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IceCap’s own Steven pro’s shows us the ballast comparison between their ballast and an OEM ballast. Most fixtures on the market include a preinstalled ballast of some kind which is an OEM from another company. While the lower cost fixtures seek to find the cheapest OEM ballast they can install to keep the prices down other higher cost fixtures seek to find the right balance. Check out the above video to see if IceCap pwns a OEM ballast or if the OEM handles the IceCap ballast. To be fair, the IceCap crew probably stumbled upon one of the weakest performing ballasts on the market but at least they make the point that the IceCap ballast is among one of the better ones. The one thing we would like to point out is the video is a bit misleading as the “time lapse photography” shows that the lamp took over 12 hours to warm up, which in our experience the “average” bulb takes less than 20 minutes. It’s a sales video, what did you expect?
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This thing has 9 Comments
funny they didnt show the time lapse on their ballast all they said was they gave it oh about 15 minutes
So according to the video time lapse it took 4 hours for a ballast to get to 100 watts used? Ummmm… even the most Chinese made of Chinese ballasts are not that crappy. It’d be one thing to say it only peaks at 180 watts, but to say it took them over 12 hours to get the ballast to it? The fudged the results some how. I don’t think the video says anything about how good the ice-cap ballast really is because what they’re comparing it too is obviously junk, and obviously defective in some way if it took that long to power up.
Oh yeah, and they should have done a slightly better job editing the video, “as you can see here on the label it says 2.35 watts” (it says amps not watts)
I too believe that they were using an OEM ballast of questionable quality, if not a defective one.
Does ICECAP even make their ballasts? Aren’t what they are selling just a OEM?
if you want to prove something to be best in class then put it up against some of the already known best in class out there and see how theirs shapes up.
it is a shame that a reputable company would have to stoop to testing their product against something that is obviously super inferior to theirs (and possibly everything else that is on the markey)
Well… I am not Einstein ….but ……Icecap lost a little credibility.
any plans to make dimmable ballast for T5 bulbs?
I purchased a cheap 48″ 4×65w PC and 2×250 MH fixture from Aquatraders a few years back (all I could afford at the time). Within 6 months one ballast failed so I replaced in with an IceCap 250W (The nice blue one). All the bulbs have since been upgraded to CoraLife bulbs and the one original ballast is still going strong….as for the IceCap ballast…it’s been back to IceCap 5 times over the last two years because it would simply go out after 10 mins of operation and then try and re-ignite the bulb. I keep a spare Cap/Coil Ballast (the real work horse) on hand for when the IceCap ballast is being exchanged (until my warranty runs out). I work in Industrial Electronics and troubleshoot complex systems of electronics and electrical componets so I know this…all the math in the world comes down to this…All the Watts and Par are ZERO when the ballast is away for repairs.