Maxspect在全球水族馆的创新中以其创新而闻名,其创作总是伴随着现代而大胆的设计。2017年底推出的Recreve LED也不例外。这个漂亮的LED灯具带有创新功能,其光滑的金属底盘为任何水族馆设置增添了精致外观。
Regrettably, Recurve comes with several shortcomings which may be due to the fact that it’s the first generation of this product line. After extensive use of Recurve R6-120 on my personal aquarium since its launch, it’s time to share my thoughts.
折回了有3种不同的大小——R6-060, R6-090 and R6-120 which are 2 foot, 3 foot and 4 foots wide respectively. According to Maxspect, each fixture can be mounted on the aquarium with same width or up to a feet wider tanks.
Nearly the entire chassis is made from aluminium heat sink which helps reducing the reliance on active cooling by the fans on the upper side of its body. This construction allows incredibly silent operation even during warm summer in northern Queensland, Australia (in fact, I have never been made conscious about whether these fans were in operation or not).
3 sizes to accommodate the aquarium in variety of dimension. An extra center cluster for every size upgrade.
One of the major features of Recurve is the unique arrangement of LED light source to allow users to flexibly adjust the coverage area. The main LED clusters are aligned in its main part of the body similarly to Razor series and two movable flaps contains numerous LED chips parallel to main clusters.
These flaps are movable up to 30 degrees to allow the adjustment of spread-penetration balance. On paper, this is a wonderful idea but it did not work as I hoped for two reasons. Firstly, the intensity of wing light is simply not enough to make real-life difference in coral colour.
On 4 foot Recurve, there are 360 LEDs in total on front and rear wings but they seem to be low-powered and covered by thick diffusers which reduces the intensity. Diffusers are highly effective to spread light over wider area and improve colour blending however, Recurve’s numerous low-powered LEDswithoutfocus optics will unlikely to have problem with spread and colour blending even in absence of diffusers.
The second issue with Recurve’s wings is the spectrum – The spectrum assigned to wings are simply not very useful. Out of 360 wing LEDs, 72 are allocated to Green, another 72 to Red, and Blue with 72 LEDs which are not exactly “blue” but more like “Blue-Green” or “Cyan”.
The rest of 144 are allocated to near-UV, Violet and Deep Blue having 48 LEDs for each sub-colour category. Majority of reefers will not be using intense Green and Red probably even Cyan. This makes large portion of wing LEDs less useful and the corals covered only by the accessory light will unlikely to have enough light to grow.
Having supplementaly LED strip on adjustable wing is a wonderful idea!
On the other hand, center LED clusters include orthodox spectrum – Blue and White. Warmer white colour temperature produces yellow-tint all over the tank and although this is a matter of personal preference, it could have been tweaked to have cooler white for more pleasant viewing experience.
Four pucks of LED consisting of 15 chips per puck are equipped with a reflector and an acrylic lens. Similarly to wing clusters, there is no focus optics offering truly amazing even spread of light. The tank mount included in the box installs the fixture at the height of 4 inch (10cm) above the tank that enables the full utilization of wide beam angle while preventing light spill.
This uniform light field without localized hotspot is the key strength of Recurve. Corals grown under Recurve display natural pastel colours with healthy polyp extension. This mounting bracket is made from clear plastic makes installation a breeze and had no issues after 2 years of continuous use.
Blue & white LED chips are neatly organised in center cluster.No focus optics = natural and even light field!Plastic tank mount enables easy-installation.
不过,要警惕,固定装置的边缘与左右两个LED簇之间存在超过8英寸(21厘米)的缝隙,这两个均留下了储罐的两端,不适合种植像Acropora物种这样的轻度需求的珊瑚。这不仅是当重复出现安装在大于重复宽度的水族馆上时,而且匹配宽度时,这是正确的。
When aquascaping, it is recommended to keep the height of rockwork low at the back and front of the aquarium so that light from center clusters can reach these areas. It would have provided much more even light spread if the same number of LED chips are split into more of smaller clusters across the entire fixture width.
The large gap between the edge and center cluster may leave both side of the tank unsuitable for light-demanding corals.
Controllability is another area Recurve shines. In addition to controlling via Syna-G app (optional ICV6 Controller required), unlike many modern aquarium LED, Recurve is equipped with OLED display and jog-dial switch enabling full control without any wireless connection.
Wireless connectivity and the ability to control via app is useful and gives modern feeling but in reality it is quite often much quicker to make a minor tweak by simple press of buttons. In case of an emergency situation where wireless network is unavailable, it is much safer to have manual control option!
反复曲线可以通过具有6个通道控制 - 蓝色/宝蓝色/深蓝色(CH A),白色/温暖白色(CH B),红色(CH C),绿色/青色(CH D),蓝色(CH E(CH e)和紫色/深蓝色(CH F)。
Built-in display & control is a luxury these days but it is an excellent fail-safe measure in case of network issue that we experience every now and then.
Recurve LED ticks many boxes and it distinguishes itself from competing products due to number of highly ambitious features. However, it is also true that these innovative features aren’t fully baked yet to achieve the intended result especially with most demanding corals.Due to the brave decision not to use focus optics in both center clusters and wing strips, Recurve provides unsurpassed spread over wide area, however, in exchange, it produces much less light intensity.
I only wish that Maxspect substantially reduced the number of Red, Green/Cyan chips and replace them with more desired spectrum such as 420nm Violet and 450nm Royal Blue to minimize the amount of unused power to compensate the intrinsic lack of power. More eye-pleasing result could be achieved with the use of cooler white colour temperature and proper blue (470nm instead of 480nm).
The issue was, this result could be achieved only within the limited area where adequate amount of light from both center and strip LEDs could reach. It is ironic that Recurve’s main focus was the light spread but its design counteracted to achieve this goal. Having said that, let’s remember that it was the first generation LED of Recurve line. With some improvements, Recurve will become a truly next generation reef LED capable of producing the result unlike any other.