Food for thought, hope that helps.Įvery state is different but you can't run a LED light bar in Oregon. And on that note, I recommend going with a "spot" patten instead of a "flood" pattern if you can, since LEDs have so much stray light anyways the dedicated flood pattern isn't much better (flooding everything with light) than a spot pattern, and it doesn't penetrate as well. Also, LEDs don't have great penetration it seems (at least going 50-60mph I want something that punches through more). I wouldn't underestimate HIDs though, I have read a few race truck/buggy guys who got rid of their other lights since the HIDs put out so much light. The paint has held up fine, great light output, and all but the 50" for under $200. My other bars (unnamed essentially running Cree/Epistars) have held up fine, being a combination of 30", 40", 50", using under mounted and side mounting rails with no issues in hot temperatures at Moab or below zero snow wheeling in CO and Northern Utah. I originally got a Tuff LED 20" bar off Amazon and the light output sucked and the paint faded really fast. With that said, they are mostly Chinese made running Cree/Epistar LEDs.
There is no reason unless you have a race vehicle or gobs of cash to buy an LED bar over $300 (in my opinion). In my experience, if you just go on eBay and search the size you want like "6 inch LED bar" you will find cheap LED bars that hold up great and have good light output.
I've run a variety of LED bars, though nothing smaller than 20".