Rigid Industries Dually Series Light Bar Review
Rigid Industries are well known for their E Series lightbars and the interesting new low profile SR Series. Lightbars aren’t the only lighting option for 4wd vehicles though. Spots, extra driving lights and floods for working round your tailgate or in a ute bed are all popular accessories too. Rigid offer a few choices for anyone who’s after that type of lighting and we decided to take a look at their Dually LED lights.
The Dually range has plenty of options, including both surface or flush mounting versions, but the core of the range is six different high quality lights. You can split these into the standard Dually models, each using four LEDs, and the six-LED D2 versions. We looked at the surface mounted lights; if you’re going for the flush mounted ones everything we say about the casings and the lights themselves still applies, it’s only the mounts that are different.
The housings for the Dually are nicely manufactured from Rigid Industries’ usual A360 aluminium. Their website says they’re extruded but to us they look more like forgings. Either way they’re very nicely put together and extremely tough. The finish is a good black powder coat that seems deep enough to shrug off a few knocks and scratches. The lights use Rigid’s hybrid optics system and the lens is part of the beam shaping, so it’s reassuring to know the polycarbonate is highly scratch resistant and just about unbreakable. A rubber gasket and tight fitting bezel seal the unit nicely; it’s rated IP68, meaning that it’s completely sealed against dust and water even if completely submerged. The surface mount lights have an adjustable mount fitted to the case and they come with a complete wiring harness, weatherproof plug and switch. They’re also available as pairs.
The quality of light output is very impressive. The Dually units only draw about 20 watts each, but the spots we tested are rated at 1,568 lumens each and the beam gives usable light at over 400m, which is pretty good. Fit a couple of these on your roof and you’ll have a clear view ahead. They’re also fully UV shielded, operate perfectly from -40° to 145°C and should last for about 50,000 hours.
If it’s not spots you’re after you’ll find an option to suit anyway. The Dually is also available as a flood or with a diffuser lens; the D2 models are a driving light (sort of a wide spot,) wide flood and diffused. You can also order them with different coloured lenses, with amber, red, green and blue available as well as the standard white.
Really there aren’t many lighting tasks we can think of that one of the Dually or D2 models couldn’t handle. If you need some solid, high performance illumination you won’t go far wrong here.
