A Big Ass Light for your garage

With insane light output and a lifespan of 137 years, this is the garage light to end all garage lights.

Ry Crist Senior Editor / Reviews - Labs

Originally hailing from Troy, Ohio, Ry Crist is a writer, a text-based adventure connoisseur, a lover of terrible movies and an enthusiastic yet mediocre cook. A CNET editor since 2013, Ry's beats include smart home tech, lighting, appliances, broadband and home networking.

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Ry Crist

Dec. 11, 2014 5:30 a.m. PT

2 min read

If your home is your castle, your dim and dreary garage might as well be the dungeon. Big Ass Light, the LED-oriented offshoot of Big Ass Fans, thinks it has the solution: an ultra-powerful LED fixture that puts out a whopping 13,000 lumens while promising to last 150,000 hours. At an average of 3 hours of use per day (which seems like a lot for a garage), that comes out to roughly 137 years.

Retailing for $399, the Big Ass Light Shop LED is the same sort of ostentatious luxury purchase as Big Ass Fans' smart Haiku ceiling fan with SenseMe , which sells for over a thousand bucks. Like the Haiku though, it's hard not to be impressed with the product, or, at very least, amused by the sheer audacity of it.

At 23 inches long, the Big Ass Light Shop LED shines hot and white at a color temperature of 5,000 K, and puts out those 13,000 lumens from a power draw of 122 watts. That's surprisingly efficient, with well over 100 lumens for each watt. Using it for 3 hours per day (which again, seems high for a garage) would add just under $15 to your yearly energy bill. It's about the same power draw as two 60W incandescent bulbs -- the difference being that those two incandescents would only put out about 1,600 lumens.

For an extra $40, you'll have the option of adding an occupancy sensor onto the bottom of the fixture -- whenever it detects motion below, the light will come on automatically. There's no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth built in, though, so don't expect it to integrate with the Haiku, or with the Haiku's app.

The Big Ass Light Shop LED is available for sale on the company website and through Home Depot, and comes with a 7-year warranty that includes the light's power supply. The fixture plugs into standard 120V outlets, so there's no need for hardwiring, though you will need to hang the thing up -- Big Ass Light sells a wire-mounting kit for $10.