Who would have thought that a company that specalized in growing plants would make such a big splash in the aquarium industry? Well, that’s exactly what Kessil has done over the past few years, and like a good wine, they’re only getting better with age. The illumination specialists have already wooed aquarium hobbyists with their A150 and A350 LED pendants, both very popular, and they just announed an even more aquarium friendly A360 that will really speak to the aquarium techno junky in all of us.
Built on the same platform as the A350, the new A360 offers up connectivity to external devices (e.g. controllers) and introduces Kessil Logic, a technology that allows for independent color and intensity control so that all spectras can be displayed at their fullest power. The new light will be available in the A360N and A360W models, which only differ in the angle of the light being emitted by the fixture. The A360W has a much wider opening that allows light to spread out, while the A360N has a narrow beam of light that is ideal for getting light down to the bottom of those really deep aquariums. Both models of the Kessil A360 will start shipping out to US aquarists by the end of March with a retail price of $449. This price is just $50 more than both models of the A350. European hobbyists should see the new fixture hit their market by this fall.
Getting back to the new features, the A360 is debuting Kessil’s new proprietary Kessil Logic, which they call a form of spectral intelligence. Through this technology, hobbyists no longer have to dim down the intensity of a particular white or blue channel to get desired color mixture. Instead, the color and intensity are independent of each other. Hobbyists dial in the color they want with one knob, then ramp up the intensity with the other. This allow the light to have the both the best color and brightest intensity to provide the best conditions for coral growth. Kessil claims this new spectral intelligence will boost light output at both ends of the available spectrum by as much as 30%.
On top of this new Kessil Logic, which is manually dialed in, the A360 also comes with a pair of ports that allow it to be controlled by external devices. This includes various aquarium controllers and even allows Kessil units to be daisy chained together. When used with an aquarium controller, the light can be turned on or off, and both the intensity and spectrum can be adjusted. When multiple A360 units are connected together without a controller, the first one in the series acts as the master unit that tells the other units what color and intensity to use, obviously making tuning multiple lights a quick and simple process.
