With A Frickin Laser Beam
Story By: Kyle Callen
Photos By: Brandon Bunch
As age starts to get the best of us, I have grown an immense appreciation for the time spent with my grandfather. Mainly the simple and hilarious one liners he comes up with while describing something. “I have brighter candles in the house than the headlights on this new truck,” comes to mind as we were discussing his new truck, and what he liked and didn’t like about it. It’s funny to see how a guy who is stuck in the 1950’s and 60’s expects so much out of modern technology without having an understanding of it, or what makes it work.
In my grandpa’s defense, lighting technology has evolved faster in the last 5-10 years than in the 50 years prior. But, much of that technology seems to be based around disco lights and fancy options, instead developing true high performance lighting solutions. Baja Designs is one of the few companies that is constantly pushing the envelope of what is capable, while perfecting the technology without the need for dancing colors. Their sole focus is helping people see farther and with more clarity in the darkest of conditions. This progression led the team at Baja Designs to start playing with laser beams. Seriously though, who wouldn’t want to get paid to play with frickin laser beams?
By now, most of us have played with a laser in one form or another, whether it was one of those little pens, a laser level, or a laser sight for your firearm, the concept is pretty much the same. In true Baja Designs fashion they have to take everything one step further. Knowing the tiny red dot wouldn’t be useful for anything in front of a vehicle, they set out to perfect the internals of their laser to maintain the range while giving it enough spread to make it useful. This is no small task.
The core of this new light is the laser chip. By using two laser diodes that shoot their laser beams into a phosphor spot, the laser chip projects light 350% further than their current best LED chip, all while using less power than an equivalent all-LED setup, and without being harmful to your eyes. This allows drivers to see up to a mile down the trail depending on the terrain without placing a massive load on the charging system. Coming in at half the size of the traditional LED chip, the team at Baja Designs was able to package both the laser chip and their state of the art LEDs in the same housing, so not only can you see a mile plus down the road, the laser projection blends seamlessly with the LED spread, giving you great mid-field visibility. All this light output condensed into a small package means you can run less lights while producing even better results.
So what does seeing a mile down the trail net you, and is it really needed? For us here in the southwest, we ride hard, and we ride fast. The landscape allows us to see a long ways out during the day, but at night we are limited to the projection of the light. With the laser lights on the front of our Polaris RZR XP Turbo S Velocity, we went out and ran the test course. We noticed that lap times with the laser lights on were significantly better than lap times with them off, and there is no denying why, we could see much further down the trail.
We then put them in an environment that they were not designed for, rock crawling in Moab, UT. We constantly found ourselves switching them on an off, as in the tight tech sections the laser was so bright that it would almost white out the trail immediately ahead, but on the longer downhill sections they would light the trail far ahead, so we knew what kind of trouble we would be headed for.
At the end of the day, we love seeing companies like Baja Designs pushing the envelope of what is possible with their products. They aren’t ok with the status quo that is pumping out sub par products and selling them just to make a buck. These new laser lights aren’t the solution for every rider, but they are a great option for those that require the best technology available.