Orphek icons burning out and poor customer service

Paulb89 · Aug 26, 2024

Has anyone else experienced the LEDs burning out and destroying the lenses on the icon units?

Both of my units have now burned out a channel and melted the lenses.
Units are only 2.5 years old and run at 70%

Had I known I would have to fork out for new boards and change them myself every 2 - 3 years I wouldn't have bought them.

What's worse is Orpheks attitude, I posted on the Facebook group chat and was banned and had my messages removed because I asked if anyone else was suffering this?
This was by an Orphek staff member

Incredibly poor, something to hide Orphek?
Trying the silence customers from bringing up issues?

They're not cheap lights and that kind of behaviour from a company is unacceptable, people should be made aware of there attitude towards their customer base.

Paulb89 · Aug 26, 2024

As per photo, my messages removed and I'm unable to post anymore.

Silencing customers much?

Dragen Fiend · Aug 26, 2024

If your going to spend money. Spend it on something that has a better warranty than 1 year...

Warranty tells you everything you need to know about the expected life of the product.

2.5 years is not bad all things considered. I don't see anything that they could do to resolve this besides providing data on why it burnt out. My guess is a component failed on regulating the power that caused the chips to overload. Burning the chips and melting the lens.

Have you emailed support yet?

While I am not a fan of how companies handle questionable product issue comments on platforms. Its a common trend.

Paulb89 · Aug 26, 2024

Dragen Fiend said:
If your going to spend money. Spend it on something that has a better warranty than 1 year...

Warranty tells you everything you need to know about the expected life of the product.

2.5 years is not bad all things considered. I don't see anything that they could do to resolve this besides providing data on why it burnt out. My guess is a component failed on regulating the power that caused the chips to overload. Burning the chips and melting the lens.

Have you emailed support yet?

While I am not a fan of how companies handle questionable product issue comments on platforms. Its a common trend.

Orpheks are an expensive light and I'm sorry but to have to replace components yourself every 2.5 years at your own cost really isn't on.

If you was buying a really cheap quality light and running them full power everyday for 10 hours a time then yeah that's to be expected but this is not the case.

I'm not asking and expecting an endless warranty and I get that there are issues at times, of course there is but to simply ask, "hey is it normal for me to keep having to replace these boards at my own cost every 2 and a half years and is the board I'm replacing it with upgraded" and for then to be banned and deleted is really shoddy.

I've emailed support but no reply yet

tjonw6981 · Sep 11, 2024

Dealing with the same issue right now actually. I have 3 compact icons and one OR3 that channel 2 (blues) have burned out over 1 to 1.5 years. Looking at the boards its all the leds labeled 450... Even more frustrating is that I ordered new boards for all units and one showed up DOA which is a major PITA. Customer service is asking me to send the boards to Colorado for diagnosis which will further delay getting my lighting backup and running.

piranhaman00 · Sep 11, 2024

Pretty common issue with orphek

tjonw6981 · Sep 11, 2024

Here's a pic of 3 the 3 boards I just replaced, you'll notice other leds Amberered or burnt too. The lenses on the burnt diodes also have been damaged.

bubbgee · Sep 16, 2024

Did you guys run this at 100% always? I am a new Orphek user

Teyhas · Sep 23, 2024

Same thing happened here. First one of my two OR3 150 blue plus strips stopped working altogether early this summer, these were purchased late 2020. Then a month later I noticed that I had lost channel 4 on one of my icon compacts and channels 4 and 6 on another icon compact that had been upgraded from v4's in late 2021. Took the icon's apart to diagnose the problem as asked to by Orphek support and noticed that the 450nm LED's were melted. This accounted for the loss of channel 4. Channel 6 on the one hand had no visible damage but was still out on the one light. The damage to the 450nm LED's was similar to damage I found to the 440nm LED's in my Atlantic V4 gen2's when I upgraded to the icon boards, the difference being those LED's still lit up. When I made the upgrades in fall of 2021 I had originally only intentioned to upgrade the controller boards and fans but then had one of the channels on my full size Atlantic V4 gen 2 go out while I was doing the controller upgrades. I do have to say that the people I have been in contact with in the customer service department are friendly and responsive even If they were unable to remedy the situation as all of the failures happened outside of the rather weak one year warranty. I was also sold replacement parts at a discount to fix the lights so it's not like they did nothing. However, I do think that a lighting fixture that sells for $700 to $1000 should function properly for more than 2-3 years. You can't convince me R&D didn't test these lights before they were released. I could maybe understand that the chips were difficult to source or maybe had to be substituted with ones of lesser quality considering everything going on in the world at the time my units were purchased, but stand by your product. I sent photo's of the original melted LED's in the V4 gen2's, did not expect to have the same thing happen to the icon's. If the 450nm's can't handle being driven so hard then why not decrease the amount of juice. Am I to look at replacement pcb's every couple years the same as replacing the bulbs in a T5 or halide fixture every year?

Dburr1014 · Sep 23, 2024

That's not cool at all.

As a light maker I would think that if you can turn them up to 100%, they should be able to handle 100%. Two and a half years is quite short to burn out.

I have ran my reef breeders light at 100% for years for 6 hours a day. My fixture is now more than 8 years old and still running, I have not changed any component on it other than upgrading it to a pro model. It's still the same power supply. All lights still working.

I would definitely reach out to them.

Teyhas · Sep 23, 2024

Been in contact with support on numerous occasions and they walked me through testing to see if it was a controller issue or the LED pcb, turned out to be the pcb. They offered to sell me replacements for the compacts at a $20-$30 dollar discount but didn't have the money at that point. Did have a brand new full size Icon sitting around that I picked up for another tank I was starting up last year and swapped it out for the 2 faulty compacts last night. Odd thing is that the 490nm orange LED's seem to have a slightly different output level/color than the ones on my original boards. Thinking maybe they made some adjustments to remedy the issue. Gonna just ride it out for now and see what happens. I did notice while setting up the new light that the uv channel 6 on the old full size icon is about half the brightness of the new one or on either of the compacts that still have that channel working. Might have to switch some controller boards around and see if there is any change. Sucks I have to do all this tinkering around, never had half as many problems with my old AI Hydra 52's. Saddest part is that when they are working they have great color to the eye and are great at growing corals as well, just durability is an issue.

FishTruck · Sep 23, 2024

I have rebuilt and replaced boards, heat sinks, and fans so many times... Atlantic, Upgraded Atlantics, moved on Icon upgrade kits. I have two icon upgrades and three upgraded Atlantiks currently running.

After the last round of rebuilds... I bought the LED light bars and dropped the intensity of the Atlantiks / Icons in my tank down to max 70% (and shorter light cycle). IME, they cannot handle 100%.

I stick with them because I like the high mounting height and I built my T Slot rails specifically to work with them.

exnisstech · Sep 23, 2024

Disclaimer I refuse to use any social media platform outside of here but I've read enough to know that Facebook is for fan boys/girls and positive comments. It's not unique to orphek shutting people down and banning them. I've also read of this happening with these lights.

jhadaway · Sep 23, 2024

I had issues with my OR3s after 1 year. The email turned into a sales pitch for the new dimmable light. Sure that sounds great since two out of three OR3s i bought are dead already. I have quanta bars now. No issues and I have a suspicion luca would make it right if i did

Teyhas · Sep 23, 2024

Wasn't even running at 100%. Have the icon's running at maybe 80% because I had 2 OR3's on the sides to give a little better coverage as my tank is 30" wide, didn't need to run them that high. Lights on for 11 hours a day. They mentioned the upcoming OR4 upgrades to me as well when my OR3 died as well, figured I'd wait for those to get the dimming feature that I was promised back in 2020.

FishTruck · Sep 24, 2024

jhadaway said:
I had issues with my OR3s after 1 year. The email turned into a sales pitch for the new dimmable light. Sure that sounds great since two out of three OR3s i bought are dead already. I have quanta bars now. No issues and I have a suspicion luca would make it right if i did

Yep… every time I got talked into the new improved parts that won’t burn out. I was really hoping the icons would last.

I’m demoing lights from a different vendor which will creep in if the orpheks start to fail again. Sad to hear the icon boards are burning out .

Zozi · Sep 27, 2024

So they cost 1000e+ and u are not able to drive them 100% not even 80% whit active vents.. custumer support sucks.. why people keep recommending this light? Thank you for posting this. When u Google orphek review u can find only good thing about it.. so i had to do a little research about problems and there is planty of cases hepaend same thing.. now I'm definitely not getting this expensive crap..

FishTruck · Sep 27, 2024

exnisstech said:
Disclaimer I refuse to use any social media platform outside of here but I've read enough to know that Facebook is for fan boys/girls and positive comments. It's not unique to orphek shutting people down and banning them. I've also read of this happening with these lights.

Is that why the vedors always send you to the facebook group page? So, they can control the narrative?