down, it automatically throttles back up to the high setting. Using it outside or walking around with it on the high setting, it remained cool enough and never throttled back, maintaining full output.


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