So I had been thinking about going to a hybrid t5/led route with my G4s, and then I saw the announcement for G5s. After some thinking and number crunching, I ended up biting the bullet for the new G5s to replace G4s hoping that the spread of the light in the G5s will be similar to G4 with T5s.
These are some of my initial thoughts. Overall probably more negative than positive but could change down the road depending on how Ecotech handles this.
Pros:
Overall, I do kind of regret upgrading to G5s, at least this early on. It does not feel like a finished product and definitely does not feel like an Ecotech product. I've been using Ecotech products for almost 10 years now and this is the first time where I've encountered so many issues trying to set something up. Maybe Ecotech will get it together and fix a lot of this, but regardless, this first impression has been pretty bad for me personally.
TLDR - Mobius is trash. Don't buy G5s right now unless you want to beta test them for Ecotech.
These are some of my initial thoughts. Overall probably more negative than positive but could change down the road depending on how Ecotech handles this.
Pros:
- Amazing light spread
- Less disco than G4 without diffusor
- Radion BLUE....doesn't look blue? Using the AB+ template (all channels at 100%), the lights don't look anything like AB+ on radion G4s hooked up to WXM. There is way more white with a weird green tint (I know there are new green LEDs on radion blues, but I thought they would have blended them in better.) It looks more like metal halides than AB+. Corals have kind of that washed out color and much less pop. I don't know how I feel about the color of the lights yet. Personally, I like a bluer look on G4s, however, if this 'new' spectrum has better colors/growth long term then I'd be okay with the new color.
- Mobius is absolute trash. It honestly does not feel like a finished product. I did not use reeflink/ecosmart live previously, so maybe its always been bad. To be frank, it is to the point of turning me off completely from buying ecotech products in the future if they don't fix this. PSA to all who don't know....you can ONLY connect to the lights through bluetooth and there is no option as of now to connect through wifi. Bluetooth is finicky, constantly crashing, and prob only works 20% of the time. If you have multiple lights, good luck trying to get them to all connect and synced at the same time. I am using a iphoneX/ipad pro to connect and both have the same issues. Mobius is also extremely laggy. Each page can take up to 15-20 seconds to load. When you adjust settings, you can't save it half the time because the app lags out and crashes. Ecotech, your hardware is only as good as your software.
- Do NOT mount the lights on your tank until AFTER you finish setting everything up. You will thank me later. When you first boot the light up, it will go full 100% blast. After panicking and immediately hitting the power off on the lights, it went back to full blast multiple times during the configuration. When you try to adjust the lights, it will 'demo' the changes live. I kind of understand the rationale behind this, but I wish ecotech would put an option to turn this off. I much rather have the apex way of doing this where you adjust all your settings and then 'save' your settings. After saving the settings, a demo would be appropriate, but not while you are dialing in things. Between mobius screwing up and crashing every few minutes, me trying to dial in my settings, and the lights being a completely different color from G4s, I manage to royally tick off all of my corals to the point where they have not consumed any alk in a day. Hopefully after the initial nonsense of setting these lights up, the corals will bounce back.
- Poor packaging and poor instructions. The inside of the box does not 'feel' like it is housing a $900 light. The cardboard feels thinner than lights in the past. The light inside of the box is poorly protected and I've seen other people receiving brand new xr30s with cracked lenses. Mine wasn't cracked but two of the screws in one of the lights were not screwed in and was just rolling around in the box... The instructions that come with this thing is borderline useless and between the terrible instruction manual and mobius being such a piece of crap, I really wanted to throw these lights in the trash intially. I think ecotech is trying to go the minimalist route like Apple with their packaging and instructions. IF mobius wasn't the terrible point of sale that it is, then I could understand the poor instruction manual. But the fact is mobius in its current form is terrible.
- Light still has disco effect, especially OUTSIDE of the tank. Yes, G5s have less disco than G4s. However, they do NOT have less disco than G4s w/ diffusers. I would say the disco effect on the G5s is more of an issue outside of the tank on the walls and floors of the room than inside the tank. The disco on the inside is minimal, but still not quite where it should be at imo. I plan on buying diffusers when they become avaliable because the disco and rainbows appearing on the walls and floors outside of the tank is super annoying to me.
Overall, I do kind of regret upgrading to G5s, at least this early on. It does not feel like a finished product and definitely does not feel like an Ecotech product. I've been using Ecotech products for almost 10 years now and this is the first time where I've encountered so many issues trying to set something up. Maybe Ecotech will get it together and fix a lot of this, but regardless, this first impression has been pretty bad for me personally.
TLDR - Mobius is trash. Don't buy G5s right now unless you want to beta test them for Ecotech.
Programing with Mobius went fine, was pretty simple to set up AB+ schedule. For lights Bluetooth is fine, doubt I will want to change it remotely, but things like dosing pumps I for sure would want to adjust from afar...
